When things reach that stage when they really can't get any worse, they can start looking better.

In the case of Detroit (a city most people have written off as hopeless), houses can be had for almost nothing. That's because the city is falling apart and city services are poor to nonexistent. So if you call the cops, they might not come at all. The schools are so bad that sending your kids to school in Detroit constitutes child abuse.

But still, a house is a house. It's a roof over your head. Sure, you might need dogs, guns, and home schooling, but to be able to get your own house for nearly nothing has a certain irresistible appeal. (After all, considering how much it costs to build a house, Detroit houses are seriously undervalued.) Little wonder that artists from around the world are now discovering Detroit:

...northeast Detroit has virtues Carmel never had -- among them $100 houses, one of which is being purchased by two Chicago artists, Jon Brumit and Sarah Wagner.

Their plan is to move to this budding community near Klinger Street and the Davison, to live in a tiny bungalow with a fire hole in the roof.

Against all odds, Detroit's downsides -- foreclosures and a collapsing manufacturing base -- suddenly look like assets, at least for starving artists, and even successful ones, in search of space and cheap digs.

It's an appealing prospect for people like Brumit and Wagner, or German artist Ingo Vetter, who says by e-mail from Stockholm that he hopes to move to America's grittiest city as soon as he can.

Beyond the property deals are the harder-to-quantify attractions of a city now almost as fabled worldwide as New York or San Francisco -- albeit in a slightly different vein.

"Detroit wins because it's Detroit," says Toby Barlow, a novelist who moved here from Brooklyn, N.Y., a few years ago. He wrote an affectionate essay on the city and its appeal to artists in Sunday's New York Times.

"Detroit wins because it has the reputation for being the worst place on Earth. You're not going to sound cutting-edge," he adds with a laugh, "by starting an artists' community in Cleveland."

Locals seem relieved that someone is buying abandoned properties. Of Cope and Reichert, who have made a point of getting to know families nearby, longtime resident Mohammed Mehid says, "They're good neighbors. One-hundred percent!"

Beyond cost and Detroit's unique aesthetic, however, there are practical advantages that wow visitors from glitzier cities.

"Friends are always struck by how much freedom and time we have," Reichert says, compared to friends in L.A. or New York who spend most of their time hustling to earn a living to support their art.

Newcomers see an unusual receptiveness in Detroit as well.

"There are so many interesting things going on here that you couldn't do in New York," says Barlow, "both because of cost and crowding, and the fact that everyone's overseeing everything. Whereas in Detroit, it's like, 'You're trying to do that? Neat.'"

(Of course, the existence of basically free houses makes me wonder about the phenomenon called "homelessness," but that's another issue.)