It’s no secret that houses can be acquired for cheap in Detroit—as low as $500 if you attend the Wayne County Tax Foreclosure Auction. With property so easy to acquire, a new question surfaces: what should be done with them? Many are dilapidated from disuse, burnt-out with no plumbing or electrical wiring to speak of, despite being located in partially occupied neighborhoods. Prior ‘cheap-house’ projects have made polemical, visual statements that call out the urban blight in Detroit. Five teaching/research fellows from the University of Michigan’s Architecture Department have approached their $500 house a little differently, using it as a testing ground for their ideas about architecture and domestic space.