- [Narrator] Coming up on "One Detroit."

Our political contributors offer their thoughts on this week's Democratic National Convention.

Plus, we'll examine a major issue that could drive more young voters to the polls for this year's election.

Also ahead, we'll have the story of Detroit's blessed Solanus Casey as he gets closer to becoming a saint.

Plus, we'll have some ideas on how you can spend this weekend in Metro Detroit.

And we'll end with a unique dance performance.

It's all coming up next on "One Detroit."

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Masco, serving Michigan communities since 1929.

- [Narrator] Support also provided by the Cynthia and Edsel Ford Fund for Journalism at Detroit PBS.

- [Narrator] DTE Foundation is a proud sponsor of Detroit PBS.

Among the state's largest foundations committed to Michigan focused giving, we support organizations that are doing exceptional work in our state.

Learn more at dtefoundation.com.

- [Narrator] Nissan Foundation and viewers like you.

(soft upbeat music) - [Narrator] Just ahead on "One Detroit."

We'll have a special report on one of the most pressing issues for young voters this election season, affordable housing.

Plus, a truly Detroit story about a Catholic priest who could become the first American male to attain sainthood.

Also ahead, Peter Whorf from 90.9 WRCJ has a rundown of the events taking place in Metro Detroit this weekend and beyond.

And we'll close with a performance by Biba Bell, but first up.

The Democratic National Convention wraps up tonight in Chicago with a keynote address from presidential candidate, Kamala Harris.

It has been a week of speeches by political leaders from battleground states.

Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer is scheduled to speak this evening.

"One Detroit" contributor, Nolan Finley, of "The Detroit News" is at the convention, and he weighed in on the event with fellow contributors, Stephen Henderson of "American Black Journal," and Zoe Clark from "Michigan Public."

(soft upbeat music) - Nolan, we're gonna start with you 'cause you are actually on the ground in Chicago.

- I am.

- So tell us what's going on, what's it like?

- Well, I mean, they're fired up and ready to go as they say.

It's been a very enthusiastic convention.

A lot of excitement about the new candidate at the top of the ticket.

It's not only relief, it's almost euphoria.

I mean, you'd have thought that Kamala Harris was the person they wanted all along here, but it is, there is a lot of energy, a lot of excitement in the United Center for those folks who could get in.

It's been hours long commute to get into the convention hall and a lot of frustration about that, but, you know, they have fully embraced Kamala Harris.

I think this is the least amount of grumbling I've heard in any of the dozen conventions I've covered over the years.

- Stephen, there is, it's just clear what seemed to be enthusiasm that had been tamped down on the Democratic side that has just sort of exploded over the past month, but we're really particularly seeing it on display at this convention.

I mean, that's what conventions are for.

- That's what they're for, right?

- Right, right.

- Yeah, but I mean, I do think there's, you know, I was thinking about this the other day when the Obamas spoke at the convention.

You know, there is a sense of order and discipline to what's happening with the Democratic party with this ticket and with this convention that you don't normally associate with Democrats, right?

I mean, the consistency here, the lack of controversy of any kind rearing its head in any way, it's just not like the Democratic Party.

Usually it's Republicans who mastered that kind of strategy during campaigns and, of course, their campaign, the Trump-Vance campaign is the one that seems less disciplined and more challenged, and disorganized right now.

You know, the momentum is what you're looking for out of a convention if you're the party.

You've gotta come out of that convention with people believing that there's energy behind the ticket going into the fall.

The Republicans couldn't master that this year.

I think the momentum the Democrats will come out with this time may seem at least insurmountable for a bit.

I mean, it is really, really powerful right now.

- Nolan, is the Big Mo, as they like to call it, insurmountable?

- Oh, I think there's no question they'll have momentum coming out of this, but Harris is walking a rather delicate line and Democrats are walking a delicate line.

They wanna embrace Joe Biden as one of the most accomplished presidents of our time.

And, you know, his sendoff was all about the great job he did and the wonderful direction he put the country on.

And yet you keep hearing about change and that word is bouncing all over this convention that Kamala represents change.

And you gotta ask change from what?

If the Biden policies were so great what is it you're going to change?

And that's a question she'll have to answer because the American public, you know, really doesn't think those policies were all that great if you believe the polls.

They're worried about some of the consequences of those policies when it comes to immigration and inflation.

So Harris is walking this line between embracing the old and trying to chart a new course for herself.

And it's interesting, even the democratic platform still has Joe Biden's name in it as the candidate.

They didn't even bother to go back and put Harris's name.

And so, I mean, she's gotta find her own path here and she's going to have to convince the American people that she could set the country on a better course than the administration she was part of had it on.

- Stephen, I was talking with Congresswoman Debbie Dingle, who we all spend a lot of time talking with when we want sort of that vibe check of what voters are feeling in Michigan, and I said, look, what does Vice President Kamala Harris need to say, if you were just talking about a Michigan audience this week?

And one of the things she said is she wants to see Harris be authentically herself and also talk about the bread and butter issues, as Nolan is saying, right?

It's the economy, stupid.

What do you think we're going to see from Harris Thursday night, both to sort of introduce herself to some voters who may not know her record, and also what she needs to do in the now 70 plus days until election day?

- Yeah, you know, it's a great question and Nolan's right.

I mean, so some of this is about the job she has now.

She's the vice president.

She can't come out and say, I didn't like any of the things that Joe Biden did, or I would do it terribly differently because she is part of this administration.

You know, at the same time she's gotta offer voters, you know, a contrast with the things that haven't worked.

I do expect that she will spend a lot of time countering the narrative that Nolan was just talking about.

If you take the totality of what they inherited from Donald Trump, which was an unmitigated disaster, and what has been accomplished over the last four years for the economy, both at the top and at the bottom.

The Dow hit 40,000 while Joe Biden was president.

The growth, the job growth has been almost unprecedented over the last four years.

At the bottom of the economy, you know, we almost eliminated child poverty with the child poverty tax credit.

There are all kinds of new things that are giving working and middle class people access to opportunity in the economy.

She has spent a lot of time talking about that stuff because it counters some of the criticism about inflation, which is very real and that people are feeling every day.

She's gotta talk about how she's gonna deal with that, but it will be in the context of this investment agenda that they have been on for the last four years that's helped everybody.

It's not just about the wealthiest people in our country.

It's about lifting everyone up.

The convention's done a good job so far of focusing on that, and drawing the contrast between that message and what Donald Trump has done or is talking about, which is about feeding the top, and hoping that it trickles down to everybody else, but convention speeches are also not platform speeches.

I mean, this is not where you're selling very specific stuff.

You're selling a message, and you're selling the difference between you and the other side.

And, you know, this idea of we won't go back is gonna resonate.

People remember where we were in January of 2021 when Donald Trump finally left the Oval Office.

- Stephen Henderson, Nolan Finley, we are gonna have to leave it there.

Nolan safe travels back from the Windy City.

- Thank you.

- [Narrator] As we get closer to the fall election, one of the major issues young adults are talking about is the lack of affordable housing across the country.

Many cannot afford to buy their first home.

Maria Witcher, a PBS News Hour Student Reporting Labs Gwen Ifill Legacy Fellow, spoke with experts at the University of Michigan about this housing concern, and how it could drive young voters to the polls.

- [Maria] The American dream of owning a home, or even renting one is turning into a nightmare.

Home prices have jumped 47% since 2020 and half of all renters nationwide are cost burdened, meaning they spend more than 30% of their income on rent according to the 2024 Harvard University Housing Study.

University of Michigan Associate Professor, Roshanak Mehdipanah, is a director of the Housing Solutions for Health Equity initiative.

- Housing has shifted from this idea of a basic human right to now becoming a commodity, right?

It's your investment.

It's no longer seen as this basic shelter that every human should have.

And so when you move into that investment territory, that's when things get more difficult.

- [Maria] And a 2024 Detroit Metro Area Community Study found the cost of housing is on voters' minds.

Mara Ostfeld is the University of Michigan faculty lead of the study.

She says that about 50% of Detroiters prioritize some element of housing costs as an issue that they want the government to address.

- When people say the economy, they're talking about housing.

When people say cost of living, they're talking about housing.

Even when people talk about schools, they're talking about housing.

It's one of those things that really permeates all of the policy issues that we see creeping up as a really big concern for Detroiters and Americans throughout the country.

- [Maria] Affordable housing is one of the top concerns for young people.

- We really saw this pop out among younger Detroiters, and this is consistent with national polls that younger Detroiters and younger Americans are far more concerned about the cost of housing, especially as they're entering into that phase of their life where they're starting to pay their own rent, or starting to put down payments on their own homes.

- [Maria] A 2024 Harvard Kennedy School Youth Poll found that 56% of people ages 18 to 29 nationwide say housing is more important than other issues in the United States today.

- Yes.

- [Maria] Mehdipanah says the reasons housing costs hit younger people harder are complex.

- And this can be attributed to multiple factors, including housing that is more expensive and many more hurdles or barriers for individuals to have to cross from credit scores, to having enough of a down payment and such.

And now we're at a time where interest rates are so high that it all makes it very difficult for younger folks to buy their first home.

- [Maria] Mehdipanah says, solutions include expanding eviction protection programs to protect renters facing financial hardship.

And also as that contractors are often not motivated to build affordable housing because of lower profit margins, government policies could change that.

- Cost of living is seen as something that's really dictated more heavily by federal policies than by local policies.

- [Maria] Addressing issues important to young voters may be especially important in a key swing state like Michigan.

- If we wanna see more young voters participate in the electoral process, then we need to pay more attention to the issues that they're saying are their top concerns.

And housing is clearly high-ranked among them.

Voters are looking for candidates to say they hear the concerns of the public and that they have a plan to address that.

- [Maria] Reporting from Ann Arbor, I'm Maria Witcher, a PBS News Student Reporting Labs Gwen Ifill Legacy Fellow.

- [Narrator] Let's turn now to a truly Detroit story about the blessed Solanus Casey.

He was a Catholic priest who served Detroiters many decades ago, but his name still resonates among the faithful today.

Father Casey died in the 1950s and now he's close to being elevated into sainthood.

"One Detroit's" Bill Kubota has the story from the neighborhood that is home to the Solanus Casey Center.

(soft upbeat music) - [Bill] Detroit's East Side, the Islandview neighborhood, the St. Bonaventure Monastery, and its Solanus Casey Center built in the longlasting memory of the blessed Solanus Casey.

When he died in 1957 at age 86, 10,000 came.

- I feel like people still feel that way today.

They feel his presence, his oneness with people, and his desire to participate in their life somehow.

- [Bill] Here, perhaps you'll feel Father Casey's presence and you can see where the celebrated Catholic priest is entombed under glass.

If you've heard of Solanus Casey, you probably know he's the closest Detroit's got to a saint, a real saint recognized by the Catholic Church almost.

Casey was born in Northwestern Wisconsin in 1870.

Worked as a bricklayer, prison guard, and a streetcar conductor.

- After, oh, a number of jobs and trying to figure out, basically, what he was gonna do with his life, what he could do with his life, he eventually came here to St. Bonaventure Monastery to join the Capuchin order.

- [Bill] Brother Steven Kropp, a friar at the monastery, also director of the center where more than 100,000 people visit each year.

Solanus Casey came here in 1896, was ordained in Milwaukee, and then went to the East Coast.

- He actually spent about 21 years in our parishes in New York, in Yonkers, and Manhattan and Harlem.

He was sent back here where he spent the next 20 years of his life here at St. Bonaventure Monastery.

He was ordained, but they withheld from him the permissions to do a lot of things that priests do.

- [Bill] The big things like preaching a sermon, or hearing confessions.

- They didn't believe he was intelligent enough to do it, so he got jobs like taking care of the sacristy, or organizing the altar boys, or sitting at the front door and answering calls on the door, which is where he became so beloved to so many.

So instead of being in the confessional for three or four minutes with somebody, he would spend as much time as anybody needed at the front desk.

Anyone who came when they were in front of him, he was their full attention.

Solanus identified closely with the average person.

He said himself his two greatest loves were the sick and the poor.

- [Bill] Detroit then in the midst of the Great Depression.

- Solanus, along with his friend, Father Herman, and the secular Franciscan order here founded the soup kitchen because they said, "We have to respond to this.

This isn't something that's going away.

This isn't going to be a handful of people every day.

This is gonna be an endless line of people who are potentially gonna be starving while they're looking for work."

- [Bill] The Capuchin Soup Kitchen is still going strong today.

In Casey's last years in poor health, he'd retire in Indiana, but near the end he returned to Detroit.

Not long after Casey died almost seven decades ago, the quest for sainthood started.

The pope declared Casey venerable in 1995, a step towards sainthood based on the evidence of miracles attributed to Solanus.

- A panel of of experts and doctors have to agree that there is no possible explanation for why this happened other than through the intervention of God in somebody's life.

- [Bill] One step closer in 2017 when venerable Solanus Casey became blessed Solanus Casey Ford Field packed with 70,000 people for Casey's beatification.

- Brother and sisters, let us repeat together.

Blessed Father Solanus pray for us.

Blessed Father Solanus pray for us.

- There's not a great difference between blessed and saint.

Blessed is more like kind of the local boy, you know, makes good.

He becomes the local saint, but then saint you tend to get to a different level of devotion where the church is acknowledging on a more universal level, the exemplary life of this person.

- [Bill] Part of the Ford Field ceremony, Paula Medina Zarate from Panama, who had a genetic skin ailment cured many believe because of her prayers at Father Casey's tomb.

- She asked that if it was God's will that she could be relieved from the suffering of this disease it was painful.

And she was praying, and through the course of the night, the scales literally from her flesh fell off onto the floor.

And she woke up in the morning with no apparent sign that she had this disease.

- [Bill] Her story heard in Rome, the Vatican.

- That's what the Vatican determines, and they did determine that case was the miracle for Solanus's beatification - [Bill] Blessed, the last step before sainthood.

There are three U.S. born saints, all women.

Will blessed Solanus Casey become the first American-born male saint?

Proof of another more recent miracle is needed.

Brother Steven Kropp says a number of cases have been documented.

- It's not really a competition, although it would be nice to have the title as the first American-born male saint, but, you know, that's unimportant in the greater scheme of things.

I truly believe it's gonna happen, and it will happen sooner than later.

The canonization will not happen in Detroit.

It'll happen in Rome, which is fine.

We'll respond here appropriately as well to get people excited, but, you know, I think just to keep spreading the good news about this holy man who shows us a way of life, who desires still to be one with and pray with his people.

We wanna be ready for them and then take the message with them.

That's what Solanus wanted.

He wanted you to go forth from his presence filled with faith, and to bring the message of faith to others.

- [Narrator] There are a lot of outdoor festivals offering up food, music, and fun this weekend in Metro Detroit.

Peter Whorf of 90.9 WRCJ has the details in today's "One Detroit Weekend."

- Hi, I'm Peter Whorf with 90.9 WRCJ here to share some exciting events happening in and around Metro Detroit this weekend.

The Taste of Greece is back now through Sunday at the Nativity of the Virgin Mary Greek Orthodox Church in Plymouth.

There you will find some of the best gyros, Greek dancing and music around.

And if you're looking for some Tex-Mex after your Greek treats, head on over to the Novi Taco Fest at Twelve Mile Crossing at Fountain Walk.

Not only can you get some fantastic tacos from over 30 taco trucks, there's also fun activities like Lucha Libre wrestling, Ballet Folklórico, live Latin music, and so much more.

It runs Friday through Sunday.

Also, at the Ford House on Friday, the Michigan Philharmonic presents "Car-Tunes."

Get ready to hear some of the best music from Disney's "Cars," "Greece," "Back to the Future," "The Beach Boys," and "An American in Paris."

On Saturday and Sunday it's time to celebrate all things our Mitten State has to offer at the Michigan Made Festival at Canterbury Village.

Go check out Michigan crafters, food, brews, wines and more.

There's also a food drive to support the Village Food Pantry, so bring a canned, or boxed non-perishable food item to donate.

And Sunday is Hug Detroit Day at Black Heritage Park on Chene and Ferry.

The event is centered on creating community spirit, spreading love, and supporting families in Detroit.

There will be live music along with arts and crafts, food, backpack, and school supply giveaways, a Soul Equestrian Horse Show, and more.

There's also so much more happening in the upcoming days.

So stay tuned for a few more options.

Have a great weekend.

(soft upbeat music) (music continues) - [Narrator] That'll do it for this week's "One Detroit."

Thanks for watching.

We'll leave you now with a pop-up performance by Biba Bell during the Kresge Foundation's 100th Anniversary celebration at the Detroit Institute of Arts.

She's joined by dancers, Celia Benvenutti, and Christopher Woolfolk, and keyboardist, Justin Snyder.

(soft music) (music continues) (music continues) (music continues) (music continues) (music continues) (music continues) (music continues) - [Narrator] This program is made possible in part by Timothy Bogert, comprehensive planning strategies.

From Delta Faucets to BEHR Paint, Masco Corporation is proud to deliver products that enhance the way consumers all over the world experience and enjoy their living spaces.

Masco, serving Michigan communities since 1929.

Support also provided by the Cynthia and Edsel Ford Fund for Journalism at Detroit PBS.

- [Narrator] DTE Foundation is a proud sponsor of Detroit PBS.

Among the state's largest foundations committed to Michigan focused giving, we support organizations that are doing exceptional work in our state.

Learn more at dtefoundation.com.

- [Narrator] Nissan Foundation and viewers like you.

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