Brightmoor is like any other poor neighborhood in Detroit, with plenty of empty houses, empty stores and empty lots between it all. Many residents here are dirt poor, and though a few hundred low-income houses have gone up in little clusters in recent years, the neighborhood remains one of the most blighted in the city.

It started as a planned, working-class community built on the west side in the 1920s for auto workers, but over the years crime grew, people left and houses disappeared.

It was a fitting place to open The Free Store, a nonprofit store with no employees, no budget and no money changing hands. As the name indicates, items here are free to the public.

The store was started by Lauren Henrikson, (below, center background) a 22-year-old Wayne State University student who converted a freshman project on the feasibility of such a store into a reality.

It began at the First Unitarian Universalist Church on Cass and Prentis, moved to Highland Park and then Hamtramck, and finally settled for now in a little box of a building on Schoolcraft west of Evergreen. Wayne State students painted a mural on the side and livened up the front door, and donations came from community organizations and businesses, all at the behest of Henrikson, who deflects credit for the project.

“I don’t want to be seen as the person who runs this,” she says. “I just want to be kind of a catalyst or something, and then really everybody’s helping everybody else out. At the moment I’m kind of coordinating the event, kind of being the mouthpiece for it I guess. But eventually we want the community to help being productive in the decision-making process.”

That’s already started, as Brightmoor resident and Free Store customer Annette Smith, 42, now works there and slowly takes over duties from Henrikson. “It’s been real good, interesting,” Smith says. Several of her children played hopscotch outside the front door. “You meet all types of people, people in the neighborhood.”

Every Saturday, a few dozen people shop here, mostly residents who live nearby. There’s a list for requests; customers write down their name and size, and if something comes in that matches, they get first dibs. Otherwise they’ll connect people with others who have goods to donate. “People put down what they want or need, so if we hear through the grapevine that somebody’s got a bed or drawers or something like that, we try to put them in contact with the person who has it to donate,” Henrikson says.

On a recent Saturday morning in spring, customers trickled in, quietly browsing through the items, listing their wishes and telling their names in low voices before they left.

“It’s really sustainable,” Henrikson says. “We ask people to take what they need and don’t sell the stuff, and if they can, bring stuff back to donate that they don’t really need anymore. It’s been working so far. People are respectful of the space, respectful of the project. It’s much more of a community base that we get here and it’s constant interaction with the community, which I think is positive.”

The Free Store is located at 20507 Schoolcraft. Hours are 11 a.m.-2 p.m. Saturdays for volunteers and donations, and noon-2 p.m. Saturdays for customers. For more information, contact 734-819-3284 or go to free-detroit.org.