Lowe’s $55 million commitment to LISC’s small business relief and recovery efforts is funding grants that will touch the lives of some 2,750 entrepreneurs. Rodney Haynes, a Detroit native who has dedicated his working life to being part of the city’s revival, is one of them.
Rodney Haynes is a lifelong Detroiter. The small business he started in 2014, High Life Leasing, both harnesses and contributes to the long-in-coming resurgence of the city he loves.
The company’s five elegant, furnished short-term rental apartments are situated in downtown Detroit, near a cluster of corporate headquarters, entertainment venues, and sports complexes. So the convenient units with on-site parking cater to entertainers and their crews, as well as traveling athletes, corporate visitors, and travelers from abroad looking to stay in the Motor City for at least a month.
Haynes and his Nigerian-born wife Funmi act more like hosts than landlords. “My wife, she’s into Detroit, and she makes friends with the tenants,” says Haynes. “She tells them all the restaurants to go to, parks to go to. She loads them up with things to do.”
When the Covid-19 pandemic reared its head in early March, the units were taken up with folks from the Detroit Metropolitan Opera, among others. They picked up and left. “The shows closed up, everything shut down,” recalls Haynes. “I refunded their money because I want their business. All of us were praying that this thing isn’t going to last very long.”
Unfortunately, it has lasted. Travel for business or pleasure all but ceased along with large shows and other downtown gatherings. The units remained vacant. Which was sadly familiar: back during the Great Recession, Haynes was running a conventional apartment rental business that didn’t survive the fallout.
So in the wake of the pandemic, one of the first things Haynes did was ask his own landlord—Haynes subleases the units to guests—if there might be some flexibility on rent. There wasn’t. Retail leases were still performing, so the landlord had little sympathy regarding the niche High Life occupies, closely linked to the travel industry.
A $10,000 grant from Lowe’s via LISC will help High Life meet expenses and stay in the game as Haynes brainstorms a marketing approach to meet the moment. As the travel industry shows signs of recovery, visitors of all kinds, he reasons, might now prefer to stay in a secure private apartment with kitchen and parking, rather than a hotel where there might be more contact with other travelers and staff.
He’s also pursuing new partnerships with local organizations. This past summer, he offered a steep discount to house young interns from General Motors, who normally stay in less expensive (and less exciting) suburban digs. Haynes kept an eye on them, making sure they knew about the curfew the city imposed briefly in June to prevent violence in the wake of protests against police brutality.
In the end, the interns left Detroit for their respective home states thanking Haynes for a great summer. “I’m hoping that they go back as ambassadors,” he says.
Rodney and Funmi Haynes still both work full-time jobs, but hope High Life Leasing will one day grow into a business that can sustain their retirement. For now, he says, “we enjoy doing it. We think of ourselves as part of downtown, part of the fabric of the city.”
Related:
Press release announcing the partnership's expansion.
Learn more at
lisc.org/lowes