Showing off the Victor Attar Court on Lambrose near Trumbull, Parzyck explained the apartment building was rehabilitated with state aid for low and moderate income renters. Parzyck himself is a consultant to the Michigan State Housing Development Authority. It's obvious Corktown is a neighborhood where folks actually know who their neighbors are. Parzyck claimed that's one reason for Corktown's low crime rate. It's such a dense neighborhood, and there's such a sense of community.
Strangers are highly visible in the neighborhood.
Corktown was one of the destinations of Irish Catholics fleeing famine in their motherland before the U.S. Civil War. It was one of the largest migrations of a people in history. An estimated 2 million Irish Catholics migrated to the United States and Canada after new steamships made crossing the Atlantic affordable. The Gaelic League is still on Michigan and they still sing the old songs there. Germans replaced the Irish, who moved up the economic ladder and out of the neighborhood to the heavily Catholic east side or west to the Holy Redeemer neighborhood.