Posted on 08/15/2005 3:32:16 AM PDT by TimeLord
DETROIT, United States (AFP) - Rats or lead poisoning. When it comes to the threats from the broken down house next door, Dorothy Bates isn't sure which is worse.
"When it's lightening and thundering you can hear the bricks just falling," the 40-year-old nurse said as she looked at the smashed windows and garbage-strewn porch. "If you call and ask (the city) about it they say they don't have the funds to tear it down."
There are more than 12,000 abandoned homes in the Detroit area, a byproduct of decades of layoffs at the city's auto plants and white flight to the suburbs. And despite scores of attempts by government and civic leaders to set the city straight, the automobile capitol of the world seems trapped in a vicious cycle of urban decay.
Detroit has lost more than half its population since its heyday in the 1950's. The people who remain are mostly black -- 83 percent -- and mostly working class, with 30 percent of the population living below the poverty line according to the US Census Bureau.
The schools are bad. The roads are full of potholes. Crime is high and so are taxes. The city is in a budget crisis so deep it could end up being run by the state.
And it just got knocked off the list of the nation's ten largest cities.
"Detroit has become an icon of what's considered urban decline," said June Thomas, a professor of urban and regional planning at Michigan State University.
"The issue is not just getting people in the city. It's getting people in the city who can become property owners and stay property owners and pay taxes."
Perhaps the biggest challenge to luring the middle class from the area's swank suburbs is overcoming racial tensions, said Stephen Vogel, dean of the school of architecture at University of Detroit Mercy.
"Suburbanites are taking the bodies of their relatives out of cemeteries because they're afraid to come to the city," Vogel said. "There are about 400 to 500 hundred (being moved) a year which shows you the depth of racism and fear."
Most American cities have experienced a shift towards the suburbs.
What made Detroit's experience so stark was the lack of regional planning and the ease with which developments were able to incorporate into new cities in order to avoid sharing their tax revenue with the city, said Margaret Dewar, a professor of urban and regional planning at the University of Michigan.
The fleeing businesses and homeowners left behind about 36 square miles (58 square kilometers) of vacant land. That's roughly the size of San Francisco and about a quarter of Detroit's total land mass.
While a decision by General Motors to build its new headquarters smack in the middle of downtown has helped lure young professionals and spark redevelopment in some of the more desirable neighborhoods, there is little hope the vacant land will be filled any time soon.
In his state of the city address, embattled mayor Kwame Kilpatrick said even if 10,000 new homes were built every year for the next 15 years "we wouldn't fill up our city."
And Detroit is still losing about 10,000 people every year.
One solution Vogel has proposed is to turn swaths of the city into farmland. In the four years since his students initiated a pilot project dozens of community gardens and small farms have popped up.
But first the city has to get rid of the crumbling buildings that haunt the streets, luring criminals, arsonists and wild animals and creating a general sense of hopelessness.
"It's partly a resource issue and it's partly a bureaucracy issue," said Eric Dueweke, the community partnership manager at the University of Michigan's College of Architecture and Urban Planning.
"It takes them forever to find the proper owners of the properties and serve them with the proper paperwork," he said. "They're tearing them down at the rate of 1,500 or 2,000 a year, so they're really not cutting into the backlog in any significant way because that's how many are coming on stream."
Dorothy Bates has been waiting three years for the crumbling house next door to be torn down. There are nine more on her short block along with several vacant lots that are overgrown with weeds.
Bates does her best to keep her five children away from the rat nests, but the lead creeping out of crumbling bricks and peeling paint drifts in through her windows.
The most frustrating part of it, says her neighbor Larry, is that so many of the abandoned houses could be repaired. The foundations are solid. The buildings are beautiful. Or at least, they were once.
Sorry, He/s from Jackson. A significant step up..
I don't get it. How is someone moving their dead relatives out of the cemetery b/c they're afraid to go to the cemetery showing "the depth of racism"?
Well, of course! My goodness, that just goes w/o saying, doesn't it?
There's plenty of houaing around it's just not where they want to live.
don't cry. at least you ha-ha-haaaave (snickers)bwhaha Bob bwahah Bob Seeeheeeheeeheeger@!!!!!bwahahahahahahahah@! (just funnin' ya). Oh,and Madonna!!!! bwahahahahahahahahahahahahah!
(Denny Crane: "Sometimes you can only look for answers from God and failing that... and Fox News".)
"I'm sure there are parts of the city which are nice"
No there isn't. You obviously have never been there!
Yes, the most liberal city and the most depressing city.
The city is having trouble locating the owners of these properties? I find that hard to believe. Whom do they send the property tax bill to? Besides, if it absolutely, positively must be destroyed overnight, call the Marines. Another solution (and fairly common) is to have the fire department set old abandoned houses ablaze for training purposes. In fact, the city could bring other departments in for training.
I agree. I was there in 2003 visiting my brother in the suburbs and the thing I noticed at the "better" parts of the Detroit city proper was sealed windows on buildings. It's simple to extrapolate on what the really bad neighbourhoods look like...
Correct me if i'm wrong, but I believe Ted Nugent is from Ann Arbor.....or was that Bob Seger??
There are more than 12,000 abandoned homes in the Detroit area, a byproduct of decades of layoffs at the city's auto plants and white flight to the suburbs.
Also, see the remark form some academic hack about "a lack of regional planning" and "tax-sharing."
You see it is really all the fault of those evil corporations and those bigoted white people that have the cheek to move out.
Whose else could possibly be at fault? Honestly now! What coulls you be thinking? I am surprised that you even had to wonder about this for only a second.
Behold, the most liberal city in the country according to that recent study.
Are there any livable majority minority cities?
(Denny Crane: "Sometimes you can only look for answers from God and failing that... and Fox News".)
Yep.
I don't think Ted Nugent is from Bob Seger.
Timelord...white racism is dead. The only racism I see anymore is from Black America.
Yes it's interesting how wanting to avoid being murdered is a racist thing. Shows just how bad it is when people are having their deceased relatives moved to safer cemeteries.
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