Posted on 08/15/2005 9:59:30 AM PDT by Pikamax
Shrinking Detroit has 12,000 abandoned homes Sun Aug 14, 5:03 PM ET
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.
I like the idea of clearing off the vacant structures and returning the land to farm land. Now, let's move on to New Orleans and do the same thing there....
Your kidding right? Who in their right mind would build a damn thing in that screwed up place. The dumbasses that ran it down in the first place will just continue to be in power and no good will ever come of that.
Your kidding right? Who in their right mind would build a damn thing in that screwed up place. The dumbasses that ran it down in the first place will just continue to be in power and no good will ever come of that.
LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL
I'm sure the people doing this would not rather be beaten and robbed by white guys, ass. That's not racism, that's reality.
Detroit also has an income tax. Big reason people live outside the city.
Sounds like we should ahve just moved Katrina's homeless up there and there wouldn't be this problem today.
"mayor Kwame Kilpatrick"
From the ole' sod, I see.
I've had occasion to be doing consulting work in Detroit that had me in the city over periods of weeks. It's an interesting feeling walking down the street at times. The fact that Michigan had CCW reciprocity with my state was very comforting
I know that thismaybe somewhat off the subject. It appears that the comments being made is mostly about the inner city of Detroit. But what about downtown Detroit, what do you think caused the demise of downtown Detroit in the first place? Was it the "White flight" or J.L Hudson's opening the Northland mall?
Sha,
I think that people left Detroit because they didn't want to be robbed or mugged (either by criminals or the government), have their property become worthless, or live in such a depressed area. What we're trying to say is that liberal politics sucked the life out of the city by ignoring crime, decay and by creating excess taxes and regulations. People got sick of being targets and slaves, and left in droves for friendlier places.
It's much more than one store opening or closing, and it's not necessarily racism. I've watched my city go from majority white to minority white, but since there are plenty of jobs, the police arrest criminals, and the city doesn't tax or regulate us endlessly, we stay cause it's a nice place to live. What's the name of this city? Phoenix, Arizona.
Detroit is what happens when all tax breaks for the rich are eliminated.. the minimum wage is increased.. and a level played field is created for the homeless..
I hear what you are saying, but back in the era that I am speaking of Detroit was not in the top 10 cities with the higest crime rate. Crime is in every city but I guess like you mentioned in Poenix the police catch and arrest their criminals.
I have done some research on this subject and back in the 50's blacks were moving into the city for job opportunities from the automotive industry, and as they moved in whites started fleeing for the suburbs. With their flight that took a lot of our tax base. I do understand what you are saying about being tax to death, because as a resident and home owner taxes are outrageous. All of Detroit is not bad there are beautiful areas in Detroit.
I do understand what you are saying
Have you ever looked at the satellite images of the border between Detroit and the first of the Grosse Pointes? Damning.
Have you tried to buy a home in LA, DC, Seattle, or San Francisco? Good luck. It's a little more expensive than Detroit.
Sorry, didn't realize that post was 16 months old!
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