Boys, this town needs an enema.
Posted on 03/25/2007 11:32:45 AM PDT by LdSentinal
DETROIT – Hit by a slump in the American auto industry, Detroit and its suburbs lost more residents in the past six years than any comparable U.S. area except hurricane-battered New Orleans, census data released Thursday showed.
Wayne County, Michigan, lost more than 89,000 residents from 2000 to 2006 – a loss of 4 percent of the county's 2 million residents. The decline is behind only Orleans Parish in Louisiana, which lost 261,000 people in the same period with the vast majority of them after Hurricane Katrina ravaged the area in 2005.
AdvertisementThe Wayne County exodus comes as General Motors Corp. , Ford Motor Co. and DaimlerChrysler AG's Chrysler Group – the three big automakers that gave Detroit its Motor City nickname – struggle with billions of dollars in losses and sliding sales. Michigan lost 336,000 jobs in the six-year period, according to a study by the University of Michigan. In the past year alone, domestic automakers have announced more than 80,000 job cuts as they restructure their operations.
“Detroit is driving those numbers,” Kurt Metzger, demographer and research director for the United Way of Southeastern Michigan, said. “People are aging, you've got older families where kids have moved out, birth rates are much lower but most importantly, you have all these job losses.”
U.S. automakers have been struggling with labor costs, tough competition, and weaker sales of profitable trucks and sport utility vehicles as consumers opt for more fuel-efficient options.
As Detroit reels from job losses in the auto industry, the depressed city also has seen a surge in home foreclosures. The city, where unemployment runs near 14 percent and a third of the population lives in poverty, leads the nation in new foreclosure filings, according to tracking service RealtyTrac.
“The population loss is going to be exceeded in the coming year with all the job cuts, and I think Wayne County will hold its place as No. 2 behind New Orleans,” Metzger said. “Things are pretty bad.”
Detroit has lost more than half its population in the past 30 years as it struggled with rising crime, failing schools and other social problems.
Both cities run by Buffoons
Nothing special. I think it was just a commentary on how bad conditions were (are) in Detroit. It's kind of like in the 1979 comedy, The In-Laws, when the dictator portrayed by Richard Libertini gets the money to pay Peter Falk. These two guards walk in with a briefcase full of cash. They look like the typical old style store guards and the dictator says, “These are the two best security guards in the world. They used to work for J.C. Penney. In Detroit!”
More recently, RoboCop dumped on Detroit in 1987. “Old” Detroit was the city in ruins and “Delta City” was the new city about to be constructed.
I think Detroit has been everyone's example of a failed city for a number of years now.
Boys, this town needs an enema.
Look for the union label...
What amazes me is how CHEAP housing is in the Detroit area, even in Oakland County. A two bedroom in the GHETTO of Newark (think west of Cass in Detroit), will set you back $200K. Then again, this is the NYC metro area...
Ironic, as at one time, folks left those states to move to Michigan to work in "Mr. Ford's Miracle" at River Rouge.
Detroit should be destroyed.
The residents are doing a pretty good job of it, on their own.
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