Posted on 03/24/2013 9:59:10 AM PDT by 1rudeboy
When the state-imposed manager of Detroit, Kevyn Orr, starts the job on Monday he will wade into a city of crumbling neighborhoods where police fail to respond to some calls, arson fires burn out of control and residents scour charred buildings for scrap metal to sell.
Except for the business district and a cultural area including a university, museum and some theaters, the city of Detroit, population 700,000, is in bad shape.
Orr, a Washington, D.C.-based bankruptcy lawyer, will have the official title of "Emergency Financial Manager." But his remit as an unelected administrator will range far beyond money.
His top priority on Day 1 will be improving public safety.
"We have to gain the public's trust, and to do that, we have to show progress with fire and police services," Orr told Reuters in an interview last week.
This could be what one former Detroit police chief called a "Herculean task" for Orr, recruited by Michigan's Republican Governor Rick Snyder to fix Detroit because of his "very successful career in restructuring and bankruptcy."
Orr's most notable career achievement to date was as a top lawyer in the restructuring of Detroit-area carmaker Chrysler.
Orr said he thinks the stories of Detroit's demise "are over-rated in my opinion." "The city center is a lot better than people thought," he said, and he hopes he can push that recovery momentum out to the neighborhoods.
As he travels a sprawling city larger than Boston, San Francisco and Manhattan combined, he will encounter the realities of Detroit's long downward slide.
(Excerpt) Read more at reuters.com ...
Interesting chart. Thanks.
Its from the Bureau of transportation statistics.
http://transborder.bts.gov/programs/international/transborder/TBDR_BC/TBDR_BC_Index.html
Although, two or three seconds with fat stupid Ashley would set ME off!
Prezbusters???
Steven Crowder visits Detroit.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1hhJ_49leBw
What are the property taxes like in Detroit? How about the gun control laws?
Even when Michigan was not a CCW State, everyone had a gun in their car.
Even more amazing is the fact that one-third of the freight crossing from just those 20 listed on your chart occurs at crossings on the Texas/Mexico border.
No wonder the politicians don’t want to shut our border with Mexico down. NAFTA is quite alive and doing well for Mexico.
The liens against Orr filed by the State of Maryland are for unpaid
unemployment comp payments related to his live in help - nanny problem.
He says he forgot - four years in a row.
But it’s ok - Orr be a bro. He’ll fit right in. Good work if you can get it.
I don’t have high hopes for Detroit’s future. Their situation is not unique, but is scale and the velocity of its decline have made it prominent in the news.
I grew up near Birmingham, Al - and they are going through the largest municipal bankruptcy in US history right now. So I’ve seen how it happens - and I can see it happening in Detroit right now. Admittedly, I haven’t been there in a while; but, you can ‘go’ there with Google Maps - and you can see large areas of vacant lots. Go to the street viewer, and you might see a nice house - but it is surrounded by vacant lots, piles of trash, boarded up houses, or half burned houses. A recent story was about failure to pay property taxes. The reason people don’t even bother to pay taxes is rooted in the extreme lack of value for real estate in the city. Thatis a huge problem.
I work in land development, and I have brainstormed with city leaders before, about how to get new home construction in the existing city limits. The major obastacle - value. In some inner city areas, I could get a lot for FREE, build a house on it, and never be able to sell it. This is because the cost of lumber, sheetrock, etc for a house exceeds the going rate for property in the area. So, you’re stuck - unless you use incentives like TIF districts, people aren’t going to build new houses. And, they aren’t going to invest heavily in maintaining existing housing.
We’ve mailed out surveys and taken polls. The major obstacles to property value in decayed cities (which likely apply to Detroit) are crime, infrastructure, and schools.
Crime - its not necessarily the big stuff. It just wears people down when they have flower pots stolen off their porch, they find needles in their front yard, and somebody steals the copper out of their ac unit.
Infrastructure - Again its not the big stuff you see on the nightly news, like ‘crumbling bridges’. Instead, its the alley that is hardly driveable behind the house, the water red with rust, or the street signs covered in spray paint. It just wears people down.
Schools - The most important one. Its like night and day, the varying level of school quality. And it doesn’t matter if your kids are grown or if you homeschool, your property value is hopelessly tied to school performance.
I should have added another category - options. Some areas, like the boroughs of New York, will never become detroit. Physical geography and commute time prevent ‘flight’ from the inner city. Sooner or later, areas in the cramped northeastern cities ‘come back’. Not even the worst areas of Philadelphia have widespread vacant lots like Detroit. But people in Detroit have options. I imagine pulling up stakes and leaving Detroit, to go to an adjacent city, doesn’t increase commute time by more than 15 minutes. There are alot of nice areas around Detroit...these are the people who found a different option. And, I’d imagine that all the stats about Detroit’s declining population are countered by large population growth in adjoining areas.
This is happening all over the mid-west, where land is plentiful. Like I said, its happened in Birmingham - and there are some geographic barriers there (Birmingham is at the tail of the Appalachain Mountains). My relatives who still live there now put up with hour long traffic jams every morning...and would likely be willing to put up with more.
I have no idea what the solution is....well, I have a few ideas but certainly no magic bullet. But trust me, Detroit’s decline is very real, and based on how other smaller cities have dealt with it, it can certainly get worse. I understand the commercial downtown is doing well - but there is a giant boat anchor, which is the rest of the city, holding it down.
I’m asking these questions that asks a larger question.
What will it take to make Detroit an economically viable city once again?
What will it take to attract people back?
Liberal gun laws? Low property taxes? Reducing city government to a limited and lean amount?
The freestaters could use this as a test case.
I’d look to comment #30, which is well on the mark.
>> Liberal gun laws?
Counter-intuitive.
“And it doesn’t matter if your kids are grown or if you homeschool, your property value is hopelessly tied to school performance.”
That’s the biggest myth around. I remember reading in the news about 10 or 15 years ago about a kid who got a 1600 on his SAT while he was living in a car with his mother. The scholarship offers came rolling in right after that.
How was that possible from a homeless child? His mother pushed him to study and pursue his education.
What you see in Detroit is a failure of the home.
I’m using “liberal” as in “lenient” or “generous.”
My nephew bought a Detroit home for $1,500. His taxes are $5,000.
“That’s the biggest myth around.”
Trust me on this. You are wrong.
For sixteen years now, I have made my living in land development. Although we had rapid development and housing construction sustained for eleven of those years, the annual population growth in the area was 1.5%.
So why all the new houses? Its no big secret - people are fleeing from the bad school district. This is a very common phenomenon.
I don’t think you understood my statement. It doesn’t matter if a homeless woman can homeschool her kid in the truck of a car. It doesn’t matter if you yourself don’t have kids. It doesn’t matter if you do have kids and they thrivce in a bad school.
The value of your home is tied to what a buyer will pay for it. And, the number one driver in that valuation is schools. Period.
Detroit is already an open carry city. The real problems are social.
Downtown and Wayne State aren't the big problem. The problem is the thought process that a 'vibrant downtown' will save the city. Schools, jobs, crime, costs, and property values are the keys to a city/community.
Twice as high as Grosse Pointe. 62 mills.
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