Detroit area's battle with blight may be key to survival

MSN Money ^ | July 25, 2013 | Nick Carey

[cyclotic]

Good idea but...25 years ago, I worked as a weatherization contractor in Detroit Ghetto houses. As testament to the craftsmen who built them, they were still standing after 20-30 years of neglect. I determined then that there was no financially feasible way to save the structures. That was 25 years ago. Now, almost none of the houses are worth saving. Brick ones around Harper and Moross area, maybe, wooden structures-no way.

[Billthedrill]

Detroit’s “blight” problem is an issue of the prevailing culture in that city. Until that is addressed, nothing will change.

Yep. You can raze the house, cut back the brush, build a modern house for comparatively little, and you still have the same city government, the same schools, the same services, the same neighbors, the same criminals.

I have no doubt that within Detroit there is a population that is determined and hard-working enough to be self-sufficient, to pull their city up by its boot-straps. They won't be allowed. And that's the bottom line: they won't be allowed by entrenched interest and culture that only sees them as another source of plunder.