• If you are having problems logging in please use the Contact Us in the lower right hand corner of the forum page for assistance.

Since The Blacks Have Ruined Detroit.....

Mike

Well-known member
Burn it down...............................................
Burning Down Detroit
The New Ledger | 3/14/2009 | Ben Domenech


As President Barack Obama’s auto industry task force heads to Detroit today to assess the feasibility of rescuing the dying automakers, there’s a strategy that the White House ought to consider as a solution, albeit an extreme one, for what ails the city where the sirens never sleep.

At this point, the best help to Michigan’s economic woes might come from razing much of the Motor City.

It’s an audacious statement, yes. It may sound like life imitating The Onion. This is beyond broken windows theories — we’re talking about broken houses, buildings, skyscrapers; an entire broken community, economy and polity.

In December 2008, the median price for a home sold in Detroit was $7,500. You read that right. There are no zeroes missing. That’s seven thousand five hundred dollars:

Among the many dispiriting numbers that bleakly depict the decrepitude of this onetime industrial behemoth, the steep slide of housing values helps define the daunting challenge to anyone who wants to lead this shrinking, poverty-pocked city of about 800,000 people …

On a positive note, Detroit’s homicide rate dropped 14 percent last year. That prompted mayoral candidate Stanley Christmas to tell the Detroit News recently, “I don’t mean to be sarcastic, but there just isn’t anyone left to kill” …

John Mogk, a professor at Wayne State University Law School noted that “a thousand people are leaving the city every month and the city does not have the financial resources and the economic base to solve its own problems.”

The full truth is actually worse than that number indicates, because stepping back to view the whole picture reveals that Detroit has no realistic hope of changing its destiny. They have no hope in their council leadership, which seems to alternate between blame games and conspiracy theories. They have little hope from President Obama, whose cap-and-trade plan — regardless of what you think of its necessity — contains the death knell for Michigan’s primary industries. They’re too far gone to be the next green enterprise zone after Wilmington, Ohio. They’re past the point of keeping up appearances just for the sake of survival.

While the vast majority of the problems plaguing the automakers (most of which are based outside the city), are of an entirely different variety than the ones destroying Detroit from within, the simple fact is that even with another bailout of the auto industry, no good worker or talented executive in their right mind will want to live or work in or near Detroit in the near future absent a fundamental change for the city and its surrounding area.

Beyond the shock of the $7,500 figure, it’s clear that most of the homes in Detroit collapse in value the instant they’re built: the raw materials are worth more than the houses themselves. And with the credit crisis inspiring more and more communities of empty, bank-owned homes, these houses are not likely to gain value back anytime soon.

This isn’t about spending less — President Obama is already inclined toward throwing more taxpayer funds at the problem. This is about how that taxpayer money ought to be spent: attempting to reinvigorate Detroit communities that are too far gone to be saved, or by buying up essentially valueless lots, knocking down the empty homes and buildings that the terribly run city has never gotten around to destroying, selling their materials for firewood value if at all, and starting from scratch.

Razing these former houses and condemned businesses — now transformed into tinderboxes for arson, crime, and urban decay — until you achieve critical mass would end the problem of oversupply and the roughly one-third overvaluation of homes. Demolition crews would provide jobs at least for the short term.

If we don’t do it ourselves, the societal ramifications for these communities could well effect a far more terrible result, as do-it-yourself arsonists have been doing in Detroit for years. Taxpayer funds for Detroit is just a band-aid on cancer: it won’t change the endpoint for the city, and buy delaying the fundamental change that needs to occur, it will only make things worse in the long run.

In the end, the White House should take guidance from history and Matt LaBash:

Detroit has always been a city of fire. Nearly all of it was destroyed by fire in 1805, more of it burned in the Detroit Race Riot of 1863, and over 2,000 buildings were consumed in the Twelfth Street Riot of 1967. Even its flag contains fire; its Latin motto translates, “We hope for better things; it shall rise from the ashes.”

This city can come back, and so can the American auto industry that supports it. But the hard choice has to be made. It’s time to bombard the Motor City with urban policy chemo.
 

Mike

Well-known member
updated 5:56 p.m. CT, Sat., Dec. 20, 2008
MSNBC/AP

DETROIT - One measure of how tough times are in the Motor City: Some of the offenders in jail don't want to be released; some who do get out promptly re-offend to head back where there's heat, health care and three meals a day.

"For the first time, I'm seeing guys make a conscious decision they'll be better off in prison than in the community, homeless and hungry," said Joseph Williams of New Creations Community Outreach, which assists ex-offenders. "In prison they've got three hots and a cot, so they commit a crime to go back in and come out when times are better."

For now, better times seem distant. Even with no hurricane or other natural disaster to blame, Detroit has — by many measures — replaced New Orleans as America's most beleaguered city.


The jobless rate has climbed past 21 percent, the embattled school district just fired its superintendent, tens of thousands of homes and stores are derelict and abandoned, the ex-mayor is in jail for a text-messaging sex scandal. Even the pro football team is a pathetic joke — the Lions are within two losses of an unprecedented 0-16 season.

And overarching these and many other woes is the near-collapse of the U.S. auto industry, Detroit's vital source of jobs and status for more than a century.

"We're the Motor City," said Scott Alan Davis, who oversees community development projects in one of the worst-hit neighborhoods. "When the basis for that name collapses, that's started to scare people."

'It's a depression'
Among the worried is 81-year-old Warlena McDuell, a retired surgical technician who shares a home with her cancer-stricken daughter. On a recent weekday, she was among hundreds of Detroiters, most of them elderly, filling orange-plastic grocery carts at a food bank run by Focus: HOPE, a local nonprofit.

"It's a depression — not a recession," McDuell said, with the authority of someone who has lived through both. "It will get worse before it gets better."

Behind her in line, stocking up on canned apple juice and fruit cocktail, was Benjamin Smith, 77, who once held jobs with Uniroyal and Chrysler. Maneuvering his cart slowly, one hand gripping a cane, he was unable to muster much cheer when someone extended holiday good wishes.

"How are we going to do well?" he replied. "Everything's busted up."

Focus:HOPE's food program serves 41,000 people a month; manager Frank Kubik estimates that's only half the number of Detroiters in need of the assistance.

"It's not going to be a nice Christmas for a lot of folks," he said.

DeWayne Wells, president of Gleaners Community Food Bank of Southeastern Michigan, said demand is up by 25 percent from a year ago in the region's food banks as auto-industry layoffs multiply.

"Many people are first-timers — they have no idea how to navigate the system, how to qualify for food stamps," Wells said. "Last year, some were donors — now they're clients."

City's bad wrap
The roots of Detroit's current plight go back decades. Court-ordered school busing and the 12th Street riots of 1967 accelerated an exodus of whites to the suburbs, and many middle-class blacks followed, shrinking the city's population from a peak of 1.8 million in the 1950s to half that now.

About 83 percent of the current population is African-American; of cities with more than 100,000 people, only Gary, Ind., had a higher percentage in the latest census.

Detroit's crime, poverty, unemployment and school dropout rates are among the worst of any major U.S. city. The bus system is widely panned; car and home insurance rates are high. Chain grocery stores are absent, forcing many Detroiters to rely on high-priced corner stores.

"There's always been a real can-do spirit among our people," said the Rev. Edgar Vann, pastor of Second Ebenezer Church. "That's being beaten down right now. ... These times, unlike others, have sapped a lot of that spirit from them."

Vann, in addition to overseeing a 5,000-member megachurch, founded the Vanguard Community Development Corp., which under Scott Alan Davis' leadership is building scores of new homes and offering education programs in the blighted North End.
 
A

Anonymous

Guest
After reading this a thought came to my mind. We may see cities die and become abandoned and become ghost towns. Nearly any small town in Texas and I am sure in the South and also other states at one times were very viable towns with several cotton gins, banks, newspapers and such. These towns supported the agricultural enterprises in their areas at the time. Once we got the interstate highways and better roads a lot of these towns died. Also a lot of what they were supported by moved overseas for the cheaper labor. So this may happen maybe that the folks that moved north to work in the auto plants will have to move south to work in the auto plants that are foreign owned there.
 
A

Anonymous

Guest
Towns that were once viable may become ghost towns as towns in the past have. A lot of towns that existed at one time are now gone. We may see this again.
 
A

Anonymous

Guest
hurleyjd said:
Towns that were once viable may become ghost towns as towns in the past have. A lot of towns that existed at one time are now gone. We may see this again.

Many parts of Montana and other states already have towns that become ghost towns- mainly with CRP and then the continued corporate buyout/integration of agricultural land...I see where another High School that has been in existence for 80+ years is closing this year- Peerless- that had only one graduate last year.....
 

Ben H

Well-known member
I saw it when I lived in NY and here in Maine. Just building a different and better/faster road eliminates communities viability.
 
Top