Posted on 03/17/2009 1:36:15 PM PDT by Darren McCarty
FLINT, Michigan -- Look in any direction from Bianca Bates' north Flint home, and you'll see graffiti-covered siding, boarded-up windows and overgrown lots.
About half of the homes on her block are burned out or vacant magnets for drug dealers and squatters. It isn't where she thought she'd end up, but it's all she can afford to rent.
"It's a dangerous place to live," said Bates, 21, who lives on East Russell Avenue. "Everywhere you look, these houses are empty around here."
Property abandonment is getting so bad in Flint that some in government are talking about an extreme measure that was once unthinkable -- shutting down portions of the city, officially abandoning them and cutting off police and fire service.
(Excerpt) Read more at mlive.com ...
MOAB & start over.
Maybe switch the management of Michigan to someone with a brain?
“Escape From Flint!” The next Kurt Russell action movie...
I still contend, sooner or later people figure out what it means to go chocolate, as in New Orleans. As long as you got a draw, it rumbles on, slower, slower, then poop — But eventually other people’s free money runs out.
Urban warfare training
Escape From New York, No, I mean Flint
When the welfare checks stop arriving, people will leave.
Wait until about August when there’s a draught and 40+ MPH winds.
Poof, let Canada deal with it.
“I say we take off and nuke the entire site from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.”
Actually...since the property’s are worth zero...and not really taxable or worth keeping...I’d recommend the city set up seizing the property (legally of course)...give up on recovery for various neighborhoods...pay some guys to burn down the houses...bulldoze the areas...and plant around a dozen trees per acre.
Face it...recovery will not happen in Flint...and just letting the houses stand...is like showing off some war-zone. It has nothing positive for the town...even in terms of tax revenue.
Sure, now there's a brilliant idea! Pay the squatters, drug dealers, and punks who get their jollies burning houses and spraying graffiti over everything and move them to nice neighborhoods.
The locusts have come, devoured, and moved on.
You mean that Michael Moore isn’t investing his profits up there to create jobs?
It might be interesting to offer the real estate to Americans with no criminal record if they agree to “clear out” the criminal element. Then give them free reign!
Better idea. Flint could make large parts of the city a training ground for first responders, cops, National Guard etc. Charge a per day fee for fire departments to come in and practice burn house rescues and techniques for training. Cops could clear structures, guard and military could do house to house combat patrols. Police could practice pursuits in a real world training ground.
Flint stands proudly as a monument to the failures of liberalism. It has a duty to stand tall for all time.
Yeah but don’t give any warning.
Recommend that the local and state government officials apologize to the people of Michigan and then commit suicide.
Tear down the houses and offer the land to neighboring property on the cheap - let them take care of the maintanance of the property and taxes. Might make some nice neighborhoods
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