And you can get the finger yourself.
Posted on 08/15/2005 3:32:16 AM PDT by TimeLord
DETROIT, United States (AFP) - Rats or lead poisoning. When it comes to the threats from the broken down house next door, Dorothy Bates isn't sure which is worse.
"When it's lightening and thundering you can hear the bricks just falling," the 40-year-old nurse said as she looked at the smashed windows and garbage-strewn porch. "If you call and ask (the city) about it they say they don't have the funds to tear it down."
There are more than 12,000 abandoned homes in the Detroit area, a byproduct of decades of layoffs at the city's auto plants and white flight to the suburbs. And despite scores of attempts by government and civic leaders to set the city straight, the automobile capitol of the world seems trapped in a vicious cycle of urban decay.
Detroit has lost more than half its population since its heyday in the 1950's. The people who remain are mostly black -- 83 percent -- and mostly working class, with 30 percent of the population living below the poverty line according to the US Census Bureau.
The schools are bad. The roads are full of potholes. Crime is high and so are taxes. The city is in a budget crisis so deep it could end up being run by the state.
And it just got knocked off the list of the nation's ten largest cities.
"Detroit has become an icon of what's considered urban decline," said June Thomas, a professor of urban and regional planning at Michigan State University.
"The issue is not just getting people in the city. It's getting people in the city who can become property owners and stay property owners and pay taxes."
Perhaps the biggest challenge to luring the middle class from the area's swank suburbs is overcoming racial tensions, said Stephen Vogel, dean of the school of architecture at University of Detroit Mercy.
"Suburbanites are taking the bodies of their relatives out of cemeteries because they're afraid to come to the city," Vogel said. "There are about 400 to 500 hundred (being moved) a year which shows you the depth of racism and fear."
Most American cities have experienced a shift towards the suburbs.
What made Detroit's experience so stark was the lack of regional planning and the ease with which developments were able to incorporate into new cities in order to avoid sharing their tax revenue with the city, said Margaret Dewar, a professor of urban and regional planning at the University of Michigan.
The fleeing businesses and homeowners left behind about 36 square miles (58 square kilometers) of vacant land. That's roughly the size of San Francisco and about a quarter of Detroit's total land mass.
While a decision by General Motors to build its new headquarters smack in the middle of downtown has helped lure young professionals and spark redevelopment in some of the more desirable neighborhoods, there is little hope the vacant land will be filled any time soon.
In his state of the city address, embattled mayor Kwame Kilpatrick said even if 10,000 new homes were built every year for the next 15 years "we wouldn't fill up our city."
And Detroit is still losing about 10,000 people every year.
One solution Vogel has proposed is to turn swaths of the city into farmland. In the four years since his students initiated a pilot project dozens of community gardens and small farms have popped up.
But first the city has to get rid of the crumbling buildings that haunt the streets, luring criminals, arsonists and wild animals and creating a general sense of hopelessness.
"It's partly a resource issue and it's partly a bureaucracy issue," said Eric Dueweke, the community partnership manager at the University of Michigan's College of Architecture and Urban Planning.
"It takes them forever to find the proper owners of the properties and serve them with the proper paperwork," he said. "They're tearing them down at the rate of 1,500 or 2,000 a year, so they're really not cutting into the backlog in any significant way because that's how many are coming on stream."
Dorothy Bates has been waiting three years for the crumbling house next door to be torn down. There are nine more on her short block along with several vacant lots that are overgrown with weeds.
Bates does her best to keep her five children away from the rat nests, but the lead creeping out of crumbling bricks and peeling paint drifts in through her windows.
The most frustrating part of it, says her neighbor Larry, is that so many of the abandoned houses could be repaired. The foundations are solid. The buildings are beautiful. Or at least, they were once.
That house actually looks like it is sitting on prime level lots. Too bad you might get shot cutting yuor grass.
You mind if I borrow you tagline?
Yes, I remember cruising Woodward. Everyone parked their cars at the corner of 13 Mile Rd. and Woodward in the Northwood shopping center lot, right next to Beaumont Hospital. My husband is from the east side, and is more familiar with cruising Gratiot. My neighbor grew up cruising Telegraph...and yes, you have given away your age!
But anyone who doesn’t like the situation is a “racist”! Glad I live where I do.
Yep.
No problem with using my tagline. Please just add that you borrowed it from me.
I think it's one of my most prophetic moments.
LOL. Of course the article didn't say that they were trying to keep criminals out. It just said that they wanted to "look like suburbia". Actually, I don't even know of any "gated communities" in suburbia around here. That sort of thing hasn't caught on in Wisconsin yet.
However, I lived in the Houston area long enough to know that the gated community doesn't keep anyone out. I've had friends who were robbed at gunpoint within their gated community. I know someone else whose BRICK condo was entered because the burglars couldn't get through the burglar bars that are prevalent throughout Houston, so they just chopped through the brick wall and went directly into the bedroom where they stole the guns!
Ping to 230.
You being the expert. I guess I's s'posed t'be a stupid darkie, far as you concerned, right, boss?
Please. Spare me your lack of intelligence and your racist attitude.
LOL! Gig 'em Michael.
Everyone knows that its Liberals that can't govern themselves - black/white/brown/yellow... doesn't matter.
Indeed.
Very true. Mayor Jeffries was the darling of "The Nation" and the Americans for Democratic Action crowd back in the 1960s. He even received a cover story in time as "America's Progressive Mayor." Then the riots happenned. Let's also not forget that Coleman Young was elected when the city's registered voting base was still about 55-60% white.
Detroit did have a (liberal) Republican mayor in the early 50s (Albert Cobo) who was as corrupt as they come. He did build Cobo Hall, site of many famous concerts long before our time.
And you can get the finger yourself.
I want to believe you trublu, please list ten cities, counties, states, or countries that are wholly and responsibly and profitably governed only by blacks. thanks.
placeholder
The only good prominent Detroit city councilman in the last 40 years was Keith Butler, who is a black man. Dennis Archer wasn't terrible as he at least cared. Some of the biggest jokers to come out of Detroit were both white(Ken Weiner, Maryann Mahaffey) and black(Coleman Young, Kwame Kilpatrick). The worst of all next to Coleman is Ed McNamaca of the suburbs(Livonia and Southgate), the Boss Dailey of Wayne County.
Ain't it interesting? The rocks turn over with threads like these.
These threads are to FR what canaries were to the mines.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.