Posted on 08/15/2005 9:59:30 AM PDT by Pikamax
Shrinking Detroit has 12,000 abandoned homes Sun Aug 14, 5:03 PM ET
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.
The former residents of New Orleans can move up there, fix them up and start a new life there.
What the heck do you have against the residence of New Orleans?
I knew a guy who grew up in the city...and went back two years ago. In 10 minutes, he saw 40 houses that were abandoned. You have whole streets where half the homes are empty. Its unlike any major city in the US.
No kidding. Detroit is a bigger cesspool than NO in its current state. People would get there, take one look at the abandoned buildings, and beg to be taken back to the Superdome!
I realize that this is an old blog. Most of the conversation seems to be about the inner city. What about downtown Detroit. What do you think caused its demise, my theory has been that the "White flight" and J.L Hudson's what do you all think.
GEEE!... Why would anyone want to leave BEAUTIFUL Detroit?... [chuckle]
Detroit, at one time, was one of the most architecturally interesting cities around, with absolutely beautiful homes. It's a real shame. There is a website devoted to photographing abandoned nutcase asylums and factories, underground tunnels and similar urban wilderness, and has a sort of cult following. Detroit landmarks feature rather prominently, it might be interesting to use Google Earth to pan around some of the areas a bit more safely.
Thats a flat out lie. In fact, the democrats/socialists who keep on getting elected are responsible for the one state recession that is Michigan.
Thats a flat out lie. In fact, the democrats/socialists who keep on getting elected are responsible for the one state recession that is Michigan.
amazing what do godders and socialists can do to athriving metropolis in a couple generations.
Poor people are resourceful and it looks like some have survived. - tom
Allah will fill those vacant houses.
Cool City??
There are unbelievably beautiful Victorian homes and buildings literally falling apart all over this city. It's enough to make one cry.
Most cities treasure their architectural gems - here in Detroit we let them rot.
The workmanship in some of these building can never be duplicated. It makes me sick when I drive around this city and see the decay. Detroit used to be one of the most beautiful cities in the country - it used to be called "The City of Trees" because of the beautiful elm trees that fell to the Dutch Elm disease in the 50s and 60s.
Trees are one thing, irreplaceable architectural gems are another.
If she owns the home in which lives she should ask the city to give her title to the abandoned home. She can then have it ripped down herself, double her property and improve the condition in which she lives, along with the neighborhood in general.
Let's see, what could we do? Maybe the government could send the military after all of the white people that moved out and make them move back. Kind of like the busing success. Government always has the answer or with all of the homeless in America we could bus the homeless to Detroit and give them free homes.
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