Posted on 03/24/2013 9:59:10 AM PDT by 1rudeboy
When the state-imposed manager of Detroit, Kevyn Orr, starts the job on Monday he will wade into a city of crumbling neighborhoods where police fail to respond to some calls, arson fires burn out of control and residents scour charred buildings for scrap metal to sell.
Except for the business district and a cultural area including a university, museum and some theaters, the city of Detroit, population 700,000, is in bad shape.
Orr, a Washington, D.C.-based bankruptcy lawyer, will have the official title of "Emergency Financial Manager." But his remit as an unelected administrator will range far beyond money.
His top priority on Day 1 will be improving public safety.
"We have to gain the public's trust, and to do that, we have to show progress with fire and police services," Orr told Reuters in an interview last week.
This could be what one former Detroit police chief called a "Herculean task" for Orr, recruited by Michigan's Republican Governor Rick Snyder to fix Detroit because of his "very successful career in restructuring and bankruptcy."
Orr's most notable career achievement to date was as a top lawyer in the restructuring of Detroit-area carmaker Chrysler.
Orr said he thinks the stories of Detroit's demise "are over-rated in my opinion." "The city center is a lot better than people thought," he said, and he hopes he can push that recovery momentum out to the neighborhoods.
As he travels a sprawling city larger than Boston, San Francisco and Manhattan combined, he will encounter the realities of Detroit's long downward slide.
(Excerpt) Read more at reuters.com ...
Detroit’s purpose is to be an example to the rest of the nation - if a city’s looking for the ‘free lunch’ or the ‘easy way’ they’ll become a hellhole like Detroit.
It’s waaaaaay too early to go in to help this 3rd world type disaster. They need to try a few more liberal ideas first...
Mr Orr is in a lose, lose situation.
That’s like the lie told by Leftists, “Poverty causes crime.” If that’s true Americans back in the Depression Era should have caused a bloodbath of ridiculous proportions.
There is home schooling plus parochial schools, private schools, charter schools and then public schools.
Is it just the lack money that makes people flee or the lack of social capital within families?
I don’t know how else to tell you - bad schools poison property values. Its not a new theory, and its commonly accepted as obvious.
You think its a myth. Fine, I’m not going to convince you otherwise. BTW - could I interest you in a real estate opportunity :).
But I’m going to stick to my ‘myth’. Its paid my bills for 16 years designing new subdivisions; and, even in a recession, people are still trying to escape our bad school district (cha-ching!). Its possible the people fleeing the city just didn’t like the street names I guess...except when we mailed them surveys they listed bad schools as the number one reason for moving out. Hard one to call, but I’m going with the bad schools myth.
But where do bad schools come from exactly?
What causes property values to decline?
“What causes property values to decline?”
From my first post:
1. Crime
2. Infrastructure
3. Bad Schools
and the ‘option’ to move away.
“But where do bad schools come from exactly?”
Bad people, of course.
Bad teacher unions, bad administrators, bad funding schemes that kickback money to politicians. And of course bad parents who are absentee and don’t domesticate their children.
But, SO WHAT. It doesn’t change the facts that the schools, right now, are BAD. (And, quite frankly, the people left are the ‘bad’ ones. Good teachers, administrators, and parents will have gotten the heck out of there by now).
By looking for causes, you are really looking for solutions. I stated right out of the gate that I didn’t have any solutions. My treatise is purely on why I think Detroit will continue to decline. And it will, partially because of bad schools. No mythology there.
I knew what you meant, but just a comment on statistical usage.
not only did everyone carry a gun... traffic lights and stop signs are strictly optional..
unless you wanna get carjacked..
So it’s the people and what they value (or the lack of) resulting in actions that eventually bring property values down.
Low moral/ethical values results in low property values.
Now where do you think those low values started?
In the home maybe?
You are arguing against an invisible opponent. I never said that family values had nothing to do with failing schools.
What I said was: YOUR HOME VALUE IS TIED TO THE PERFORMANCE OF YOUR SCHOOL DISTRICT.
You called that a myth.
Its not.
We disagree...yet somehow I think you are shadow boxing an invisible opponent, and disagree with some other phantom point of view you have imagined for me.
Anyway, its not a whacked out theory of mine. This truism is the PRIMARY DRIVER of real estate in my community. Period. Ask anybody. Oh - we did, actually mailed out surveys. And they told us this.
Let’s ditch the argument and get back to my question.
What will it take to bring people back to Detroit?
There need to be companies who will want to do business there that will generate the tax revenue to pay for those government schools.
Why did they flee? Because of bad schools? Or was it something more?
Why did they flee?
1. Crime
2. Infrastructure
3. Schools
Its fairly universal.
How to get people back? There is an instrument called tax increment financing, which borrows against future property taxes. But it only works if the borrowed for improvements substantially raise the value and tax base. Detroit has not properly de-valued its distresses properties...making this instrument impossible from the start. For commercial improvements there are STAR bonds....the s and t stand for sales tax...and you borrow against future sales tax revenue. But before any new commercial comes to Detroit, they need ‘rooftops’ which is single family housing with disposable income. So, its back to the housing. You have to have rooftops first. Its a common concept in commercial development....often lost on people trying to ‘re-develop’ areas.
Lets start with incentives that don’t cost money. Create zones in Detroit where new construction can be built without complying with the clean water act. Have the EPA waive environmental rules to reduce the cost of demolition (and reduce self imposed arson). Its controversial and against my values, but Detroit could implement a commuter tax at the payroll level, to either collect money or incentivise living in Detroit. Now the social issues - I have no solution. I have no idea how to unprogram people who have lived a feral existence for decades. The best Detroit can hope for is bringing good people back. They can’t cause the bad people to have an epiphany. The bad will always be there....and growing.
Again it is against my values, but California has hedged their bets against becoming like Detroit by artificially making buildable land a scarce commodity wiyh quotas on building permits. Their laws also giving zoning control beyond a city’s boundary lines, to control people’s having the ‘option’ of moving a short distance beyond the city limits. This ship has sailed for Detroit - there are alot of nice places next to Detroir. In light of this, it is not meant to be a joke when I propose converting abandoned blocks to park. Perhaps a golf course. Maybe an amusement park. Something, anything to put on the vacant land. The population will never fully come back (our steel no longer comes from that area so nothing ties the auto industry to Detroit), so they should be prepared to find different land uses and not try to fill it all.
.The next day, Orr faced his first crisis — a personal one — when The Detroit News asked him about two outstanding tax liens on his $1 million Maryland home that Orr and Snyder’s office were unaware of.
From The Detroit News: http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20130324/METRO01/303240315#ixzz2OV6QOMZy
Who is John Galt?
See: Oakland, CA.
The other issue is this. Most of the jobs are now in Oakland County or Macomb County. Most Detroiters commute.
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