INNOCENT BYSTANDERS IN DETROIT, MICHIGAN!

INNOCENT BYSTANDERS IN DETROIT, MICHIGAN!

(Crain’s Detroit Business, Bloomberg News, Jeff Green)

(Chris Ghristoff, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Detroit Free Press)

(Patricia Zacharias, Michael Davis, Robert Sedler, Robert Goodspeed, Frazer Chronicle)

Detroit used to be a jewel in Michigan’s crown of industrial hot spots, a city on the raise, a neighborhood of million dollar homes where it’s residents were all leaders in Michigan industrial might. Now the city which was identified throughout the world as the Motor City sits in almost total ruin.

Each day, on average, 15 vacant buildings flood, mostly because thieves have stolen the plumbing out of them. There are undocumented fires in vacant homes and business structures that go unattended by the city’s strapped fire departments, and police vehicles are in such poor repaid that the cops simply let the buildings burn as long as they don’t threaten other buildings or life.

For 30 years and more, vacant houses have been piling up on the cities unpaid property tax rolls and city repair and building codes have gone largely unenforced for decades. Detroit is the most populous city in the state, and has been primarily a business culture, financial and transportation center of the metro area with an overall population of 5.2 million people. It was founded in 1701, by the French explorer and adventurer Antoine Laumet de La Mothe, sieur de Cadillac.

Between 2000 and 2010 the city’s population fell by 25% changing its ranking from the nation’s 10^th largest city to the 18^th. In 2010 the city’s population stood at 713,777, down from 951,270 in 2000. Between 1950 and 2000 the overall population went from a peak of 1,849,568 to the current 713,777, a drop of 60% of its inhabitants.

The descent into the abyss that marked the decrease and the eventual loss of the city’s tax base and eventually loss of inhabitants is not new, and it didn’t happen overnight. From a peak historical high in population, Detroit has been on a 6 decade pattern of losses with regards to its population, the numbers follow:

1950, 1,849,568

1960, 1,670,144

1970, 1,514,063

1980, 1,203,368

1990, 1,027,974

2000,    951,270

2010,    713,777

With this massive loss of tax base, with the hand-writing on the wall, and absolutely no action to address the problem it’s pretty easy to understand how Detroit finds itself in its present condition, and why the city finds itself under the control of a Governor appointed emergency city manager.

TRACING THE DECLINE THROUGH THE MAYOR’S OFFICE

No one political party, and no ethnic group can be cited as the root cause of Detroit’s decline, although the Democratic party has controlled the Mayor’s office for the past 51 years, it simply would be too easy to point an accusing finger at one political party’s practices.

Many in outlying Detroit point a finger at the black population of the city…..and again the accusation is just too easy. No one particular race had any more to do with the city’s demise than another. Surprisingly I found an age old core reason for Detroit descending into the predicament it now finds itself.

Between 1950 and 1953, the city of Detroit embarked on one of the nation’s premier postwar urban renewal programs. Since the 1920s, city planners in Detroit had drafted visions for the future of the city but in the postwar period for the first time their plans, funding, and a political will would come together with unprecedented results.

Aware of the growth of suburban communities, city leaders saw federal urban renewal dollars as a means to reinforce property values downtown by clearing dilapidated housing, expanding the Wayne State University campus, constructing new facilities for the city’s hospitals, and building a new civic center for major events, in addition to constructing an extensive highway system within the city.

Perhaps no other U.S. city in postwar the period were the ideas of planners so fully realized. City officials spent millions on building new infrastructure and facilities, and the city of Detroit Planning department was renowned nationwide. However the urban planning department missed the boat on one of the basic of needs, affordable housing issues for the city.

A large part of what city planners thought was a major task for them was to reinforce and increase property values, yet failed to adequately address the more serious social issues, as well as how the renewal plans impacted the black community. In the end, the initiatives in general, failed egregiously to serve the needs of most of the city’s residents.  

The Gratiot Area Redevelopment Project looms as the most significant urban renewal project for the early 1950’s. Not only was it Detroit’s first project, the project itself was executed as the meaning of urban renewal even when the term was being redefined. Conceived during the 1940’s as part of the citywide 1946 Detroit Plan, the project received a boost after the passage of the Housing Act of 1949 which provided matching funds for renewal projects.

Mayor Albert Cobo made the Gratiot Project a cornerstone of his plan to eliminate blight in the city. The Gratiot Plan ended up straddling an important political shift, when the newly elected Cobo exercised his power to ensure only specific parts of the Detroit Plan vision were implemented. Specifically, he accelerated the slum clearance and highway construction programs, while stopping completely the public housing component and doing little to alleviate the severe housing shortage faced by the African-American community.

The Gratiot Project turned into an extreme example of one type of urban renewal: an entire neighborhood was torn down for little more than the simple reason it looked run-down. When the Detroit Plan was announced, there existed a limited political coalition which believed that slum clearance and new, publically-owned housing, could together provide a solution to the problem of slums in the city, the reason…..without exception, all Detroit political figures were white.

What Mayor Albert Cobo did was set in place a social minefield of problems which would later explode on his successors. History has granted the mayor, who died in office in 1957, leniency and there is even a Cobo Arena in downtown Detroit, it was however his failure to address the acute black housing problems which may have pleased his constituents, but it would spell doom for the city in the racial upheaval of the1960’s and beyond.  

THE FIXES FOR 60 ODD YEARS OF NEGLECT

The city of Detroit is paying for some of the mistakes that were made in the 1950’s and 1960’s, and also for some of the people who were voted into key offices. A bad politician doesn’t know color, black, white, green or violet, if they’re bad, they’re bad, and Detroit’s had more than its share of bad political people in office who unfortunately were black.

Detroit has so many leaks in its dykes almost impossible to cure all of its ills, overshadowing it all is $18 billion dollars in long-term obligations. Detroit has a city-wide crime problem that is going to take effort and a boat load of money to get under control.

Detroit is drowning in a sea of vacant parcels of property, 150,000 to be exact, and has more than 70,000 unused buildings scattered throughout the city. Property tax has fallen by 20% over the past five years in the city. The mismanagement connected with the city points to some really draconian efforts to solve what is ailing the Motor City.

There aren’t any quick fixes; people are going to have to practice for rather harsh austerity type programs if the city is ever to come back. And the first thing needed is to get the political house in order, bring in some of the right people to work at solving the issues…..no matter what the color of the brow. Detroit needs a five, ten and fifteen year set of plans…..and those plans can’t be deviated from.

First on the agenda of taking back the city of Detroit would probably be to simply take back the streets from the punks, thugs, prostitutes, pimps, drug dealers and users. There isn’t any room for these types of scum-bags…..they’ve gotta go…..almost any way possible.

With regards to getting out from under, first and foremost take control of all the vacant parcels of land with outstanding property taxes owed, do the same with the vacant buildings…..and then have a giant property and building sale…..get the tax rolls back in order.

Then attract business back into the community, Detroit can be a viable and vibrant community again, the infrastructure is in place, and the buildings for industry are vacant and ready to roll…..for the right purchaser.

And then, if at all possible, set up a city plan that would enable federal and state funds to be used, create privately built homes, affordable homes for the city’s citizens…..enough with the racial attitudes, can’t you tell that that attitude doesn’t work…..and really never did.

It’s going to take a herculean effort by the right people, it’s going to take involvement by the citizenry of Detroit, and it’ll probably take an assist from the Federal Government and the state of Michigan to solve all the problems that have been created over the last 60 odd years.

Remember this, before there was 5 black mayors in a row in Detroit, there was 55 white guys that were running the city. Black or white, get together, and get it going.

 

HAVE A NICE DAY!