In a city often known as the nation's murder capital, with over 10,000 unsolved murders dating back to 1960, the police are in shambles through cutbacks and corruption trials. (They have a profitable sideline, though, as one of the nation's largest gun dealers, having sold 14 tons of used weapons out-of-state.) Their response times are legendarily slow. Their crime lab is so inept that it has been closed. One Detroit man found policeIt's sad when the high note of the piece is that the city finally pulled down one of the deathtrap abandoned buildings that had killed a fireman fighting one of the all-too-common blazes that erupts endangering the homeless who camp out in the thousands of abandoned buildings that dot the city.
so unresponsive when trying to turn himself in for murder that he hopped a bus to Toledo and confessed there instead.
Detroit schools haven't ordered new textbooks in 19 years. Students have reported having to bring their own toilet paper. Teachers have reported bringing hammers to class for protection. Declining enrollment has forced 67 school closures since 2005 (more than a quarter of the city's schools). The graduation rate is 24.9 percent, the lowest of any large school district in the country. Not for nothing did one frustrated activist start pelting school board members with grapes during a meeting. She probably should've reached for something heavier.
An internal audit, which was 14 months late, estimates next year's city deficit to be as high as $200 million (helped along by $335,000 embezzled from the Department of Health and Wellness Promotion). With a dwindling tax base--even the city's three once-profitable casinos are seeing a downturn in revenues (the Greektown Casino is in bankruptcy)--the city has kicked around every money-making scheme from selling off ownership rights to the tunnel it shares with neighboring Windsor, Canada, to a fast food tax. It's perhaps unsurprising that Detroit now has the most speed traps in the nation.
It also has one of the highest property tax rates in Michigan, yet has over 60,000 vacant dwellings (a guesstimate--nobody keeps official count), meaning real estate values are in the toilet. Over the summer, the Detroit News sent a headline around the world, about a Detroit house that was for sale for $1. But it's not even that uncommon. As of this writing, there are at least five $1 homes for sale in Detroit.
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Monday, December 22, 2008
The Demise of Detroit
If you want to read something very depressing, read Matt Labash's elegiac cover story on Detroit. He starts off with the statistics and then takes us inside to meet some of the people who are trying to live there. It breaks your heart. The combination of inept and corrupt political leadership and a dying economic base have turned it into a decaying shell.
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3 comments:
About the only thing Detroit has accomplished that can even remotely be called a success is reducing the rate of structure first on Hell Night (10/30) from 800 plus to a reported 147 this year. Many of the homes that were burned were by the owners falling behind on their payments and torching the homes to collect the fire insurance money by using Hell Night as a cover.
LaBash misses the unbelievable sense of entitlement of Detroit, the state of Michigan, the UAW, and the auto industry in general.
Apparently, if you're lucky enough to have Henry Ford and become the center a major manufacturing industry everyone else owes you.
Detroit is in a magnificent geographical location, and the area inhabitants can't let go of that sense of entitlement long enough to make the city/area work.
It spills over into everything.
I don't hate the UAW, but I hate how it operates and what it has done. It has, near as I can tell, inculcated a desire to get the most return for the least effort by way too many people.
There is a lot of good stuff and good people in the Detroit area, but until the Ancien Regime is pulled down not much good is going to happen.
Blaming the UAW for the demise of Detroit is like blaming the Roman Legions for Nero's inferno. Yes, they participated, but they were not the lead player. The demise of Detroit was brought about by a simple policy "what's good for GM is good for the country." The Big three became politically powerful and evoked protection for their executives, stockholders, and yes the workers and their unions also. Today, we are in the process of repeating these mistakes when we think that what's good for the wealthy is good for the country. If it is repeated long enough and loud enough people start to believe it.
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