How Detroit went broke: The answers may surprise you — and don't blame Coleman Young. Originally published Sept. 15, 2013 Detroit is broke, but it didn’t have to be.
An in-depth Free Press analysis of the city’s financial history back to the 1950s shows that its elected officials and others charged with managing its finances repeatedly failed — or refused — to make the tough economic and political decisions that might have saved the city from financial ruin. Instead, amid a huge exodus of residents, plummeting tax revenues and skyrocketing home abandonment, Detroit’s leaders engaged in a billion-dollar borrowing binge, created new taxes and failed to cut expenses when they needed to. Simultaneously, they gifted workers and retirees with generous bonuses. And under pressure from unions and, sometimes, arbitrators, they failed to cut health care benefits — saddling the city with staggering costs that today threaten the safety and quality of life of people who live here. One-Fifth of Detroit's Population Could Lose Their Homes - The Atlantic.
Updated 10/26/2014 Evone Brown, a 55-year-old former machine operator, survives on $850 a month from retirement and disability checks, which wasn't enough to cover the roughly $8,000 she owed in property taxes on her home on the east side of Detroit.
This year, because she was at least three years behind on her tax payments (most of which she inherited when she bought the house in 2011), Wayne County's treasurer foreclosed on her. As a result, her house is up for sale this week in Wayne County’s online foreclosure auction, at a starting bid of just $500. Property taxes going down for over half of Detroiters. Detroit — More than half of Detroit’s residential property owners will have lower property tax bills this year, but 41 percent can expect modest increases, city officials said Monday.
The Duggan administration unveiled the proposed 2017 property assessments on the heels of the first parcel-by-parcel reappraisal of the city’s nearly 255,000 residential properties in 60 years. “It’s been a three-year process, and today we will be sending out the assessment notices and everybody will get an assessment based upon their individual houses,” Mayor Mike Duggan said during a news conference Monday at City Hall. “... Getting the assessment right is something that every homeowner should be entitled to just expect.”
Officials said approximately 140,000 homeowners will see reductions in their taxes of about $263 each. About 12,000 will see an average increase of about $80 each and the remaining 6 percent of property owners will see larger adjustments. Michael J. Detroit Population History 1900-2000. This page graphically depicts Detroit, Michigan's population changes during the 20th century.
Population statistics from the US Census are displayed from 1900 to 2000. The graphics attempt to show how highway policy affected how people chose where to live. THE WAR . At Home . War Production. “Powerful enemies must be out-fought and out-produced,” President Franklin Roosevelt told Congress and his countrymen less than a month after Pearl Harbor.
“It is not enough to turn out just a few more planes, a few more tanks, a few more guns, a few more ships than can be turned out by our enemies,” he said. “We must out-produce them overwhelmingly, so that there can be no question of our ability to provide a crushing superiority of equipment in any theatre of the world war.” Two years earlier, America’s military preparedness was not that of a nation expecting to go to war. In 1939, the United States Army ranked thirty-ninth in the world, possessing a cavalry force of fifty thousand and using horses to pull the artillery. Many Americans — still trying to recover from the decade-long ordeal of the Great Depression — were reluctant to participate in the conflict that was spreading throughout Europe and Asia. War production profoundly changed American industry.
RACE - The Power of an Illusion . Go Deeper. How Does a Good Neighborhood "Turn Bad"?
What triggers the decline of an area? Some people claim that once minorities move in, the neighborhood starts to deteriorate. Detroit’s Bankruptcy Reflects a History of Racism. This is black history month. Detroit Race Riot (1967) The Intersection of 12th Street and Clairmount, Saturday, July 23, 1967 Image Courtesy of the Detroit Free Press Image Ownership: Public Domain The Detroit Race Riot in Detroit, Michigan in the summer of 1967 was one of the most violent urban revolts in the 20th century.
It came as an immediate response to police brutality but underlying conditions including segregated housing and schools and rising black unemployment helped drive the anger of the rioters. On Sunday evening, July 23, the Detroit Police Vice Squad officers raided an after hours “blind pig,” an unlicensed bar on the corner of 12th Street and Clairmount Avenue in the center of the city’s oldest and poorest black neighborhood. At 5:20 a.m. additional police officers were sent to 12th Street to stop the growing violence. Around 1:00 p.m. police officers began to report injuries from stones, bottles, and other objects that were thrown at them. Nypost. DETROIT — Whites are moving back to the American city that came to epitomize white flight, even as blacks continue to leave for the suburbs and the city’s overall population shrinks.
Detroit is the latest major city to see an influx of whites who may not find the suburbs as alluring as their parents and grandparents did in the last half of the 20th century. Unlike New York, San Francisco and many other cities that have seen the demographic shift, though, it is cheap housing and incentive programs that are partly fueling the regrowth of the Motor City’s white population.
Foc32a. SW Detroit Neighborhoods. Nine Reasons Why Detroit Failed. My hometown of Detroit has been studied obsessively for years by writers and researchers of all types to gain insight into the Motor City’s decline.
Indeed, it seems to have become a favorite pastime for urbanists of all stripes. How could such an economic powerhouse, a uniquely American city, so utterly collapse? Most analysis tends to focus on the economic, social and political reasons for the downfall. A Declining Population In A Widespread City - pg.1. Marilyn Salenger: ‘White flight’ and Detroit’s decline. By Marilyn Salenger By Marilyn Salenger July 21, 2013 Marilyn Salenger is president of Strategic Communications Services and a former correspondent and news anchor for several CBS stations.
An almost palpable sadness has swept across the country at the news that the city of Detroit has filed for bankruptcy.