Perhaps this is Bush's fault? Or a bad childhood?
Would you buy a house in this neighborhood? There are a lot of them for sale! How would you like to look out and see this going down during your open house? Nice! Great place to raise the kids. Just throw them outside and sit in your recliner.
Houses in this neighborhood go for $379,900 to anywhere as high as $650,000. Wonder where these characters came up with the money for their house? Adjustable rate, no money down maybe? Brain surgeons possibly? Meth? Crack?
5 comments:
It's going to be a fascinating urban study in how fast these areas fall into a near-ghetto-like state. Since these homes are not as well built as the past generations (and that's very much true for the homes built specifically for flipping), they will be extra vulnerable to damage from looters, pests and the weather.
I read this series and have fallen in love with the term "urban prairie":
Broken Detroit: Death of a city block
I live in a similarly rusty city and I've seen actual urban prairie around here. However, that open land took a long time to develop into that state. The "bubblehoods" will revert to urban prairie faster, perhaps more violently, and undoubtedly with more government direction (i.e. charging in with the bulldozers).
Also, those government bulldozers do more damage than you think. Their use in mixed areas (as urban prairies tend to be) produces damage to streets, sidewalks, curbs, trees, and -- get this -- water and sewer systems. The corrupt politicians who direct the 'dozers only want the teardowns to happen as fast as possible since they're highly embarrassed by the entire affair ... so they're hardly careful about where the 'dozers dig, how deep they go, and where all the hauling trucks have to be to remove debris.
I've seen this farce first hand. It's not a solution. The sustainable way to go is to revitalize old or decrepit homes by emplacing welfare renters under the strict penalty of law. "Keep the house maintained to a certain minimum level or we'll jail you." The boon to the renters is that they get the house for free and only have to "rent" by maintaining it, pay the taxes (which are low in the first place), and stay in it a certain minimum time (I suggest 10 years) in order to obtain clear title. I'm not actually suggesting that they pay rent to the city. The renters win this way since they apply wealth to ownership that also covers the work of refurbishing the home. The city wins since the property is off their ownership rolls and it generates tax revenue. The neighborhood wins since economic/racial natives of the area remain in place, and then the win doubles since the home is occupied. Society quite simply WINS.
Since the credited and incomed middle class is steadily fleeing such areas, what else can we do?
I loved that series on Detroit, also...
It answered one question: why is there no demand to fill the empty lots? Because they aren't empty: the city bulldozed the old homes into the basements, then covered the gravesite in sod. Anyone hoping to build would first have to excavate the entire mess to get back to ground zero. Nice.
I've been unable to explain the rationale for completely wrecking and removing a home -- right down to the foundation and perhaps the sewer connection? -- over simply boarding it up until such a time that it can be refurbished by a new owners. Doesn't an excavation, sewer connection, foundation and basement floor cost many thousands to establish? Yet cities are ripping all that out and (please note) they prefer to dump some truly nasty soil onto the site. One starts to wonder if cities aren't looking for places to dump polluted, rocky or clayey soils, and the authority to teardown simple gives them the opportunity.
I do know the surrounding homeowners cheer the demolition, since they are largely "property value" whores who only care about their own home price. We can't count on help from them to correct the conspicuous consumption represented by these demo jobs.
http://www.stormfront.org/whitehistory/hwrdet.htm
Good photo essay on Detroit.
And, Detroit nowadays:
http://detroitiscrap.blogspot.com/
And, the death of Johannesburg:
http://deathofjohannesburg.blogspot.com/
The stats in the first link on crime vs. racial makeup are telling. Even liberals vote with their feet when faced with reality.
I grew up in a white flight neighborhood and my (white) family didn't leave. The neighborhood went through a rough period but is now gentrified and integrated.
I grew up with intense anger at the white who ran - I regard them as cowards without principles. No one forced you to leave. You put your tail between your legs and ran. Now you're bitter and you look at how your neighborhoods were trashed by "them", poor brown people, but the fact is: YOU TRASHED YOUR OWN NEIGHBORHOODS BECAUSE YOU'RE A BUNCH OF DAMN RACIST COWARDS WHO RAN. You took the money out, and the jobs left. I lived through the aftermath of YOUR BETRAYAL. Now you racist scum (I talking about you Samuel Adams, I checked out your sites) you blame others for the effects of your own cowardice. Disgusting.
Post a Comment