guardian.co.uk/business/2010 … losures-80
Detroit homes sell for $1 amid mortgage and car industry crisis Chris McGreal , in Detroit
One in five houses left empty as foreclosures mount and property prices drop by 80%
Some might say Jon Brumit overpaid when he stumped up $100 (£65) for a whole house. Drive through Detroit neighbourhoods once clogged with the cars that made the city the envy of America and there are homes to be had for a single dollar.
You find these houses among boarded-up, burnt-out and rotting buildings lining deserted streets, places where the population is shrinking so fast entire blocks are being demolished to make way for urban farms.
“I was living in Chicago and a friend told me that houses in Detroit could be had for $500,” said Brumit, a financially strapped artist who thought he had little prospect of owning his own property. “I said if you hear of anything just a little cheaper let me know. Within a week he emails me a photo of a house for $100. I thought that’s just crazy. Why not? It’s a way to cut our expenses way down and kind of open up a lot of time for creative projects because we’re not working to pay the rent.”
Houses on sale for a few dollars are something of an urban legend in the US on the back of the mortgage crisis that drove millions of people from their homes. But in Detroit it is no myth.
…(cont’d)
Detroit homes sell for $1 amid mortgage and car industry crisis | US housing and sub-prime crisis | The Guardian
Tuesday 2 March 2010Chris McGreal , in Detroit
One in five houses left empty as foreclosures mount and property prices drop by 80%
Some might say Jon Brumit overpaid when he stumped up $100 (£65) for a whole house. Drive through Detroit neighbourhoods once clogged with the cars that made the city the envy of America and there are homes to be had for a single dollar.
You find these houses among boarded-up, burnt-out and rotting buildings lining deserted streets, places where the population is shrinking so fast entire blocks are being demolished to make way for urban farms.
“I was living in Chicago and a friend told me that houses in Detroit could be had for $500,” said Brumit, a financially strapped artist who thought he had little prospect of owning his own property. “I said if you hear of anything just a little cheaper let me know. Within a week he emails me a photo of a house for $100. I thought that’s just crazy. Why not? It’s a way to cut our expenses way down and kind of open up a lot of time for creative projects because we’re not working to pay the rent.”
Houses on sale for a few dollars are something of an urban legend in the US on the back of the mortgage crisis that drove millions of people from their homes. But in Detroit it is no myth.
…(cont’d)
You can but well located multi unit apartment complexes in eastern seaboard cities (4 million + population) for $7,000 each. They rent for $550 per month.
A quick look found this one for example trulia.com/foreclosure/30036 … t-MI-48238
Thanks, but I was looking for a link to the eastern seaboard ones
How much property tax etc ?
Im guessing by eastern seaboard, he meant Florida
Out of curiosity I did a google earth flyby of parts od Detroit, Whole districts look like they’ve been carpet bombed leaving nothing except the road layout! Also remember that a lot of google earth images are a couple of years old.
Is that the fate of some of the ghost estates here I wonder.
dolanbaker:
Out of curiosity I did a google earth flyby of parts od Detroit, Whole districts look like they’ve been carpet bombed leaving nothing except the road layout! Also remember that a lot of google earth images are a couple of years old.
Is that the fate of some of the ghost estates here I wonder.
I don’t think so.
Kate_P
March 8, 2010, 6:02am
#10
Posted this article previously on a Morgan Kelly thread: viewtopic.php?p=271618#p271618
telegraph.co.uk/finance/fina … rvive.html
US cities may have to be bulldozed in order to survive
*Dozens of US cities may have entire neighbourhoods bulldozed as part of drastic “shrink to survive” proposals being considered by the Obama administration to tackle economic decline. *
The government looking at expanding a pioneering scheme in Flint, one of the poorest US cities, which involves razing entire districts and returning the land to nature.
Local politicians believe the city must contract by as much as 40 per cent, concentrating the dwindling population and local services into a more viable area.
The radical experiment is the brainchild of Dan Kildee, treasurer of Genesee County, which includes Flint.
Having outlined his strategy to Barack Obama during the election campaign, Mr Kildee has now been approached by the US government and a group of charities who want him to apply what he has learnt to the rest of the country.
Mr Kildee said he will concentrate on 50 cities, identified in a recent study by the Brookings Institution, an influential Washington think-tank, as potentially needing to shrink substantially to cope with their declining fortunes.
Most are former industrial cities in the “rust belt” of America’s Mid-West and North East. They include Detroit, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Baltimore and Memphis.
In Detroit, shattered by the woes of the US car industry, there are already plans to split it into a collection of small urban centres separated from each other by countryside.
…(cont’d)
Posted this article previously on a Morgan Kelly thread: viewtopic.php?p=271618#p271618
telegraph.co.uk/finance/fina … rvive.html
Published: 6:30PM BST 12 Jun 2009
*Dozens of US cities may have entire neighbourhoods bulldozed as part of drastic “shrink to survive” proposals being considered by the Obama administration to tackle economic decline. *
The government looking at expanding a pioneering scheme in Flint, one of the poorest US cities, which involves razing entire districts and returning the land to nature.
Local politicians believe the city must contract by as much as 40 per cent, concentrating the dwindling population and local services into a more viable area.
The radical experiment is the brainchild of Dan Kildee, treasurer of Genesee County, which includes Flint.
Having outlined his strategy to Barack Obama during the election campaign, Mr Kildee has now been approached by the US government and a group of charities who want him to apply what he has learnt to the rest of the country.
Mr Kildee said he will concentrate on 50 cities, identified in a recent study by the Brookings Institution, an influential Washington think-tank, as potentially needing to shrink substantially to cope with their declining fortunes.
Most are former industrial cities in the “rust belt” of America’s Mid-West and North East. They include Detroit, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Baltimore and Memphis.
In Detroit, shattered by the woes of the US car industry, there are already plans to split it into a collection of small urban centres separated from each other by countryside.
…(cont’d)
Following on from that, here is a website chronicling the demolition. blog.mlive.com/flintjournal/news … _with.html (warning! it takes a long time to load as there are several embedded google maps)
Requiem For Detroit on BBC2 now.
bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00rkm3y
Requiem for Detroit
Julien Temple’s new film is a vivid evocation of an apocalyptic vision: a slow-motion Katrina that has had many more victims. Detroit was once America’s fourth largest city.
Built by the car for the car, with its groundbreaking suburbs, freeways and shopping centres, it was the embodiment of the American dream.
But its intense race riots brought the army into the city. With violent union struggles against the fierce resistance of Henry Ford and the Big Three, it was also the scene of American nightmares.
Now it is truly a dystopic post-industrial city, in which 40 per cent of the land in the centre is returning to prairie. Greenery grows up through abandoned office blocks, houses and collapsing car plants, and swallows up street lights.
Police stations and post offices have been left with papers on the desks like the Marie Celeste. There is no more rush hour on what were the first freeways in America. Crime, vandalism, arson and dog fighting are the main activities in once the largest building in North America. But it’s also a source of hope.
Streets are being turned to art. Farming is coming back to the centre of the city. Young people are flocking to help. The burgeoning urban agricultural movement is the fastest growing movement in the US. Detroit leads the way again but in a very different direction.
Requiem For Detroit on BBC2 now.
bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00rkm3y
Today, 21:00 on BBC Two
Julien Temple’s new film is a vivid evocation of an apocalyptic vision: a slow-motion Katrina that has had many more victims. Detroit was once America’s fourth largest city.
Built by the car for the car, with its groundbreaking suburbs, freeways and shopping centres, it was the embodiment of the American dream.
But its intense race riots brought the army into the city. With violent union struggles against the fierce resistance of Henry Ford and the Big Three, it was also the scene of American nightmares.
Now it is truly a dystopic post-industrial city, in which 40 per cent of the land in the centre is returning to prairie. Greenery grows up through abandoned office blocks, houses and collapsing car plants, and swallows up street lights.
Police stations and post offices have been left with papers on the desks like the Marie Celeste. There is no more rush hour on what were the first freeways in America. Crime, vandalism, arson and dog fighting are the main activities in once the largest building in North America. But it’s also a source of hope.
Streets are being turned to art. Farming is coming back to the centre of the city. Young people are flocking to help. The burgeoning urban agricultural movement is the fastest growing movement in the US. Detroit leads the way again but in a very different direction.
Reminds me of a sketch in “Not the nine o’clock news”, old farmer standing next to a hedge, saying to a TV reporter “I remember when this was all fields!” The reporter retorts “but it’s fields now!” the farmer replies ““it was fields when I was a child, then they build factories, then Thatcher closed them all down! now it’s fields again!””
dolanbaker:
Reminds me of a sketch in “Not the nine o’clock news”, old farmer standing next to a hedge, saying to a TV reporter “I remember when this was all fields!” The reporter retorts “but it’s fields now!” the farmer replies ““it was fields when I was a child, then they build factories, then Thatcher closed them all down! now it’s fields again!””
I can’t believe they didn’t play Talking Heads - (Nothing But) Flowers:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qo1aKvqjA0o
Might have to do a video of my own!
Report: Detroit bankruptcy looms without drastic change → detnews.com/article/20100406/METRO01/4060342
Group says city must slash spending, downsize or it could end up more than $400M in red
Detroit – Mayor Dave Bing and the City Council must reduce the size of government and slash the city’s budget deficit to stave off bankruptcy or state receivership, according to a report released Monday.
The Economic Base
**The deterioration of the economic base of the city has accelerated. There were an estimated 81,754 vacant housing units (22.2 percent of the total) in Detroit before the recession; that number increased to an estimated 101,737 (27.8 percent of the total) in 2008.
The average price of a residential unit sold in the January through November, 2009 period was $12,439, down from $97,847 in 2003. Remaining businesses and individuals are challenging property tax assessments on parcels that have lost value and, in some cases, cannot be sold at any price.
there is more
globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=19856
**“Dying Detroit”:: The Impacts of Globalization. Social Decay and Destruction of an Entire Urban Area **Li Onesto
A YouTube video titled “Dying Detroit” takes you on a tour of “neighborhoods literally falling apart”—through streets that look like “a hurricane has recently swept through, destroying nearly everything on its path.” Thousands of houses have been abandoned—in many areas 50-60% of the houses are in foreclosure. Some blocks have only a few homes left standing. A thousand people a month are leaving what has been called " America ’s fastest dying city."
There used to be almost 2 million people in Detroit . Today the city’s population is just under a million and 85% Black. Many thousands are living the city’s slow death:
1 in every 3 people live below the federal poverty level. Almost half of the children live in poverty. (2004 figures)
The unemployment rate among Black people, especially the youth, is over 30%—city officials say it is actually closer to 50%.
There is NO public hospital for the uninsured and, due to budget cuts, public health departments have largely eliminated programs providing direct health care services.
29 schools were closed the summer of 2009. An additional 32 schools—almost 20% of the city’s schools—were closed the summer of 2010. Detroit ’s dropout rate of 68% is the highest in the country (along with Indianapolis and Cleveland ). The illiteracy rate is close to 50%.
Michigan state spends more on prisons than it does on higher education and has the second highest incarceration rate in the country.
…(cont’d)
irishtimes.com/newspaper/wee … 50373.html
From Motown to no town BEN OLIVER in Detroit
One of the United States’ biggest cities is in free fall, with so many residents fleeing that it is ready to disown the neighbourhoods they left behind. But could the weeds of urban neglect become the green shoots of hope?
In 1967 John Lee Hooker recorded Motor City Is Burning , about the race riots that racked his adopted hometown that year. Some say Detroit’s decline began then, but it plunged faster into its current mire with the collapse of the US auto industry in 2008. Home to about a third of that industry, the state of Michigan has taken most of the pain: an estimated 230,000 jobs have gone in the past three years.
The car-industry bosses who gathered in Detroit for the opening day of the North American International Auto Show last month were bullish about the recovering US car market and pleased to announce some new jobs. But few would have ventured beyond the few blocks that hold Detroit’s Cobo Centre, which hosts the show. There were extra police patrols for them, plus fleets of Mercedes and Audis to take them from hotel to hall. They would not have to witness the devastation that the car industry’s clear-out is wreaking on the city that gave us GM, Ford and Chrysler, the Model T and muscle cars, the planes and jeeps and munitions that helped win the second World War, and Motown records. But they wouldn’t have had to go far: the blight, as Detroiters call it, has eaten into the heart of the city, with its empty, windowless skyscrapers and theatres used as parking lots.
Motor city’s not burning but dying, and the statistics are harrowing. Detroit has lost more than half its population since its postwar peak. A third of all houses are empty or already demolished. Half of all children live in poverty, and the median house price is now under €6,000. But one fact really stands out. The new mayor, a former basketball star named Dave Bing, is going to close a third of the city. With a budget deficit of more than $300 million, Detroit can’t afford to maintain neighbourhoods from which most of the population has fled. So if you live in Detroit, later this year you might get a letter explaining that, technically, you no longer do; that your sewerage and police patrols will soon be cut off; and that instead you can have a free house in one of the neighbourhoods the city thinks it can save.
…(cont’d)
