Poor Detroit

[chiggerbit]

15710 Freeland St
$5,000

[chiggerbit]

18630 Cherrylawn St




Guess how much



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$900

[pepsified thinker]

http://adventure.howstuffworks.com/abandoned-city3.htm

5 Modern Abandoned Cities
1. Centralia, Penn.

2. Hashima Island, Japan

3. (Parts of) Detroit, Mich.

Courtesy Walid Hassanein
The arcade with a view of the ticket counters at the abandoned Central Michigan Depot in Detroit.
Some modern abandoned cit ies are actually parts of functioning cities. Perhaps the best example of an abandoned district is found within Detroit. The Motor City gets its name from its former role as the world’s seat of the automotive industry. Henry Ford’s refinement of the assembly line led to cheaper, mass-produced cars and trucks in the 1920s, and the city expanded quickly. By the 1950s, Detroit, with its two million residents, was America’s third-largest city [source: University of Michigan].

With employment rates and income high in the area, opulent buildings began to dot downtown Detroit’s skyline. Ornately detailed architecture adorned the city’s theaters and office buildings. It was a bustling city, and its buildings reflected the power and the wealth the automobile industry accumulated.

By the 1970s and '80s, however, the American auto industry entered a decline. Detroit, inextricably attached to car manufacturing, reflected this downturn. In 1979, Detroit’s Big Three carmakers (Chrysler, Ford and General Motors) produced 90 percent of all of the vehicles sold in the U.S.; by 2005, that figure was down to 40 percent [source: The Guardian]. Since Detroit was something of a boomtown -- based on cars, not gold -- it couldn’t help but suffer when car manufacturers faced competition from overseas automakers.

But it wasn’t only competition from foreign car manufacturers that led to the demise of downtown Detroit. Suburbanization played a role as well; as people began moving out of the city, their money went with them. The same holds true for the carmakers. Automotive factories became bigger as the car boom went on. With land in the city at a premium, car companies built newer, bigger facilities in the suburbs. Whole sections of Detroit were left abandoned, while in other cases, slumping buildings sat empty alongside struggling buildings that remained open.

Detroit began to crumble. Building owners simply left their investments to decay once they found they couldn’t lease or sell them. Others tried to revitalize or redevelop buildings into new businesses; for example, some stage theaters found new lives as movie theaters. Ultimately, a lack of customers caused many buildings to simply be abandoned. For years, office buildings, hotels, churches, theaters, homes, factories and stores were boarded up and left to rot. Vandals broke windows, spray painted messages and picked mementos from the architecture. Within these buildings, sunlight streams through cracks. Old furniture is overturned in unused hotel rooms. Desks still stand in empty offices. Even the city’s old train depot -- a massive, 18-story transportation hub -- has been abandoned, its intricate shell a reminder of its past importance.

Revitalization efforts are reforming these districts of Detroit. Many of the abandoned areas are being leveled, with new buildings or parking lots built over their former foundations. And an unusual tradition has had an effect on the urban blight. In the 1970s, vandals adopted the custom of burning empty (and sometimes occupied) buildings downtown on Halloween Eve, a custom that came to be known as Devil’s Night. The ritual continued into the 1990s, but peaked in 1984, when more than 800 fires were set from Oct. 30 to Nov. 1 [source: New York Times].

Economic changes led to the demise of another modern city in Japan. Find out about Hashima Island on the next page.

4. Humberstone and Santa Laura, Chile

5. Prypiat, Ukraine

[chiggerbit]

There are loads of rural communities throughout the Midwest that are little more than ghost towns or have become bedroom communities with residents commuting to larger cities nearby for jobs, shopping. The problem with Detroit is that it became a humongous bedroom community---not to another city but to the auto factories. And now the auto factories are nearly defunct.

[chiggerbit]

The difference between the fates of being a ghost town or a bedroom community depends on whether the rural community is located within easy commuting distance of a larger community which has jobs which can absorb the unemployed of the smaller town. Detroit's problem is that there is NO larger neighboring community to absorb its unemployed. In addition, it is bounded on one side by a national boudary and on another by a state boundary, with its urban center being scrunched down into the conjunction of those two boundaries.

[chiggerbit]

13110 Corbett Detroit, MI 48213
$2,500
Estimate My Monthly Payment|Get Mortgage Rates
4 Bed, 1.5 Bath | 1,584 Sq Ft on 0.21 Acres

[MinM]

YouTube - 09/20/09 Detroit Lions vs Minnesota Vikings: Drunk Chicks fight cops and get arrested

Detroit Police Take Out the Trash During Lions Loss | The Big Lead

***
Assignment Detroit - Terry McDonell - SI.com

The D-Shack is for journalists from numerous Time Inc. magazines and websites.

[chiggerbit]

I wonder how much Time, Inc paid for that house.

[monster]

I wonder if the Lions will ever win another football game.

[Brentos]

"I wonder if the Lions will ever win another football game."

The fans would make a tougher team to beat IMHO...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=htYg_-_- ... edded#t=11

[Brentos]

"I wonder if the Lions will ever win another football game."

The fans would make a tougher team to beat IMHO...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=htYg_-_- ... edded#t=11

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6dydtXJ94CE

[MinM]

Detroit Tigers' Comerica Park (pictured above) was featured in Flash Forward:

YouTube - Flash Forward - The Ending of Episode 1 - Adam Lambert???

[chiggerbit]

Heh, I noticed that. And I immediately jumped to the conclusion that the enemy is going to be someone of Middle Eastern descent, of which there is a rather large population in the Detroit area.

[MinM]

Heh, I noticed that. And I immediately jumped to the conclusion that the enemy is going to be someone of Middle Eastern descent, of which there is a rather large population in the Detroit area.

University of Michigan professor's new book explores stigma and acceptance in the Detroit Arab-American community - AnnArbor.com

Even the most patriotic, politically-involved and community-oriented Arab Americans struggle to be accepted by as full-fledged members of American society, says University of Michigan professor Wayne Baker.

Why?

For the new book "Citizenship and Crisis: Arab Detroit After 9/11," Baker and a team of U-M researchers conducted more than 1,500 face-to-face interviews in Oakland, Macomb and Wayne counties - areas that contains one of the largest and most diverse populations of Arab Americans in the U.S.

Their aim: To get to the heart of why Arab Americans struggle to be accepted in American society and explore the concept of citizenship.

"There's always this tension over whether or not Arab Americans belong or don't belong," Baker says. "Many people in the general population prefer to keep their distance." ...
http://www.annarbor.com/news/even-the-m ... litically/

[chiggerbit]

http://money.cnn.com/2009/10/01/news/ec ... /index.htm

Detroit: Too broke to bury their dead
Money to bury Detroit's poor has dried up, forcing struggling families to abandon their loved ones in the morgue freezer.
EMAIL | PRINT | SHARE | RSS
By Poppy Harlow, CNNMoney.com anchor
Last Updated: October 1, 2009: 10:19 AM ET

Unclaimed bodies piling up in the Detroit morgue.


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DETROIT (CNNMoney.com) -- At 1300 E. Warren St., you can smell the plight of Detroit.

Inside the Wayne County morgue in midtown Detroit, 67 bodies are piled up, unclaimed, in the freezing temperatures. Neither the families nor the county can afford to bury the corpses. So they stack up inside the freezer.

Albert Samuels, chief investigator for the morgue, said he has never seen anything like it during his 13 years on the job. "Some people don't come forward even though they know the people are here," said the former Detroit cop. "They don't have the money."

Lifelong Detroit residents Darrell and Cheryl Vickers understand this firsthand. On a chilly September morning they had to visit the freezer to identify the body of Darrell's aunt, Nancy Graham -- and say their goodbyes.

The couple, already financially strained, don't have the $695 needed to cremate her. Other family members, mostly in Florida, don't have the means to contribute, either. In fact, when Darrell's grandmother passed recently, his father paid for the cremation on a credit card -- at 21% interest.

So the Vickers had to leave their aunt behind. Body number 67.

"It's devastating to a family not to be able to take care of their own," said Darrell. "But there's really no way to come up with that kind of cash in today's society. There's just no way."

The number of unclaimed corpses at the Wayne County morgue is at a record high, having tripled since 2000. The reason for the pile-up is twofold: One, unemployment in the area is approaching 28%, and many people, like the Vickers, can't afford last rites; two, the county's $21,000 annual budget to bury unclaimed bodies ran out in June.

"One way we look back at a culture is how they dispose of their dead," said the county's chief medical examiner, Carl Schmidt, who has been in his position for 15 years. "We see people here that society was not taking care of before they died -- and society is having difficulty taking care of them after they are dead."



Detroit is not alone. The Los Angeles coroner's office said it, too, has seen an increase in the number of bodies abandoned. That's not surprising at a time when unemployment tops 10% in many cities and the median cost of a funeral in America hovers around $7,000. Cremation can cost $2,000.
Little help available

This is an issue of concern, said the Detroit mayor's office, but the city can't afford to offer any assistance. "The failure, through inability or choice, to bury the deceased is a reflection of the economic conditions that have arrested this region, where people are now forced to make emotionally compromised choices," said a spokesman in a prepared statement.

The state, however, does have some funds available to assist with burial costs. For fiscal year 2009, Michigan allocated $4.9 million for assistance, and of that, approximately $135,500 remains. Those in need of assistance can find grant applications at Michigan Department of Human Services offices, most funeral homes, and at Michigan.gov/dhs.

The Vickers did not know about the funds until CNNMoney notified them. But, fortunately, they were eventually able to scrape together the $695 and will be able to cremate their aunt with help from Social Security, social services and their aunt's church.

The way Darrell sees it, the stimulus package should have helped people in situations like this, rather than to "spark the economy and sell cars. We can't take care of our own when it comes to laying them to rest and letting them rest in peace."
'Reflection of the economy'

Believe it or not, the Vickers are among the fortunate.

Dozens of other bodies remain, some never identified. And they can't be disposed of until their families come forward or the county's burial fund is replenished when the 2010 budget is approved. There were 66 bodies before Aunt Nancy's, and they'll be interred on a first-arrived-first-buried basis.

"There are many people with sad lives," said Schmidt. "But it is even sadder when even after you are dead, there is no one to pick you up."

And in a town with so much need, Schmidt noted one more cause for concern: The increase in unclaimed bodies is not due to an increase in murders -- though the rate remains high -- but due to natural causes. Schmidt speculated that many of the deceased didn't have health insurance or could no longer afford medication for the chronic medical conditions.

"If anything is a reflection of the economy, that is a reflection of the economy," he said.

But this messy reality is shielded behind the Wayne County morgue's perfectly trimmed hedges and pristine brick walls.

"I feel sadness because I can recall when it [Detroit] was really booming," said investigator Samuels. "I don't think a lot of people are really aware that these types of things are happening in such a wide area."