Originally Posted by
EastsideAl
It is one of the stranger areas in any city in the world I know of, and I say that having grown up just 2 blocks away from this building [[and my parents still live in the neighborhood, about 8 blocks to the south).
The 3 streets directly to the east and south of this building [[Seminole, Iroquois, and Burns from Mack to Jefferson) are Indian Village, which is one of the better neighborhoods in the city and a national historic district. It is full of beautiful large homes, many with stunning details, and although it has suffered along with the rest of the city and the Detroit area through the recession, housing slump, and overall urban decay, most of the houses are well kept and the population is generally upper middle class.
4744 Burns built in 1919 Pingree Park Detroit, MI.
The rest of the area around there is one of the poorest places in the U.S. Many of the houses are dilapidated or vacant, and a large percentage have been torn down, meaning that there is a lot of vacant land nearby. The population in these areas has been declining for decades, and that decline has accelerated greatly in the last few years. Despite what some here would have you think, there are a lot of good, decent people who still live around there [[many of them elderly). But there's also a very significant amount of crime, violence, gunplay, scavenging, drug use, teen parenthood, lack of education, joblessness, and poverty. The area just to the north of Indian Village has fared better than some other nearby areas, but the overall trend is towards deeper poverty, population loss, and abandonment.
You should really take a Google Streetview tour of the surrounding streets. And keep in mind that things have gotten worse since the onset of the recession in 2008.