The REAL reason for Detroit's decline: not enough projects?!?!

[nain rouge]

I can also say from personal experience, having stayed in a hostel in Bedford-Stuyvesant in Brooklyn, that I felt perfectly safe walking by the projects. To start with, the grounds were well-maintained, with manicured lawns and functioning, bright playground equipment. And because of the way the projects were set up, gang members couldn't just congregate on the sidewalk - the police patrolled regularly and would squash it.

Now, I can't vouch for the living conditions inside of the projects, but I'd imagine that the accommodations were acceptable, aside from any violent tenants. It might not be fair, but it worked.

[wolverine]

RE: WOLVERINE.
Good point. This article, however, comes up with an intriguing argument that blames the gang problem in Chicago with the failure of public housing: Why Are There So Many Gang Members In Chicago?

Basically, the article states that while violent crime decreased in Chicago throughout the '90s and early '00s, incarceration rates were skyrocketing. Prisons, it is widely known, are a breeding ground for gains.

On top of that, as public housing projects were demolished/abandoned, two problems quickly emerged. 1. For decades, law enforcement had essentially been containing gangs within the projects, essentially cooperating with gangs if they would stay out of selected areas. Once the projects were gone, the system of containment broke down. 2. As gang members were dispersed from the projects to all corners of the city, recruiting became easier, as gang members now had much easier access to a wider audience.

The article also explains how New York's decision to reinvest in public housing greatly benefited the city. Essentially, it would seem Chicago lacked the funds [[mostly) and political will to support the projects, and thus demolished the projects under the glorified pretense of the "greater good". Obviously, when you can't adequately invest in an area, it's eventually going to turn very sour.

I partially agree on the containment point, but with some apprehension. But maybe where I misunderstand you is if you think that clustering of crime is a better solution to managing a city's crime problem overall or whether New York's investment supersedes this thought that while crime and poverty may be contained and concentrated, better investment in public housing is a response to lessons learned of the previous failures of public housing. Correct me if I'm wrong in interpreting this from your post.

I can't say for sure whether what worked in New York will work in Chicago. The issue in Chicago is that the gangs became more powerful in the towers that any police force could deal with. So if the police couldn't manage the problem, you can't really manage your investment in public housing, no matter how money you throw at it.

I would guess the CHA thinks a bunch of smaller fires to stomp out are better than one big blazing inferno.

I also tend to think that this discussion is laden with undertones that the majority of public housing tenants are criminals, so if we concentrate them and throw money at the issue it will probably work. I mean, what's essentially being said is that closure of places like Cabrini or Taylor led to an outpouring of crime into the neighborhoods. While that might partially play a role, I'm not entirely convinced. And I don't think reversing such a process would help. Plus we can't be sure the problems in the neighborhoods will disappear. You expose people to more problems than they had before...an apartment from hell. I guess NYC is just far better at managing this problem. I do want to know how they did, and how Chicago could....or can't.

I want to be clear your original post is interesting as an observation. Can't say it's supported by fact, but it's worth discussing.

[old guy]

Housing Act of 1949

Upon its passage, Truman told the press:

"[This legislation] opens up the prospect of decent homes in wholesome surroundings for low-income families now living in the squalor of the slums. It equips the Federal Government, for the first time, with effective means for aiding cities in the vital task of clearing slums and rebuilding blighted areas. This legislation permits us to take a long step toward increasing the well-being and happiness of millions of our fellow citizens. Let us not delay in fulfilling that high purpose.

Yeah, that worked out really well. But, it was an attempt at a quick fix and opened up land for people that wanted to develop properties for people that had cash.

[Crumbled_pavement]

I'm not sure I agree with the premise of this thread, although some interesting pionts have been made. What I think has been more detrimental to Detroit and America as a whole is this notion that there are upper class whites, middle class whites, lower class whites, and then the "blacks". Black people are as diverse as any other group of people, we also have upper, middle, and lower classes of people. Maybe creating more projects for lower class blacks [[why lower class whites wouldn't be relegated to the projects is another thread) might have helped the situation, why would the middle class and upper class blacks have to be shoved in with them in those conditions? The city should have also created neighborhoods of equal condition to the white middle class areas where middle class blacks could live as well. This thinking would never occur to the vast majority of population in this nation, thus we'd never consider these types of solutions.

All blacks don't subsist off of public housing, some of us can afford private housing through our own hard work and initiative. I resent any insinuation otherwise. It's time to see that there are different groups of black people and just shoving us all in a convenient easily managed and contained corner is not the solution to the problems inner cities are facing.

[Zacha341]

I agree 100%. Thank you for pointing these out these crucial distinctions.

All blacks don't subsist off of public housing, some of us can afford private housing through our own hard work and initiative. I resent any insinuation otherwise. It's time to see that there are different groups of black people and just shoving us all in a convenient easily managed and contained corner is not the solution to the problems inner cities are facing.

[Mikeg]

In the Feb. 25, 2013 issue of National Review, Kevin D. Williamson has an interesting article titled "Gangsterville - How Chicago reclaimed the projects but lost the city" [[not available on-line).

His article makes the same point that with the loss of the "projects", gang violence has dispersed. However, he makes the further point that not only has it been dispersed, the level of gang violence has increased greatly because of the loss of the "culture of loyalty and discipline that was the hallmark of the Chicago street gang in its golden age".

During that "golden age" of the late 1960s and early 1970s, the Black Disciples, Gangster Nation and Black P-Stone Rangers were noted for their tightly integrated, top-down management structures. Their gang leaders [[David Barksdale, Larry Hoover and Jeff Fort, respectively) grew their enterprises by exploiting the way high-rise housing projects could be easily secured to their advantage: "With most [gang] members living and working under the same roof, the leaders could quickly quash intra-gang disputes or freelance criminality."

Williamson concludes: "When the towers came down, Chicago's organized crime got a good deal less organized, and a number of decapitation operations run by the Chicago police and federal authorities had the perverse effect of making things worse: Where there once were a small number of gangs operating in a relatively subtle fashion under the leadership of veteran criminals, today there are hundreds of gangs and thousands of gang factions.... Some are one- and two-block operations, many with young teens in charge."

[Shollin]

I'm not sure I agree with the premise of this thread, although some interesting pionts have been made. What I think has been more detrimental to Detroit and America as a whole is this notion that there are upper class whites, middle class whites, lower class whites, and then the "blacks". Black people are as diverse as any other group of people, we also have upper, middle, and lower classes of people. Maybe creating more projects for lower class blacks [[why lower class whites wouldn't be relegated to the projects is another thread) might have helped the situation, why would the middle class and upper class blacks have to be shoved in with them in those conditions? The city should have also created neighborhoods of equal condition to the white middle class areas where middle class blacks could live as well. This thinking would never occur to the vast majority of population in this nation, thus we'd never consider these types of solutions.

All blacks don't subsist off of public housing, some of us can afford private housing through our own hard work and initiative. I resent any insinuation otherwise. It's time to see that there are different groups of black people and just shoving us all in a convenient easily managed and contained corner is not the solution to the problems inner cities are facing.

There are/were projects for whites. I used to live in one briefly as a kid in Warren. It was government subsidized housing. It was all white. Whites work and afford to pay their own middle class homes. I guess I don't understand where are given these middle class homes. Besides, wasn't Southfield the black middle class neighborhood?

[Crumbled_pavement]

I guess I don't understand where are given these middle class homes. Besides, wasn't Southfield the black middle class neighborhood?

RE: I doubt Southfield was that built up during the timeframe that the OP is talking about. Either way, I don't know the answer to that.

RE: "given these middle class homes". I didn't intend to give the impression that anyone was or should be "given" a middle class home. My point was that the OP said there were middle class white neighborhoods in Detroit that black people didn't get to move into until they were displaced from the projects and slums. Obviously these middle class neighborhoods were built by private companies and sold to the white people occupying them. However, if there were similar black middle class neighborhoods those from the projects wouldn't have been displaced into the white middle class neighborhoods. I do truly believe though, my point regarding this from my previous post was crystal clear.

Whites work and afford to pay their own middle class homes.

Are you trying to say there were no blacks that would pay for their own middle class homes?

[hybridy]

gathering up groups of people based on religion, creed, race, income level and colocating them in 'ghettos' never worked out for anyone. try visitng auschwitz-birkenau if you feel differently.

[EastsideAl]

I have some experience with public housing in NYC, having worked as a housing advocate/liaison for a state assemblyman [[equivalent to a state rep in MI) back when I first moved there. One thing that separated NYC public housing from that in the rest of the country was the high degree of demand for units. Because of the perpetually tight and expensive rental market in NYC, and the lack of affordable property to purchase, even in the worst of times there was always a extremely long waiting list to get into public housing in the city.

It finally dawned on people in City Hall that public housing had been treated as a 'no-man's zone' and a dumping ground for many of city's ills, that despite this many public housing residents were working poor or people who wanted jobs and who were trying to raise decent families there [[in other words, public housing resident were people too, and were also voters), and that the federal government that built the projects and then abandoned them [[see "benign neglect") was never going to return with significant money to fix them. With the chronic housing shortage in NYC, it was clear that tearing down the projects as other cities had done was not an option, so NYC set out to actually try to make them better.

The main thing they did was to throw out as many felons and bad actors as possible. They could leverage the city's housing pressure and the waiting lists to achieve this, since there were always ready replacements. It became known that if you or one of your family members were convicted of a crime - particularly a drug offense - you would be evicted. And that the screening of prospective tenants would keep you out if you had such convictions in your background. Along with this came a stepping up of maintenance and policing, particularly of the grounds around the buildings. The idea went from clearing people out of those areas to encouraging as many people as possible to use them and spend time there engaged in good activities, which was found to actually be a deterrent to crime.

This is not to say that NYC projects have become perfect little crime-free villages, or are perfectly managed and maintained, but they definitely are safer and better places to live than they were a decade or two ago. But for reasons that don't really apply in a city like Detroit where there's little population pressure, other housing has been so cheap and available for so long, and there's no money to pour into improving conditions and policing. I assume that Chicago's situation is somewhat similar.

However, housing pressure may also cause something of a return to the bad old days. I understand from people I still know who work in housing in NYC that Bloomberg's short-sighted push to reduce the cost of managing the city's growing homeless population is increasingly forcing homeless people to move in with relatives if they have them. Since much of the homeless population is made up of some combination of addicts, the mentally ill, and people who have recently 'come back from upstate' [[i.e. just got out of prison), this program is starting to dump many of the same old problems [[and many of the same people) back into the city's projects.

[iheartthed]

Public housing has had almost nothing to do with Detroit's decline; blockbusting tactics had a far larger impact on the city. Couple blockbusting with Detroit's high percentage of owner occupied residential units -- there is a very strong positive correlation between home ownership rates and urban decline -- and you have a recipe for disaster.

[Detroitnerd]

Public housing has had almost nothing to do with Detroit's decline; blockbusting tactics had a far larger impact on the city. Couple blockbusting with Detroit's high percentage of owner occupied residential units -- there is a very strong positive correlation between home ownership rates and urban decline -- and you have a recipe for disaster.

But iheart, that totally doesn't fit with my mythological view of the world. White people are industrious and therefore live in private housing. Black people just want white people to pay for projects to live in so they can form gangs and turn them into crime-infested slums.

Can we please never talk about blockbusting again?