In the spirit of Detroit Yes, I submit what I believe the biggest issue Detroit faces

[Hermod]

Apples and oranges. Circumstances of a rural village of 7000 compared with an urban center 100 times that make the two largely incomparable. The poor of Detroit could populate over 40 Houghtons and equals the entire Yooper population - which is likewise declining.

I'm only talking about Detroit but I know well that that there even more poor in the rest of the state. Yoopers and Upper-lowers have very high levels of poverty. Flint, Highland Park, Benton Harbor and a string of others likewise carry unfair burdens of the poor.

This is a Michigan problem. Pure Michigan? Hah! Let me take you for a drive on the Eastside.

No it isn't apples and oranges. The rural poor in the United States vastly outnumber the urban poor [[who receive the most attention from the pearl clutchers). The rural poor live out their lives in quiet desperation without turning the areas around them into war zones.

Check out the census data and see how most of the counties in the state have family median incomes well below the state median. There are few job sources available in most of the counties of Michigan. Yet these are the people you want to tax to pour more and more money down the rathole in Detroit.

[noise]

The city of Houghton, Michigan [[up in da YooPee) has a lower median family income than Detroit [[$23,912 versus $26,955) according to the census bureau.

By your logic, Houghton should be a worse crime-ridden hellhole than Detroit.

Strictly taking a guess, but I suspect I could live on $24K in Houghton easier than I could live on $27K in Detroit. But then, that may be because I'm a country guy at heart.

[Dan Wesson]

How does du Jour segregation, de Facto segregation and self segregation all play into this?

Since we have seemed to established the concept that this sub group of citizens are basically wards of the state, I will offer that there are plans afoot now at the state and federal level to address the situation. Also there is a non governmental, although it is promoted by government, course of action.

I will throw out there, Section 8 housing, gentrification and removal of what some would consider sub standard housing in Detroit proper.

Are these solutions?

I know that I can be somewhat obtuse and not clear enough
because I hate to be long winded. So I will paraphrase the above using something from the environmental industry...

The solution to pollution is dilution. Please do not take me to task for refering to a populace as pollution, that is not my intention.

Lowell did make reference to something along these lines.

I find myself following along with Mikey mainly because he is addressing more than just the economic aspect of a multifaceted issue.

[MizMotown]

continue to monitor and control wasteful spending and amount of welfare and other types of fraud that goes on

give tax breaks/incentives for those who choose NOT to have children instead of rewarding and paying for those who cannot afford it.

[Hermod]

Strictly taking a guess, but I suspect I could live on $24K in Houghton easier than I could live on $27K in Detroit. But then, that may be because I'm a country guy at heart.

Yeah, if the heating oil runs out and you can't afford another tank, you can always go out of town and cut a tree for the fireplace.

[noise]

Yeah, if the heating oil runs out and you can't afford another tank, you can always go out of town and cut a tree for the fireplace.

I'm sure you could find some old worn-out tires in an empty lot in Detroit that will burn for a long time, though.

[Honky Tonk]

I'm sure you could find some old worn-out tires in an empty lot in Detroit that will burn for a long time, though.

Just take your neighbors heating oil.

[noise]

Just take your neighbors heating oil.

I think you mean "borrow," which is what they'd do up in Houghton.

[Honky Tonk]

I think you mean "borrow," which is what they'd do up in Houghton.

Actually heating oil, propane, whatever, theft in outlying areas, IS quite a problem. Akin only to electrical, natural gas, and water theft here in the City.

[townonenorth]

You are putting words in my mouth. I have no hang up that somebody did anybody wrong.

Instead there has been a blind sprawl that has left behind a fiscally insoluble city of 300,000 poor people who can't pay a penny of tax. This is the elephant in the room that you seem to be content to ignore. Will it just fix itself?

In a magical world they would all be distributed proportionally among all the suburbs and Detroit would get well overnight. But that's impossible.

You say we need new solutions but offer none. I have.

Wonderful. Then who props up the inner ring suburbs that have absorbed the fleeing citizens of Detroit? They had to go SOMEWHERE, Lowell. And they generally are just as poor, just as needy, and just as ill educated as anyone that is "left behind" in Detroit.

[Hermod]

Wonderful. Then who props up the inner ring suburbs that have absorbed the fleeing citizens of Detroit? They had to go SOMEWHERE, Lowell. And they generally are just as poor, just as needy, and just as ill educated as anyone that is "left behind" in Detroit.

Maybe each county will be given a quota to take in. Antrim County will take this many, Baraga County will take this many, and so forth.

[Honky Tonk]

Wonderful. Then who props up the inner ring suburbs that have absorbed the fleeing citizens of Detroit? They had to go SOMEWHERE, Lowell. And they generally are just as poor, just as needy, and just as ill educated as anyone that is "left behind" in Detroit.

The suburbs have become a "Human Landfill" for people fleeing from Detroit.

[Honky Tonk]

Maybe each county will be given a quota to take in. Antrim County will take this many, Baraga County will take this many, and so forth.

They could set up refugee camps on the 8 Mile border.

[MizMotown]

The suburbs have opened up to section 8 to fill apartments and lots of rentals from foreclosed houses. I seen my old apartment building in Dearborn Hts. go to complete crap. Even got a couple sitting in the parking lot selling weed with their child sitting in the backseat. Not that crime didn't go down in the suburbs before... maybe it's just taking more notice.

[Dan Wesson]

There is another trend occuring and it is also state sponsered. It's foster care.

I have noticed more and more young children of color living with white families and what would be considered white grandparents outstate.

Is anyone aware of the numbers involved or the program?

[Wesley Mouch]

Apples and oranges. Circumstances of a rural village of 7000 compared with an urban center 100 times that make the two largely incomparable. The poor of Detroit could populate over 40 Houghtons and equals the entire Yooper population - which is likewise declining.

I'm only talking about Detroit but I know well that that there even more poor in the rest of the state. Yoopers and Upper-lowers have very high levels of poverty. Flint, Highland Park, Benton Harbor and a string of others likewise carry unfair burdens of the poor.

This is a Michigan problem. Pure Michigan? Hah! Let me take you for a drive on the Eastside.

Why are the two largely incomparable?

You say that poverty drives crime. Then you say that poverty doesn't drive crime, its something else different between urban poverty and rural poverty.

What's the difference? And how does that difference change crime?

You cannot both suggest a causal link, then say it is 'incomparable'.

[noise]

Why are the two largely incomparable?

You say that poverty drives crime. Then you say that poverty doesn't drive crime, its something else different between urban poverty and rural poverty.

What's the difference? And how does that difference change crime?

You cannot both suggest a causal link, then say it is 'incomparable'.

A may certainly be related to B, but C, D, E, and F may alleviate or exacerbate B.

[greatlaker]

Well besides the bolded, I believe the folks of Chicago had a much more vested interest in seeing their city succeed, in spite of the trials and tribulations they faced. Folks could have fleed Chicago and take their capital with them after the great fire or during the rough years in the 1970s, but they instead hunkered down to preserve what is a great city.

Folks here just didn't have that same type of pride for Detroit [[for Michigan, yes, but not Detroit). Many "Detroiters" don't even know:

*What Detroit-style pizza is [[nor its history)
*The Fox Theatre is the 2nd largest theatre in the country
*The Detroit-Windsor border is the busiest International Crossing in the
*The history behind the Coney Island
*What's the tallest building in Detroit.

[[amongst other things...)

I think there was a very prominent capitalist from the early 1900s who put it best regarding people's mindset of Detroit. It [[was) a great place to make money, but not such a great place to spend it.

What is Detroit style pizza? I've heard of Chicago style. are they close to the same?

[SWMAP]

313WX: Humankind is really the same all over, but cultures do clash.
It is unlikely that people in Chicago "had a much more vested interest in seeing their city succeed" than people here have had over our nearly three centuries.
People here, for example, continued to build Detroit after in burned, through war and depression. People here built skyscrapers and magnificent department stores and dozens of hotels. The international convention marketing business started here. There was a time when Detroit was one of the top ten convention destinations in the country. Detroit had Pulitzer-prize-winning newspapers and some of the most remarkable church buildings in the nation. Schooners and yachts filled our waterfronts. The DPS was one of the exemplary systems in the nation. Working-class families had access to great hospitals and kids went to the university right in their own city.
I posit that SOME people here did not and do not have similar city-building consciousness, wanting to leave a legacy of beauty and commerce for the next generations. SOME people here in Detroit are bent on destroying everything that their culture did not create. SOME people here do not care to preserve housing stock as can be seen everywhere in the City. SOME people here in Detroit will not clean their lots, streets and neighborhoods because to clean "is too much like slavery times" [[as has been said to me about neighborhood clean-ups). SOME people here would rather have things low and loud and slummy and dangerous as long as they run things.
And so capital left. Who wants to live like we have to live now? It is so TERRIBLE to drive on Fort St. and Gratiot and Grand River and see the terrible destruction. The filthy, boarded up, blackened, stripped, graffitied buildings built lovingly and cared for over many decades: the jewelry stores and auto stores, the dime stores and soda shops, the tobacconists and shoe stores – stores that were looted in 1967 and tore the hearts out of their owners.

[313WX]

What is Detroit style pizza? I've heard of Chicago style. are they close to the same?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detroit-style_pizza

[Dumpling]

Any time people are posting comparisons about the UP in particular and Detroit I am very interested. My Dad hails from five generations of UP and after retiring from his Generous Motors job in Detroit, became a full fledged UPer - he registered to vote up there - who just "visits" metro Detroit for the winter seasons. I go north to visit once every year or every other year.
As I see it, The metro Detroit area has a "ridge" of marvelous prosperity - the Pointes, much of Oakland County, Ann Arbor, and I would even add Windsor -
with a bowl of poverty in Old Detroit [[to be sure, a Renaissance Center of Prosperity has been going in from Downtown to Midtown and there are plans to stretch it up the Woodward Corridor to Ferndale).
I was visiting Houghton in the early 2000s when I found a big cardboard mess floating in the water by the riverside park. By and large, compared to the soup bowl of Detroit, there is no litter to speak of in Houghton. But here was this massive mess, and being properly trained by Detroit, I was going to dispose of it...when I was informed that it actually belonged to somebody, that there had just been a cardboard boat race, and this had actually been a boat just prior to being an unsightly mess.

[Kevgoblue]

.....calling Frank Rizzo. ^^^^

[Dumpling]

So a few compare/contrasts can be made here.
There is less apparent litter in the UP than in Detroit because:
- There are fewer fast food outlets per square mile.
- People, albeit poor, have more ownership. In the UP, they have owned their shack, or lived right there at that spot, from since long ago, whereas in Detroit, there is a substantial transient population. Some are rewarded even for not taking care of their spot. For example, there is the cardboard sign population which receives MORE money if they don't bathe or pick up the litter around them or wear nice clothes.
- The UP has a tourist industry and therefore receives money that goes towards, among other things, trash cans at places that tourists may frequent. Compared to the poor in Detroit, the poor in the UP most likely have more access to tourist industry money flow [[without resorting to
cardboard signs) so again there is more ownership.

[Dumpling]

To strengthen the ownership contrast and specifically focusing on the tourist
dollar, start with the example of Super Bowl XL.
It was nice that Super Bowl came to Detroit. Special kudos to Mr. Penske for
the deep cleaning of downtown streets at that time.
However, at that time, recall that it was felt that all the fan money that came to Detroit was carefully corralled and channeled and that some businesses that wanted to cater to the fans were left out.
Something like this goes on to a lesser extent with the visitor dollars that come to the Detroit metro every day. To begin with, some visitors won't even come to even greater metro Detroit because they are appalled by the blight and the crime.
Those that do come to Detroit often have specific destinations in mind such as Greenfield Village or the DIA, and once they are at their destinations
they may receive a guidebook or advice that directs them to specific other destinations. They and their travel budget are being corralled [[in a nice way
of course) but their money gets to the poorest areas in Detroit only indirectly
and only after other areas have received a better cut of the tourist dollar.
Such corralling certainly occurs in the UP as well but the corral is larger and less well defined so that the poor may receive a proportionately better share.

[rex]

There is no way to spin those numbers in a positive light. Things are either staying the same or getting worse in pretty much every category.