Monterey Motel - Highland Park

[Detroitgayhistoryguy]

It is hard to believe looking at Highland Park today that it was ever such a nice place. Now most of it looks like a nuclear bomb went off.

[professorscott]

The scary thing about Highland Park is how quickly it went downhill, but then it was unique in that it was a separate city. This happened in Detroit, very routinely, neighborhood after neighborhood, like clockwork.

It was a sort of conspiracy between flimflam real estate agents, insurance companies and the financial institutions that did mortgages. There was a lot of money made in converting middle-class neighborhoods to poor neighborhoods! People seem to think the sleazebags were racist; that's not quite true. Racism was, to them, just a vehicle to help them make money.

The Prof lived in Berkley for quite a while, and Berkley was largely populated [[at least in the 1990s) by Highland Park expatriates. Lots of interesting stories from those folks. Most of them, by the way, took an absolute fucking bath on their houses when they sold, mainly in the mid to late 1970s.

Of course, these practices have been illegal for nearly fifty years, but nothing slows down a determined crook. All of this crap still happens today, but now it's moved beyond Detroit into certain of the inner suburbs. I wish I knew how to make it stop.