10th Anniversary of Detroit Bankruptcy - What's your assessment?

Today's Free Press has a major article and some associated lesser articles and opinions on the Detroit Bankruptcy whose 10th anniversary is July 18.

What is your opinion? Is Detroit better, worse, or about the same ten years later?

In brief these are the article's yes, buts:

• Crime rate same, but police response better
• City Budget stabilized, but break from paying into its retiree pension fund ending. [An associated article covers the pension situation and the retirees who took the hard hits of the bankruptcy]
• Population decline continuing, no buts about it
• Home values up 62%, no buts about it
• Poverty rate declined from 41% to 30% but Detroit is still qualifies as the poorest large city in the nation
• Unemployment rate down from 18.8% to around 6% [hit 4.6 in April was 6.4 in May]
• High School graduation statistically the same at 65%, but numbers skewed by pandemic, had hit 78% at one point prior to that
• The Neighborhoods, unfortunately the article does not give any measures.

My Detroit cup is "half full." Detroit is improving, but there are still plenty of buts—visually and psychologically.


Visually, Detroit has a bit of a boom town look from Downtown to the New Center core. Cranes are everywhere; new project announcements are constant. I may have missed a couple, but every ruin in the area has been restored, is being restored, or has a plan for restoration on the books. Among them, several new structures have been built. In the neighborhoods, there are signs of improvement. I categorize the situation as stabilized. More homes are being improved than are declining; more housing is being built than abandoned. But there are miles and miles and miles to go.


Psychologically, the attitude toward and image of Detroit is vastly better. This is reflected in the national and international press. But it's also reflected in the people I know, both here and from outside. I hear good things about Detroit and far, far fewer snarky remarks.


But... This improvement is not all due to the bankruptcy, as John Gallagher writes in his piece, Detroit has changed. It's not because of the bankruptcy. Rather, as he writes, philanthropic foundations, the Dan Gilbert's, and corporations have changed attitudes and pulled together.

Thank you, Lowell, for your comments. Today's New York Times also has
a substantial essay entitled "10 Years After Filing for Bankruptcy. Detroit has a long to-do list" It is a balanced essay and observes that the city;s
government now has the resources to address problems, resources the
city did not have before the end of bankruptcy.

The essay also notes that there are major doubts about the accuracy of
the 2020 census count of Detroit. Detroit's rate of population decline
abruptly changed after bankruptcy. I am one of a group of people who
have tried to analyze the quality of Census 2020 in Detroit. We think
we have fairly strongly evidence that Detroit was one of a number of
large cities that were substantially undercounted. The essay also
mentions the tremendous improvement in the quality of the Detroit's
parks.

It's all King Kwame's fault for pimping Detroiters out of the tax paying pockets.

Mike Duggan has to fix things up.

The city was able to put the funds aside for the pension obligations,so that is not really a big deal.

Out of the most well run cities out of 149 Detroit has risen 9 levels,with San Francisco taking your # 149 spot.

To me anyways it is the wash rinse and repeat aspect of changing the mentality that brought the city into bankruptcy in the first place,every thing after that is kinda window dressing.

It’s the core issues that brought the city down,some are being doubled down on,more are being implemented.

Until that happy medium is found it’s going to be slow,you should not have to depend on 3 billionaires to rebuild your city.

That’s where the focus is,when it takes a community to rebuild a community those 3 billionaires are nothing without all of those in the community that are also doing their part and should also be recognized.

This forum is a mirror of the community and there are a lot that seem to spend more time and energy focusing and looking for reasons to create divisions instead of coming together for a common cause.

I caught a glimpse of that community as one ,when last week a worker on the ambassador bridge fell off into the river.

There was a group of people at the park that saw it happen and they did what it took to save that worker,they are the hero’s and an example of what happens when members of the community pull together for a common goal.

That is the real test of if the city is in a better place then it was 10 years ago,when that pendulum of those who care as a community swings to their side over the ones just doing time in the city expecting everybody else to carry their weight.

The way it still is now there still seems to be a big push to divide everybody instead of uniting everybody as one,even going as far as looking for reasons where they do not exist.

There has to be some common cause that brings the community together,Belle Isle would have been perfect for that but it was another example of ,let somebody else deal with it.


Fancy buildings are not a measure of success if they are built on weak foundations.

You see it mentioned almost daily- Detroit is a majority African American.

Its not - Because everybody in Detroit is a Detroiter

I was downtown on Saturday which was a pretty horrible day weather-wise and was amazed at how busy the streets and restaurants were. I guess there were a couple of big concerts in town that brought much of the suburban population downtown to hopefully spend money which is good. The chic eateries and watering holes seemed to be doing a booming business and this was all very nice to see, but a bit disconcerting in that the crowds in this majority African-American city were hardly as diverse as one might expect. It is great to see all the new construction even if it is limited to only pockets of this 140 square mile city with less than a third of its heyday population.

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Originally Posted by expatriate

I was downtown on Saturday which was a pretty horrible day weather-wise and was amazed at how busy the streets and restaurants were. I guess there were a couple of big concerts in town that brought much of the suburban population downtown to hopefully spend money which is good. The chic eateries and watering holes seemed to be doing a booming business and this was all very nice to see, but a bit disconcerting in that the crowds in this majority African-American city were hardly as diverse as one might expect. It is great to see all the new construction even if it is limited to only pockets of this 140 square mile city with less than a third of its heyday population.

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Good analysis. That's the same thing I experienced.

I think we're conflating the health of the overall city with the health of the government itself, which has more to do with the bankruptcy, I think.

Here's a pretty fair assessment I think:
https://reason.com/2023/07/18/a-deca...etroit-better/

Basically:

- Higher-up leadership seems to be doing OK.
- It's hard to know how the city is doing fiscally as they have terrible, opaque controls, making audits difficult to impossible.
- A side effect of poor controls is corruption continues to be a problem.
- The city has *not* been making pension payments since the bankruptcy, which is going to change in a few months. This is a huge deal, as the pension funds were the primary creditors that caused the bankruptcy in the first place.
- Development continues to depend on large property tax cuts, which are probably not sustainable.

The most troubling aspect for me are the financial control issues. The city *might* be fixing it, but nobody has said anything substantial about it. When a city goes bankrupt, the first thing the accountants do when they are brought in is figure out where every penny of money is going, as, usually, there is no insight or proper accounting done. Money goes into accounts that are never touched. Funds for one thing are used for other things. Paperwork is misplaced or misfiled. It's a huge problem when you are trying to run a complex organization. If this isn't getting fixed, the prospects aren't looking good.

Aside from crime, in my opinion, the single biggest problem the city faces hasn't changed. How do you convince the young, stable family that is moving up economically to keep their kids in DPS and remain in the city when they can move themselves and their kids to Oakland County schools.

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Originally Posted by 401don

Aside from crime, in my opinion, the single biggest problem the city faces hasn't changed. How do you convince the young, stable family that is moving up economically to keep their kids in DPS and remain in the city when they can move themselves and their kids to Oakland County schools.

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What has The State of Michigan done fundamentally different to change since Detroit filled? Oakland County is far from some sort of economic boom, just some more of the of build in the farm fields while the taxes are far lower than move out even farther while the core flounders philosophy. It is nothing more of repeating the same and expecting different results. Michigans population is stagnant at best with the brain drain continuing. Michigans Tax system has been broken for decades. Change is required when something has obviously failed. Very few from out of state see real economic opportunities here. That simple fact is a recipe for even more failure.