I'd rather them say we selling it to someone who wants to build the world's largest paint ball field than that BS
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I'd rather them say we selling it to someone who wants to build the world's largest paint ball field than that BS
Nobody I know either. Sheesh talk about hyperbole.
What I like about urban gardening is the rethinking it displays. People are facing what they have and making something positive with it. Detroit's challenges are immense and require new thinking on just about everything. Urban gardening is one brick in that wall.
Farming is beautification. It provides food, teaches skills, heals the land and, if you have ever gardened, you know it teaches patience and gives great satisfaction.
I find the Hantz project very promising. Taking largely blighted property, growing trees and putting the land back on the tax rolls while providing beauty and much needed revenue. Nobody is getting evicted and those who remain will have a much more pleasant surround than urban prairie tire dumps.
Why don't you put up or shut up!
If you've got a better offer, present it to the city on your own dime. So far, no one else has presented one. There's just three options. 1) Status quo with the city retaining ownership on an unmaintained garbage dumping ground that the city can't afford to clean up; 2) Let it go for $560K and let the private sector sign an agreement to clean it up and agree to plant 15,000 trees; or 3) Roll the dice and let it go individually to tax auction where history reveals that slumlord speculators like Micheal Kelly and Moroun will continue to scoop them up and let them sit them another decade as a landfill site and urban blight before it goes back to tax auction if they can't hustle the property onto some foreigner on e-bay or some other scam scenario.
There's a huge benefit that this offer is doing. By cleaning up these vacant parcels, you'll not only raise the value of these vacant parcels, but you'll also raise the value of the individually owned houses in those subdivisions. Also, if the property values go up, they might become desirable again for another use.
Think of this. If you have a block of 20 parcels and 8 parcels have individually owned houses that are occupied and the rest are tax sales filled with boarded up houses or vacant parcels with tires and other urban blight on them, how much do you think the houses and vacant parcels in the neighborhood are worth? If you clean up the whole block, does the value of all the properties in the neighborhood go up or down? If the property values go up in the neighborhood, do the tax assessed values of all the properties in the neighborhood go up [[which means more overall taxes will be paid than any other scenario)?
This offer is way better than any of the alternatives. It is not ridiculous. It makes perfect sense. If you've got a better offer, put up or shut up.
Urban farming can be good for neighborhoods. Programs can be developed to help homeless, addicts, and veterans get back into the workforce through farming. Schools can benefit from students learning how to farm. These would all be small-scale operations.
The problem is what to do with acres of land nobody wants to build on.
I heard NASA's going to put up a technology development center because of all the rocket scientists in Detroit. Seriously, you need to do some research and take a good look @ what's going on, before posting this emotionally charged ghetto BS. What do you think's going to happen, this guy's going to send trucks through neighborhoods taking small children to work on his farm? C'mon man, all the word "farm" means is something is going to be growing there. In this case it's trees. I don't know where people get these livestock, sharecropper, and all the other BS rumors from. This "precious jewel" land has been sitting unused, covered with debris for 35 years, getting worse, and no one wants it. Just like no one wants the thousands of other debris covered, unmowed, land in Detroit. That's fact. If in the future, he does decide to "develop" the land, so what? The development is going to need City services, it's going to be paying City taxes. Right now we have nothing and no prospects. Maybe it's time to start thinking differently.
If the properties are available at tax auction for $500 that would then make the value at $500 as one would not pay $3000 for something that can be purchased for $500.So you now have an established value.
So if for instance properties were sold for $200 that would then place a value on surrounding properties at $200 ,comps set the worth.
Or you could go a little bit further ,
For example, Henneberry and Barrows [[1990) find
that the effects of exclusive agricultural zoning in Wisconsin on property values are negative effects for smaller parcels close to urban areas and positive for large parcels farther from urban areas.
In a recent analysis that uses propensity score matching and instrumental variables to account for the zoning
endogeneity, Lui and Lynch [[2011) find that low-density zoning has differentiated impacts on rural land
parcel depending on whether they are resource versus residential parcels. Specifically, resource parcels’
land values are unaffected and residential parcels’ values decrease by 20-50% with the low density rural
zoning constraint.
http://ageconsearch.umn.edu/bitstrea...5%203%2011.pdf
So while it would be clear that the general look of the area would be improved by cleaning up of the area ,weather or not it would actually increase property values for the surrounding neighbors? I think that would be up for dispute.
"These issues are important in the legal debates at the national level involving takings cases, and they are highly relevant to Oregon's Measure 37, passed by voters in November 2004. [[4) Measure 37 requires that when a land-use regulation "has the effect of reducing the fair market value of the property," then either a payment must be made to landowners equal to the reduction in the fair market value, or a waiver must be granted from the regulation. [[5) Determining whether land-use regulations have had positive or negative effects on land values is, of course, a central question in this context."
http://www.thefreelibrary.com/The+ef...s.-a0144981210
I would believe that by offering the existing property owners first right of refusal the city council has pretty much eliminated the above possibility.
It all sounds good and well on the surface but this is new territory when you start introducing urban farming on a large scale,cross the Ts and dot the I's ,if the measure had flown through with no thought other then yea it looks good and in the case I listed above how much more monies would it have cost the city in litigation and future buy outs..
First off, the tax assessors don't agree with your auction sale comps establishing value of neighboring properties. If you have a regular house in a subdivision where regular houses sell for $100K and you've had foreclosures or auctions where properties went for $15,000, take a guess what the tax assessor is going to say your house is worth on tax appeal [[from my experience and others I know who've tried to fight it at the tax appeal board)? Take a lucky guess. It's still worth $100K in the tax assessors eyes because comps from foreclosures and tax auctions are irrelevant to tax assessment. Only normal market transactions are relevant with the tax assessor. So tax assessments will not go down this way. I guarantee it, especially since Hantz Farms said one of his goals is to create scarcity so property values go up.
The only group that cares about foreclosure and tax sale comps in establishing value are lenders. A lender's appraisal can't be used to lower the tax assessments.
Second, I'm pretty sure they are not changing the zoning to agriculture. It's the same zoning. From what I read about this agreement with the city, the only thing Hantz farms can grow on them are normal trees for lumber. They are not even allowed to grow christmas trees let alone fruit trees or any other kinds of fruit or vegetable crop. They are not even allowed to put fences up because the zoning is going to stay the same. They are just planting lumber trees which you can do on any residential lot in the city.
Because planting normal trees you would see in a park does not need a zone change and tax auctions don't affect neighboring property values, your legal precedents don't apply. In fact, I remember reading somewhere that Hantz farms was saying property values would increase in value because it would be a lot like living next to a wooded park. If you had a house next to woods on Belle Isle or Palmer Woods, I'm sure it would be a lot more desirable and worth more a lot more than owning a house surrounded by blight and garbage.
Can you cite your source on this? I understand that taxes and water bills generally don't go away when property is transferred, but when the city gets title to these properties, could the city also forgive taxes and water? I've noticed -- particularly in southwest Detroit -- that many people had acquired the empty lots next to their houses. Some have made for very nice additions. If it were so cost-prohibitive, I can't imagine there would be this much participation. I did a little googling, but could not come up with a definitive city policy on this issue. So, Blueiodine, can you point me to the source that backs up your claim?
I think what many people seem to be missing here is a bit of cultural/historical context behind what may seem to some to be hyperbolic rhetoric surrounding this issue. If your ancestors had spent decades trying to escape an isolated, exclusionary, and extremely poor rural past then 'farming' might not sound like such a benign concept to you for the fate of your neighborhood or the economic life of your city. In fact, it may sound a little too uncomfortably close to the deprivations of Jim Crow rural life and the sharecropping system, which were a reality in the relatively recent family histories of many Detroit residents.
I'm not necessarily against large-scale urban gardening, or the growing of useful or salable crops on our empty urban land [[although I'm less sanguine about wide scale private land usage like Hantz). However, I also feel that people who are dismissing objections that come from a real emotional/historical source as "crazy" or "ghetto BS" are just not listening to those who will be the most affected or thinking clearly about the context of their objections.
Some people really can't seem to understand that "urban farming" is not something that automatically sounds great to everyone [[certainly not as good as "economic development" or "jobs"), especially if your family came to the city specifically to escape a rural society. This idea may need a much more specific sell on its actual practical and economic merits, rather than its utopian promise, to bring many Detroiters around to favoring it. Dismissing their objections out of hand as not conforming to your vision of the world isn't helpful.
It's a fair point about historical context, but I think why it sounds so crazy to people is this is a tree farm, not a plantation and nobody is going to be "working the land" other than whoever Hantz hires to cut trees down. It seems like a bit of a stretch to make a comparison there.
I agree they [[he and the council) need to do a better job of explaining exactly what the plan is and how it will benefit the city of Detroit. To object to it solely because he is white though is no better than all the racist "whites only" neighborhood associations of decades past that objected to black property owners moving in. People should be allowed to buy property wherever they want. If anybody "owns Detroit" it's certainly not blacks or whites, but rather the Native Americans that were here first. Everybody needs to get over themselves.
"Everybody needs to get over themselves." Exactly the kind of thing people say when they are unable or unwilling to actually listen to others and take their point of view seriously.
Also, I really wasn't addressing the Hantz project, which I oppose for reasons that are not really related to national or local racial history, but the overall concept of 'urban farming' as in 313's original post.
Since you quoted my post EA, I feel obliged to reply. my "ghetto BS" comment was in reply to the "sharecropping" comment from the OP. I'm nowhere near sold on "Urban Farming" as Detroit's or any other places salvation. My objection is to these kind of comments is that there's always some kind of slavery motive to "the man" wanting to do anything in the COD. Slavery isn't the only form of genecide that was exercised against a race of people on this planet. In Detroit, that kind of mentality is a big factor in moving this City forward with any kind of progress. Your reply "I think what many people seem to be missing here is a bit of cultural/historical context behind what seems to be the hyperbolic rhetoric surrounding this issue. If your ancestors had spent decades trying to escape an isolated, exclusionary, and extremely poor rural past then 'farming' might not sound like such a benign concept for the fate of your neighborhood or the economic life of your city. In fact, it may sound a little too uncomfortably close to the deprivations of the sharecropping system, which are a reality in the relatively recent family histories of many Detroit residents." Is total nonsense. Show me one stitch of evidence that the Hantz TREE Farm proposal suggests anywhere that Detroiters will pick Oak leaves in return for meals @ the end of the day, and a place to sleep. I know what slavery was, and I know what sharecropping was. I just fail to see what any of that has to do with the business @ hantz. I'm not going to play that game.
Maybe because it's a tree farm [[ie woods), and not a plantation? When people like you equate that to slavery and sharecropping, you're intentionally trying to stir up racial animosity. Well done, I guess.
Everybody includes everybody - Hantz, the Council, blacks, whites, etc. For fucks sake it's just some goddamn trees. Only in Detroit can the planting of trees on vacant, blighted land turn into a fucking racial travesty. You want to know why this city will never recover - because of thinking like this.
You bitch about white flight, then you bitch about white reinvestment. Holy fucking shit this city is dysfunctionally retarded.
I imagine that most Americans have ancestors that spent a lot of time trying to get away from their agricultural roots. My Irish ancestors certainly did. So what's different for the people who are so afraid that they absurdly fear that they will be forced to work John Hantz's woodland?
Their problem is not "sharecropping" fears. They see a reversion to farmland as a judgment on the management of Detroit for the last four decades. Yes, a once-bustling city of more than a million abandoned and reduced to woodland ideas in only four decades. You may now weigh in about all the academic literature that cites racism of the people who left - but ask yourself why NOBODY [[pretty much) wanted to move here into the City over the last four decades.
So people are afraid about the destruction of a city to the point that it is being commercially re-forested is going to play on the national news. So they bring in the absurd idea that they are going to be forced to sharecrop John Hantz's land!
And the enablers all join the chorus. If not farms - what? I am a sixth-generation Detroiter. I don't really see anything else for us. I agree with a poster above. let's hear your ideas if farming is not to be tolerated because it cuts too close to admitting failure.
Well, Eastside Al made some really good points. And, like I said before, there are some Detroit residents whose grandparents were slaves. For a lot of Detroit residents, the Old South is the old country, and these people came North looking for new opportunities, a more cosmopolitan lifestyle, social equality. And, when you tell these people that the answer may be working on land, or turning a city into an agricultural laboratory, you're going to get some hurt feelings and some pretty strong reactions.
Either that's a fair point or it isn't. Say it's a fair point, acknowledge why people might react like that, and then move on with a new understanding of your fellow metro Detroiters.
"I know what slavery was, and I know what sharecropping was. I just fail to see what any of that has to do with the business @ hantz. I'm not going to play that game."
"You want to know why this city will never recover - because of shit like this."
Again, a complete failure to listen to, or even attempt to understand, the source of the feelings and objections of others. As long as so many insist on sitting in their own trenches, talking past one another and dismissing others as being too stupid to know what's good for them, we really are going nowhere.
You're talking about the Detroit Black Food Security Network, aren't you?
http://detroitblackfoodsecurity.org/
That's a BIG farm. Do you know if they pay taxes on that land, or reimburse the City for the water they use to irrigate those crops? I know they tap into City hydrants. Do you feel they're turning Detroiters into sharecroppers too?
That is a fair point, and you seem to be less filled with racial invective today so I have no problem agreeing with you. I'd love to hear other solutions, I'm not sold on a tree farm I just think it's a lot better than vacant blighted land and would make neighborhoods safer and more attractive which would probably increase property values. If there is a better solution, let's see them. Continuing on with more of the same isn't going to cut it though.
I agree that the likelihood of hurt feelings and strong reactions is high. I think that it's unreasonable to expect that people aren't going to react to major changes like this.
At the same time, community leaders -- rather than stoking those emotional reactions -- should refuse to let it affect public policy. If public policy is going to be determined by emotional reactions, then we'll make really bad long-term decisions.
One thing I've been surprised by is how cool people feel when they know they're actually being heard and listened to. That person who starts out barking at you in a confrontational tone cools down when he realizes he's being heard. Listen thoughtfully enough and you've got a conversation on your hands. Pretty soon, you might even get a chance to express how you feel. This is something I don't see a lot among a lot of the people who charge into Detroit a la "Detroit Works" with the attitude that sometimes you gotta break a few eggs to make an omelette. And it shouldn't be that way.
so many people in Detroit have been here for multiple ensuing generations already-- and scarce few who are 60+ could claim to have legitimately come from some kind of rural background and/or outright jim crow conditions-- so I'm not automatically buying the "I left rural [[fill in the blank) to escape damn corn fields.." ideology, nope.
what is is, is that too many simply object on "principle"-- they don't understand it, and what's more, they don't want to understand it; so the "slavery" reflex is the most convenient thing to rationalize.. so many people who have grown up under urban/inner city conditions have become socialized to think that this current status quo is literally the only "civilized" way to live- with smokestacks and smog on your immediate landscape, and relatively little in the way of "green space".. Belle Isle is okay to "visit", but if your neighborhood had "forests" that would be just unconscionable..
People have been socialized to think of greener suburbs/rural areas as "the sticks" or the "boondocks" at best, and "klan land" at the worst- and all "farmers" are uneducated goobers with missing teeth and who wear dusty overalls day in day out all week.. a lot of kids are growing up literally thinking that produce, ultimately comes from "the store"... the chain of cultivation/distribution is totally lost on them.. and of course, no self-respecting African-American would ever be involved in agriculture/forestry for a living unless they were just.. losers...
too many people hold onto the notion that new, huge sprawling [[fill in the blank) factories are around the corner, but...
"Everybody includes everybody - Hantz, the Council, blacks, whites, etc. For fucks sake it's just some goddamn trees. Only in Detroit can the planting of trees on vacant, blighted land turn into a fucking racial travesty. You want to know why this city will never recover - because of thinking like this.
You bitch about white flight, then you bitch about white reinvestment. Holy fucking shit this city is dysfunctionally retarded."
This should be under every "Detroit City Limits" sign!