Would Detroit benefit from my crazy right-wing pipe dream?

[nain rouge]

Mainly because of its heritage as Polish town, Hamtramck developed a sense of separateness from Detroit, whereas the African-Americans moving into Highland Park were mainly from Detroit. Even as the Polish population in Hamtramck, dwindled, subsequent generations of immigrants bought into the idea that Hamtramck was truly a world unto itself.

Because of this, Hamtramck citizens truly stuck together during the hard times and the city was very aggressive in policing its borders "against" Detroit. In fact, Hamtramck got into some trouble in the early 1970s with the federal government when it was found that the city's urban renewal plans were purposefully designed to try and reduce the influx of African-Americans from Detroit.

Still, Hamtramck did lose half of its population over that time, so it's not like the city didn't experience some decay. The area west of I-75 isn't looking so hot nowadays, and same with a few other spots.

[GUSHI]

Being surrounded by the eastside of Detroit its hung on pretty damn good, look at the area around it, the area by Conant and miller has hung on just compare it to the other side of miller and mt Elliott , thanks to immigrants, also the area sout of Davidson and Conant could be a lot worse if it wasn't for immigrants, look at the number of mosks in the area, most of them are home to mostly immigrants or 1st generation Americans, look by we're Help of Christian use to be, that's why it's hung on one comes others follow and pretty soon you have 1000s and the open church's or Mosk, open businesses, etc a community if formed, and most immigrants take part in their community, shit look @ Dearborn. Hamtramck business went from polish to albanian, Macedonia ,to Bosnian, yemans, Bangladeshi,

[GUSHI]

Honestly if Gm and Coleman young wouldn't of destroyed pole town I thing the area would still be alive today, comparing hamtramck to Detroit it's not comparable,

[Hermod]

I don't even understand what your line of argument is here! The suburbs benefited majorly from the freeways, more than Detroit ever did. That's practically common knowledge! Building the freeways destroyed a disproportionate amount of taxpaying neighborhoods in Detroit and allowed people and jobs to move out the suburbs. In fact, the freeways are commonly cited as part of the reason for Detroit's downfall.

Few urban planners today would agree that the freeways were of some major benefit to Detroit. It was a project to help out the suburbs, mainly.

The inner ring suburbs out to 16 mile were pretty much built out before I-75, I-94, and I-96 ever reached 8-Mile. Mound Road was 4-lane out to about 14 mile. All of the other north-south section line roads in Oakland and Macomb were two lane blacktop [[or in some cases gravel). The houses were built, the people moved out there, and only then were the roads improved. The gummint didn't build a whole lot of five lane roads, sewer systems, etc and then the developers moved in. Like the roads in Detroit itself, the roads were built when traffic demanded it.

[Goose]

Well, Shollin: Estimated at $100 billion annually, the mansion subsidy remains larger than the entire annual budget of the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

So there goes your section 8 bit, and let's be honest here: the mortgage on a McMansion is going to be a lot bigger than mortgage on Robinwood. And while more people in the inner city are more receiving food stamps than those in the suburbs, their infrastructure is often crumbling, while the infrastructure in the suburbs continues to receive generous federal- and state-level financing. And when a suburbanite retires, they're probably going to withdrawal more from Social Security than your typical urbanite.

But no, it's only those dang welfare drains wasting all our money!

I haven't read this entire thread but this stands out to me...

it's amazing, that a tax deduction, or, mortgage interest deduction, that allows people that work and earn money to keep WHAT THEY EARNED is regarded somehow as a "subsidy" by the left....???? WTF? how is this in anyway congruent with the definition of a subsidy?

[Hermod]

I haven't read this entire thread but this stands out to me...

it's amazing, that a tax deduction, or, mortgage interest deduction, that allows people that work and earn money to keep WHAT THEY EARNED is regarded somehow as a "subsidy" by the left....???? WTF? how is this in anyway congruent with the definition of a subsidy?

Tax cuts = Wasteful expenditures
Pouring tax money down a rathole = Wise investments in the future

Doncha know??????

[JBMcB]

You have the terminology all wrong.

Tax cut for you == subsidy
Tax cut for someone else == loophole

That's why most people support subsidies and fight to close loopholes.

[nain rouge]

it's amazing, that a tax deduction, or, mortgage interest deduction, that allows people that work and earn money to keep WHAT THEY EARNED is regarded somehow as a "subsidy" by the left....???? WTF? how is this in anyway congruent with the definition of a subsidy?

Exactly! You've spent enough money on that house, why should you have to pay any taxes? Dang gub'mint takes everything. I curse those thieves every day I drive on the federally funded roads, or whenever I call the the local, publicly funded police station.

[Bham1982]

But why do immigrants chose Hamtramck over Detroit or Highland Park? Why wasn't Hamtramck as effected by the crack epidemic like Detroit and Highland Park?

Highland Park is a bombed-out warzone while Hamtramck is shabby but cheap and livable. And there's comfort in having your fellow countrymen in proximity.

But keep in mind that the immigrants in Hamtown are generally just passing through. As soon as they get a few dollars in savings, they're off to the burbs like everyone else.

You wouldn't believe how many former Yugoslavians [[Albanians, Bosnians, etc.) live in Sterling Heights & Shelby Township. A huge chunk of them started out in Hamtramck.

[nain rouge]

You wouldn't believe how many former Yugoslavians [[Albanians, Bosnians, etc.) live in Sterling Heights & Shelby Township. A huge chunk of them started out in Hamtramck.

Yep. My stepdad is Albanian and grew up in Hamtramck. Though he had a fun childhood, he was there during what was arguably Hamtramck's lowest point [[the 1980s). His mother would make him stay indoors a lot, and he got into a few dicey situations on his way back from school.

Eventually, he and his family moved out to Sterling Heights and turned their Hamtramck residence into a rental. He now lives in Macomb Township, and so do many of his relatives.

[Detroitnerd]

The inner ring suburbs out to 16 mile were pretty much built out before I-75, I-94, and I-96 ever reached 8-Mile.

Yeah, you've said that before, but it doesn't really dovetail with the history. Besides, if they were all built out to 16 Mile already, how did Troy and Southfield manage to fit in about 25 million square feet of commercial office space after 1965? I think this is more "wishful remembering" on your part.

Anyway, even if the suburbs were "pretty much built out" at that early date, the freeway served as a siphon for the businesses that followed. Without I-75 corkscrewing through Troy, how could Troy have become a commuter suburb?

And have you seen Troy lately? This style of development only moves on to the next greenfield and leaves vacancies and municipal headaches in its wake.

[Detroitnerd]

Highland Park is a bombed-out warzone while Hamtramck is shabby but cheap and livable. And there's comfort in having your fellow countrymen in proximity.

But keep in mind that the immigrants in Hamtown are generally just passing through. As soon as they get a few dollars in savings, they're off to the burbs like everyone else.

You wouldn't believe how many former Yugoslavians [[Albanians, Bosnians, etc.) live in Sterling Heights & Shelby Township. A huge chunk of them started out in Hamtramck.

And a huge chunk of them are still getting their start in Hamtramck. The city is very fortunate to be a landing strip for immigrants and very smart to be sensitive to their needs and concerns.

Also, I think you overstate things a bit. According to the Piast Institute, Hamtramck is home to some very stable populations. For instance, the black population in Hamtramck. Most Hamtramck blacks live in homes their family has occupied for more than a generation.

[Hermod]

Yeah, you've said that before, but it doesn't really dovetail with the history. Besides, if they were all built out to 16 Mile already, how did Troy and Southfield manage to fit in about 25 million square feet of commercial office space after 1965? I think this is more "wishful remembering" on your part.

Anyway, even if the suburbs were "pretty much built out" at that early date, the freeway served as a siphon for the businesses that followed. Without I-75 corkscrewing through Troy, how could Troy have become a commuter suburb?

And have you seen Troy lately? This style of development only moves on to the next greenfield and leaves vacancies and municipal headaches in its wake.

1. The only reason that I-75 "corkscrews" through Troy is that Detroit got it to detour away from the west so they could stick a straw into the interstate money pool to pay for their urban Chrysler expressway. It then had to get back on a path to go to Mackinac as an interstate highway. It zig-zags through Troy because they had to minimize eminent domain takings.

2. The folks already living in Troy [[when the Chrysler didn't go north of Warren Avenue) were already worried about having I-75 run right through their subdivisions. I was working the survey party for the Troy City Engineer in summer of 1959 and we were laying out waterlines and sewer lines to get the citizens folks off wells and septic tanks [[paid for by Troy property taxes, not federal or state subsidies). Every time we would set up the transit in a subdivision, an army of irate housewives would come pouring out telling us to go away as they didn't want I-75 coming though their neighborhood and the city hall switchboard would light up with protests.

3. It may just be my feeble memory, but there were a couple of small airports along Big Beaver. Possibly one of them might have been the provenance for a very extensive office park.

4. The small industrial plants that are rather thick along Stevenson Hwy south of 14 Mile also pre-dated the arrival of I-75. My father was the manager of one built in 1963.

[Shollin]

Yeah, you've said that before, but it doesn't really dovetail with the history. Besides, if they were all built out to 16 Mile already, how did Troy and Southfield manage to fit in about 25 million square feet of commercial office space after 1965? I think this is more "wishful remembering" on your part.

Anyway, even if the suburbs were "pretty much built out" at that early date, the freeway served as a siphon for the businesses that followed. Without I-75 corkscrewing through Troy, how could Troy have become a commuter suburb?

And have you seen Troy lately? This style of development only moves on to the next greenfield and leaves vacancies and municipal headaches in its wake.

This is what I don't understand. People bitch about the freeways heading out of Detroit which led people out of the city, but if Detroit was a desirable place to live, why would they leave?

I have seen Troy lately. In fact, I'm in Troy everyday.

[Detroitnerd]

This is what I don't understand. People bitch about the freeways heading out of Detroit which led people out of the city, but if Detroit was a desirable place to live, why would they leave?

I've heard a few good explanations.

There's a really long one about Americans' abiding fondness for pastoralism, although it tends to produce something less than pastoral [[unless your idea of fresh country air is the baking blacktop lot behind the muffler shop).

That pastoral echo in American culture was echoed and promoted by Henry Ford, who proposed that men should leave the cities and live in the country. At least until it became an automotive slum, and then men could move on to the next green field, until, of course ...

But also, cities, so recently invigorated by the City Beautiful movement in the 1890s and 1900s, were backsliding. And Detroit was an extreme example, as if somebody had promised "a factory in every back yard." Add to that a Depression and a World War and a race riot, and I think that the city was really, really beaten down and needed a couple of hundred million dollars of investment to make it into a beautiful city again. We gave a great sum of money to the Europeans after the war and they went to work rebuilding their cities. We, on the other hand, spent it on suburban development and emptying out our cities.

All of this is not to leave Detroit's leaders off the hook. Ever since the end of the City Beautiful era, and with the rise of the automotive industry, with its enormous needs for space and materials and railroads and the tremendous rewards and risks, Detroit's leaders have tended to focus on big deals, big companies, big developments, big players, and have ignored or harassed the people who actually make a city: the mom-and-pop businesses, the individual homeowners, the little shops, the bars, barbershops and shoeshine joints. I've heard that from some old-timers and I believe them, that if everybody on the block sweeps their doorstep, the city works; Detroit's big "dealmakers" would rather have huge deals with big corporations and run a streetsweeper.

[Goose]

Exactly! You've spent enough money on that house, why should you have to pay any taxes? Dang gub'mint takes everything. I curse those thieves every day I drive on the federally funded roads, or whenever I call the the local, publicly funded police station.

that's a solid answer, exactly what I had expected.....

[Detroitnerd]

And there's race too. I think a study of Detroit once showed that black people preferred the stability of being in a neighborhood that was more than half white. And that as soon as a neighborhood got a quarter black, whites began to leave, tipping it eventually to an all-black neighborhood. The residents of those neighborhoods, however, preferred the stability of being in a neighborhood .... [[etc. etc.)

[markd]

I haven't read this entire thread but this stands out to me...

it's amazing, that a tax deduction, or, mortgage interest deduction, that allows people that work and earn money to keep WHAT THEY EARNED is regarded somehow as a "subsidy" by the left....???? WTF? how is this in anyway congruent with the definition of a subsidy?

The mortgage interest tax deduction is clearly a subsidy. It subsidizes the auto, banking, construction, and oil industries by encouraging people to purchase new homes. When society naturally heads towards more efficient life in dense urban areas, this deduction interferes with the free market to artificially increase demand for housing, roads, infrastructure, cars, etc in the burbs.

[Shollin]

Did I miss something? Is mortgage interest not tax deductible in the city of Detroit?

[Goose]

The mortgage interest tax deduction is clearly a subsidy. It subsidizes the auto, banking, construction, and oil industries by encouraging people to purchase new homes. When society naturally heads towards more efficient life in dense urban areas, this deduction interferes with the free market to artificially increase demand for housing, roads, infrastructure, cars, etc in the burbs.

the deduction is valid for the City of Detroit as well as the suburbs...

obviously, society does not "naturally" head towards a more "efficient" life in dense urban areas... this is a utopian desire but not reality....

do you think that if there were no mortgage interest deduction, people would flock towards large, dense apartment buildings? and then would you bitch about the rich landlords gouging these people for rent?

the demand for housing isn't based on the mortgage interest deduction... its based predominantly on population, in relation to job availabity and desirability of the community...

[Goose]

next thing we will be reading that the federal income tax refund is somehow a subsidy....

[Bham1982]

Did I miss something? Is mortgage interest not tax deductible in the city of Detroit?

Detroit had, until relatively recently, the highest homeownership rate among major U.S. cities, so it definitely has benefitted from the mortgage interest deduction [[not to mention the property tax deduction).

And both mortgage interest and property tax deductions are based on income, and start phasing out at a relatively low level, so moderate income homeowners see the full benefit.

[oladub]

Did I miss something? Is mortgage interest not tax deductible in the city of Detroit?

It is but it is a regressive federal tax. The owner of a $30,000 house in Detroit, or the UP, in a 15% income tax bracket gets a much smaller tax cut than someone in Birmingham with $300,000 house in a 29% tax bracket.

[nain rouge]

Did I miss something? Is mortgage interest not tax deductible in the city of Detroit?

Sure. But the mortgage-interest deduction wasn't really exploited until the 1950s, when it was to help push bigger, suburban homes, pushing investment away from urban developments. In addition, the mortgage-interest deduction doesn't apply if you take the standard deduction on your income tax, which your average person does because it's generally more cost-effective [[in fact, roughly 66% of people - including, I'm sure, most Detroiters - take the standard deduction). Therefore, it's usually the exurban homeowners that are benefiting from the mortgage-interest deduction, because it's very much in their interest itemize deductions.

Home ownership in the US is about the same as it is in other advanced Western countries that luck such a deduction - the only difference is that our homes tend to be larger, and this is directly related to the mortgage-interest deduction. If a wealthier person can basically scratch the interest of off their mortgage, they'll often use some of the money they save to get a bigger house.

I hate having to spell everything out like this, but I can see that a few you of you really love to exploit any ambiguities you find, creating meaningless abstractions from the holes to support your desired viewpoint [[and yes, I'm aware that at least one of you are going to point that statement back at me).

[Bham1982]

It is but it is a regressive federal tax. The owner of a $30,000 house in Detroit, or the UP, in a 15% income tax bracket gets a much smaller tax cut than someone in Birmingham with $300,000 house in a 29% tax bracket.

It's actually a progressive federal tax. It's based on income and home value, and I think it starts to phase out well below 100K household income.

I sure don't get the full benefit, and I'm no baller.

But I wouldn't have a problem with removing the benefit. I don't understand why we fetishize homeownership, when it isn't right for a huge proportion of folks. I don't think it has much to do with urban vs. suburban, though. People aren't avoiding Detroit because of mortgage interest deductions.