Article: Black Flight Hits Detroit

[cman710]

While this phenomenon is nothing new, I think this is an interesting story. We frequently hear calls for people to stick things out in Detroit, but after this woman's experience, it is hard to blame her for leaving Detroit.

I think this article highlights, above all, that without much improved public safety, Detroit will continue to decline. If a single, middle class woman cannot live in a Detroit neighborhood without being continually subject to crime, the city has little hope of attracting young professionals to the neighborhoods. There is truly a public safety crisis in the city.

DETROIT—This shrinking city needs to hang on to people like Johnette Barham: taxpaying, middle-class professionals who invest in local real estate, work and play downtown, and make their home here.
Ms. Barham just left. And she's not coming back.
In seven years as a homeowner in Detroit, she endured more than 10 burglaries and break-ins at her house and a nearby rental property she owned. Still, she defied friends' pleas to leave as she fortified her home with locks, bars, alarms and a dog.
The Last Straw

See more photos from Detroit and listen to Ms. Barham and her neighbors talk about their troubles.
View Interactive



Johnette Barham leaves her old home in the Atkinson district of Detroit

• More photos and interactive graphics

Then, a week before Christmas, someone torched the house and destroyed almost everything she owned.
In March, police arrested a suspect in connection with the case, someone who turned out to be remarkably easy to find. For Ms. Barham, the arrest came one crime too late. "I was constantly being targeted in a way I couldn't predict, in a way that couldn't be controlled by the police," she says. "I couldn't take it anymore."
Ms. Barham's journey from diehard to defector illustrates the precarious state of Detroit today. The city—which has shed roughly 1 million residents since the 1950s—is now losing the African-American professionals who had stayed steadfastly, almost defiantly, loyal.

For the rest of the article, click here.

[rooms222]

I would say that the four "Interactive Graphic" slideshows/interviews are really good and worth viewing [[do the Warren Evans one last as those of us in Detroit have heard that one already). The one with the former resident is really sad and touching.

Also, I was very offended by the comments section on WSJ.com thus far. It is full of extremely overbroad condemnations of the people of Detroit and by some posters, black people in general. Many of these posters claim to have ties to Detroit or live in the suburbs. I would say that the posters on Detroit Yes of all views tend to have more developed comments than this bunch.

[Danny]

Over the past 20 years. Detroit's black population has been decreased from 777,000 to 685,000, a lost of 92,000. The degeneration of Detroit Black control is happening. Blacks in Detroit ghettohoods don't have that power to maintain their homes, families and social structure. Their human psyches from their dark past oppressed who they are. The damned themselves like they can't get anything right in life. They keep on blaming the white man for this and that. If blacks in Detroit can't get what they have wanted in life, they take [[as in steal) from their brothers, sisters, mothers and fathers and even from the Lord. They go into drugs and alcohol to make themselves feelgood. They go into gangs to make a name for themselves and support terrorism.


Since the 1950s Blacks mostly from the south came to Detroit for a better life, good jobs, schools and get away from Jim Crow. However getting a decent home in Detroit is NOT easy. Blacks just like any other northern cities have to fight "invicible segregation" in order to survive. From the Dr. Ossian Sweet to the McGhee families. From the Sojourner Truth Housing Project Riots to the 12th Street Riots of 1967. Blacks in Detroit were turning to leaders like Martin Luther King and Malcolm X and for help. They did their favors and now the're long gone. They look to Coleman A. Young to Kwame Kilpatrick to fix Detroit. However they were more of a show horse than a work horse. So what a black Detroiter to do if their homes are broken and their kids are turning to Osama bin-Laden copycats?

1. Start community policing

2. Get our black churches involve. Our Black preachers said to church that we Christians don't need to hide behind the tabernacle, but to go out the dangerous world and teach our youth the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

3. Provide a father figure. [[ Not from Justin Bieber look-a-likes) and from original gangsters but from people who care about young people for mentorship.

4. Don't cry to Detroit Police Chief Warren Evans and Mayor Dave Bing to protect my ghettohood. Fix yourselves so you all can fix your ghettohoods.

5. Don't cry to Detroit Public School teachers saying that my child isn't learning anything. Instead get the parents involve to teach the child. So that the child will be well trained and ready for the face the so-called white man's world.

If Blacks or anyone can do these things. Then Detroit would be a better place for everyone.


WORD FROM THE STREET PROPHET

Because changing Detroit takes action not negative talk.

In Memoriam: Neda Agha Soltan

[evergreen]

What an article! Forty years ago, my parents contemplated purchasing a house in the Boston-Edison neighborhood, looking for more space. But they were too familiar with the area to do so. In the late 60's, the surrounding area was flooded with heroin which in turn created a huge guerilla army of drug addicts who engaged in an unrelenting war against private property. Single family detached dwellings are exquisitely vulnerable to break-ins and you never rest easy in a home once you've been burglarized. The sense of violation is enormous. Plus, the Boston-Edison community has no buffer zone, it drops pretty quickly into a longstanding ghetto which has now completely disintegrated. Stay on Woodrow Wilson northward just past this area and you are in an urban prairie; the destruction is almost complete. [[By the way, be alert in making this journey, the last time I was in that area I was almost caught in an armed confrontation involving some very beefy gentlemen who appeared to be guarding a house and a driver who was waving a gun barrel outside of his window - this was in the daytime.)

I remember the bubble of the early 2000's in that area and was struck by the naivete of the folks who were purchasing those huge homes, which can be quite costly to maintain, in an area that didn't have a future decades ago. I feel badly that these urban pioneers got burned in this process. These are exactly the sort of folks Detroit desperately needs, but somehow in Detroit the bad guys just keep overwhelming the good people.

And I admit I don't know the solution.

[tallboy66]

Well this is how Southfield got built up by middle class blacks leaving Detroit and since the city made up of 85% African Americans who else is going to leave?

Nobody wants to live next to an abandoned bldg. or in a 'hood that is filled wih violence.

[Danny]

Well this is how Southfield got built up by middle class blacks leaving Detroit and since the city made up of 85% African Americans who else is going to leave?

Nobody wants to live next to an abandoned bldg. or in a 'hood that is filled wih violence.

More than that, Blacks have been moving to Southfield neighborhoods when they follow the organized Jewish Communities since the late 1960s to the present.

[Zacha341]

Indeed what an article. At the risk of sounding corny I was nearly at tears reading it. My father sold life insurance door to door in that area in the 60's and 70's and if you lived there you'd made the big time re. real estate and community... this was right at the time of the heroin introduction. What it was - was beautiful. I recall driving thru the Boston Edison area as a treat as a kid.

Now look at this! I mean the woman TRIED to do and bring something to that community and was basically kicked in the butt and burn down for her efforts. Like I have said I don't care "what" folks stand behind which podium, wearing what and saying what, or promising "what"! UNTIL CRIME IS FULLY ADDRESSED PEOPLE WILL CONTINUE TO LEAVE! And the people who are leaving for the most part are the people we need to stay. Tax payers.

I'm not too, too far from that area and thankfully live in a shared dwelling with lots of folks/ family coming and going -- someone always home with the required requisite number of pit bulls, security measures etc.

This article points out that a fact I've long known and as you state: single homes are "exquisitely vulnerable" and watched [[by that special neighborhood "watch"). So, as the working stiff [[or stiffs) goes off to work, their home is summarily broken into as a default action by those who choose to take the un-earned from the productive.

Thus, I would absolutely NOT live in a single home in Detroit. Not at this time.

Home invasions are really bad in that area. Those with the big homes are considered "fair game 'chumps'" perceived to have something to steal so the justification goes. And there is no buffer. That area drops off to "beyond thunderdom" really bad like the end of a steep cliff like parts of EEV does.

From New Center we used to joke that Euclid was the Berlin wall between ok living and the forbidden zone and Clairmont has been a problem of some time. Now it's all zigg-gazzed bad, in and out one street to another. Thus why those silly cheap condos on Woodward and Lothrop with those extra-low poor security windows are not doing well.

Community policing would be my first response as a solution. But as more people leave who would be inclined to engage and invest in such I am wondering if it is feasible. And once an area starts to have every other house abandoned the crime problem is made worse.

What an article! Forty years ago, my parents contemplated purchasing a house in the Boston-Edison neighborhood, looking for more space. But they were too familiar with the area to do so. In the late 60's, the surrounding area was flooded with heroin which in turn created a huge guerilla army of drug addicts who engaged in an unrelenting war against private property. Single family detached dwellings are exquisitely vulnerable to break-ins and you never rest easy in a home once you've been burglarized. The sense of violation is enormous. Plus, the Boston-Edison community has no buffer zone, it drops pretty quickly into a longstanding ghetto which has now completely disintegrated. Stay on Woodrow Wilson northward just past this area and you are in an urban prairie; the destruction is almost complete. [[By the way, be alert in making this journey, the last time I was in that area I was almost caught in an armed confrontation involving some very beefy gentlemen who appeared to be guarding a house and a driver who was waving a gun barrel outside of his window - this was in the daytime.)

I remember the bubble of the early 2000's in that area and was struck by the naivete of the folks who were purchasing those huge homes, which can be quite costly to maintain, in an area that didn't have a future decades ago. I feel badly that these urban pioneers got burned in this process. These are exactly the sort of folks Detroit desperately needs, but somehow in Detroit the bad guys just keep overwhelming the good people.

And I admit I don't know the solution.

[Luckystrikes]

What an article! Forty years ago, my parents contemplated purchasing a house in the Boston-Edison neighborhood, looking for more space. But they were too familiar with the area to do so. In the late 60's, the surrounding area was flooded with heroin which in turn created a huge guerilla army of drug addicts who engaged in an unrelenting war against private property. Single family detached dwellings are exquisitely vulnerable to break-ins and you never rest easy in a home once you've been burglarized. The sense of violation is enormous. Plus, the Boston-Edison community has no buffer zone, it drops pretty quickly into a longstanding ghetto which has now completely disintegrated. Stay on Woodrow Wilson northward just past this area and you are in an urban prairie; the destruction is almost complete. [[By the way, be alert in making this journey, the last time I was in that area I was almost caught in an armed confrontation involving some very beefy gentlemen who appeared to be guarding a house and a driver who was waving a gun barrel outside of his window - this was in the daytime.)

I remember the bubble of the early 2000's in that area and was struck by the naivete of the folks who were purchasing those huge homes, which can be quite costly to maintain, in an area that didn't have a future decades ago. I feel badly that these urban pioneers got burned in this process. These are exactly the sort of folks Detroit desperately needs, but somehow in Detroit the bad guys just keep overwhelming the good people.


And I admit I don't know the solution.

The events you describe was the catalyst that pushed my parents close to the Eight Mile/Greenfield border in '67 from12th St. and Woodrow Wilson. After the riot, the deluge -- drugs.
My parents, and the fleeing neighbors, rented their homes when they left instead of selling them. This left a transient population occupying these well built, wonderful homes. Not apartments, but homes. Rentors are the first indication of a neighborhood going south because they have less vested in the property. They could have sold the house, but they wanted property they could manage and derive extra income from. Didn't quite work out that way. They had to evict the first rentors and so on and so on.

[Danny]

Another contributor to Black fight in Detroit: Downsizing of various Detroit ghettohoods by scrupolous real estate brokers, banks and mortage companies. Banks hire looters to scrap their Detroit property, prevent blacks to re-but they home, force Detroit city leaders to downsize the neighborhood to a brownfield, have real estate developers re-buy the brownfield and gentrified the area into pre-suburbanesque community for only middle income families.

[Danny]

Another contributor to Black fight in Detroit: Downsizing of various Detroit ghettohoods by scrupolous real estate brokers, banks and mortage companies. Banks hire looters to scrap their Detroit property, prevent blacks to re-buy those homes, force Detroit city leaders to downsize the neighborhoods to a brownfields, have real estate developers re-buy the brownfields and gentrified the area into pre-suburbanesque community for only middle income families.

[Hermod]

Another contributor to Black fight in Detroit: Downsizing of various Detroit ghettohoods by scrupolous real estate brokers, banks and mortage companies. Banks hire looters to scrap their Detroit property, prevent blacks to re-buy those homes, force Detroit city leaders to downsize the neighborhoods to a brownfields, have real estate developers re-buy the brownfields and gentrified the area into pre-suburbanesque community for only middle income families.

Tell me when all this is going to happen. I don't see much demand for the empty fields.

[Retroit]

Another contributor to Black fight in Detroit: Downsizing of various Detroit ghettohoods by scrupolous real estate brokers, banks and mortage companies. Banks hire looters to scrap their Detroit property, prevent blacks to re-buy those homes, force Detroit city leaders to downsize the neighborhoods to a brownfields, have real estate developers re-buy the brownfields and gentrified the area into pre-suburbanesque community for only middle income families.

You forgot the part about the burning crosses and lynchings.

[1KielsonDrive]

Black flight from Detroit has been happening for generations. As you stated; 'nothing new'.

[mwilbert]

Evergreen makes an excellent point about the vulnerability of single family detached houses. If you often leave the house empty, you increase the likelihood of a burglary in any area, but in a neighborhood where there is a lot of crime anyway the incidence is greatly increased. Good neighbors and a security patrol are a help, but you can't count on them seeing everything. Dogs are good too, but they aren't much help when you are on vacation.

To my way of thinking this is one of the big attractions of living in an apartment/condo/coop building with security. Detroit could use more of those. I really don't like the idea of gated communities, but given the circumstances maybe some areas could go that way too.

[Zacha341]

Yeah, I hear that. The only problem with some gated community areas is that it just get's too weird to live walled off, prison-like knowing that just outside of your gate ALL HELL IS WAITING... home living is about community too. I don't need a daily olympic sprint to my door when I get out of my car ready to pole vault to get into my own gated dwelling. Recall Grayhaven was suppose to be like that. Then the criminals scaled the gates too and we see that a mess that became....

Evergreen makes an excellent point about the vulnerability of single family detached houses. If you often leave the house empty, you increase the likelihood of a burglary in any area, but in a neighborhood where there is a lot of crime anyway the incidence is greatly increased. Good neighbors and a security patrol are a help, but you can't count on them seeing everything. Dogs are good too, but they aren't much help when you are on vacation.

To my way of thinking this is one of the big attractions of living in an apartment/condo/coop building with security. Detroit could use more of those. I really don't like the idea of gated communities, but given the circumstances maybe some areas could go that way too.

[Roq]

I don't need a daily olympic sprint to my door when I get out of my car ready to pole vault to get into my own gated dwelling.

Ok, Zacha, the visual I got from that description made me smile
You make some great points though; I want to feel somewhat comfortable where I choose to live.

[Zacha341]

Gotta laugh to keep from crying : ) The vision I had of doing ME that was funny to me too. LOL! Go for the "gold" to get in your house and lock the door behind you ! Whew!

Ok, Zacha, the visual I got from that description made me smile
You make some great points though; I want to feel somewhat comfortable where I choose to live.

Originally Posted by Zacha341
I don't need a daily Olympic sprint to my door when I get out of my car ready to pole vault to get into my own gated dwelling.

[Danny]

Black flight from Detroit has been happening for generations. As you stated; 'nothing new'.

Actually Black flight from Detroit has happen since the late 1970s. A prime example of early Detroit Black flight the trailing of the organized Jewish Communities from Detroit's Northwest Side from 1960s to 1980s. Blacks followed them all to Oak Park, Southfield and Lathrup Village and all they up to West Bloomfield TWP.

Black flight from Detroit has been happening due to the scrupulous real estate practices since the 1960s to the present. A prime example of it is when real estate brokers, banks and mortages companies started to sell homes to blacks more in Redford TWP. Harper Woods and Eastpointe from the 1990s to the present. This is cause more whites to move out fast and lose property values.


WORD FROM THE STREET PROPHET.

It seen it happen

In memoriam: Neda Agha Soltan

[daddeeo]

I hear you brother.
Neda git outa here fast.

[Retroit]

Black flight from Detroit has been happening due to the scrupulous real estate practices since the 1960s to the present. A prime example of it is when real estate brokers, banks and mortages companies started to sell homes to blacks more in Redford TWP. Harper Woods and Eastpointe from the 1990s to the present. This is cause more whites to move out fast and lose property values.

The falling property values can be attributed to the housing market crash, not to racial migrations. Many of whites living in these areas were elderly, who have either passed away or moved into nursing homes, etc. Their white children moved out to the outer suburbs long before black immigration.

It would be inaccurate to imply that home values are falling because blacks are moving in. [[This is one of the unscrupulous practices formerly used by banks/mortgage companies.) The demand for suburban housing for ex-Detroiters may in fact be inflating the housing prices in these areas.

[Danny]

The falling property values can be attributed to the housing market crash, not to racial migrations. Many of whites living in these areas were elderly, who have either passed away or moved into nursing homes, etc. Their white children moved out to the outer suburbs long before black immigration.

It would be inaccurate to imply that home values are falling because blacks are moving in. [[This is one of the unscrupulous practices formerly used by banks/mortgage companies.) The demand for suburban housing for ex-Detroiters may in fact be inflating the housing prices in these areas.

The word you say "Many of whites living in these areas were elderly, who have either passed away or moved into nursing homes, etc. Their white children moved out to the outer suburbs long before black immigration. " is correct, but the MAIN evidence lies real estate scheming practices in the past before the acceleration of generations.

[Chuck_MI]

From the article:
Within hours, police say, Mr. Christian confessed to the two robberies at Mr. Jeter's home and the January 2009 break-in at Ms. Barham's house. He also told police he was one of a handful of people inside Ms. Barham's house when it was set afire. Under an agreement with prosecutors, he pleaded guilty to one count of second-degree home invasion and was to serve 90 days in jail.

This is why blacks and whites are leaving the city. Crime pays here. A guy burglarizes a woman's house three times and is offered a misdemeaner plea? That recent cop-killer was also similarly given slaps on his wrists for his previous felonies. It pays to be a sociopath here. If your lucky, you'll enjoy the benefits of the criminal life with only brief interuptions in the pokey.

[iheartthed]

Tip of the day: If your house is repeatedly burglarized while you are not home, it is almost always the neighbor.

[Roq]

I find this article troubling as I am currently in the process of looking for a home and I would really like to live in the City but damn...I fit much of the profile of Ms. Barham; single, live alone, have a regular schedule, etc..

Also, Apartment living is not an option for me so I wouldn't even have that small protection. What do people here think? Was it just the area she was in or is this symptomatic of all of Detroit?

[cman710]

Roq, would a townhouse style condo work for you? That would provide a more secure design, but would also have benefits over an apartment. Also, if you lived anywhere with private security [[the woman in this article did not), you will be safer than in an area without private security.