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



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.