Article: Black Flight Hits Detroit

[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.

[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.

[Lowell]

A friend of mine wrote the following thoughtful response to the WSJ article. I think it reveals the heartfelt and torn loyalties shared by so many of us.

My Response to WSJ article---Black Flight Hits Detroit

...I have to admit that I was in denial about the state of affairs in Detroit for a long time. I lived, worked, invested, and spent most of my leisure time in the city. However, I remembered a comment made by a former Detroiter while I was visiting her in the San Francisco Bay area. This goes back many years ago. I was 16 years old and she was 15 when we met in Detroit. She had already made up her mind to permanently leave Detroit upon graduating from high school. She did leave and followed other siblings to California. Some settled in the LA area, she and another brother opted to live in the Bay area near their father.

About ten years after she left Detroit, I went on vacation to San Francisco, California. I called to let my friend know that I was in town. During a visit at her San Franciso apartment we sat and talked about our hometown of Detroit. She lived on a hill with a breathtaking view of San Francisco's sky line, the Bay, and the Golden Gate Bridge. She asked me why I continued to live in Detroit. In her opinion, the city was dying a slow death and that I should leave immediately. She suggested that the Bay area was a better fit for a person with my background. I had graduated from the University of Michigan and was completing work on a MBA. In retrospect my friend had considerable insight. It was during that conversation almost 30 years ago that she also spoke about the demise of the Big 3 auto industry in Detroit. I guess my friend's comments had an impact because the next year I moved to the Bay area to take a job. I have traveled internationally, and I am not alone in the my beleve that San Francisco still ranks among the world's top cities. I found SF a progressive city and the Bay area teeming with a myriad of political, cultural, and social activities.

After moving to San Francisco I made friends and felt comfortable living and working in the Bay area. Despite the positive surroundings, I decided to return to Detroit. My friends implored me to reconsider and stay in Northern California.

I was torn, but at that time I wanted to start a business with my brother and live closer to my family. When I returned to Detroit it was a bit of culture shock. Besides missing the beauty of the San Francisco Bay area, Detroit looked more abandoned and less vital than before I moved. I shrugged it off, consciously not admitting that Detroit was lagging far behind on several fronts in comparison to cities such as San Francisco, Chicago, and Atlanta.

Many years have passed since I lived in California. Notwithstanding the aforementioned, I continued to achieve in Detroit; operating businesses, attaining a MBA, a law degree and a Masters of Law and practicing law. In addition, I saw my daughter successfully navigate the mean streets of Detroit. With pride I can say that she followed my sister, cousins, and me [[all U of M alumni) to Ann Arbor where she attended the University of Michigan. While at the University of Michigan she earned a bachelors degree and a law degree from the U of M Law School. Following the completion of her law studies, she moved to NYC and took a Masters degree from Colombia University.

Obviously, Detroit has not been the horror story for me that has been for countless others. Nevertheless, it is disheartening to watch a once great city you love crumbling before your eyes.

It is easy for me to understand Ms. Barham's disappointment and plight. As a business person and a resident, I have encountered the break-ins, robberies, witnessed the shootings, and attended the funerals for the victims of the carnage that is too much a part of Detroit. I have always been able to explain away the devastation of the city and its residents in socioeconomic terms. However, the dysfunction which exists in Detroit today has reached epidemic proportions.

The lack of leadership, along with the psychopathic misfits that roam Detroit often makes living in the city a test of wills. This reality has placed the dwindling numbers of tax paying, educated, and middle class folks [[black and white) at the crossroads. Many of these individuals are finding that the path of least resistance is to relocate to areas which offer a more intelligent management of community life.

Perhaps, I over stayed my welcome in Detroit. I could have left for good 30 years ago like so many of my family members and friends. However, I was born, raised, and lived in Detroit for many years. My mother and father had a love for the city which kept them from following their friends and co-workers to the "sticks" [[suburbs).

Now all the proclamations of rebirth and commitments to the City of Detroit appear hollow. In reality, Detroit has in many instances become unlivable.

Is Detroit the only city facing these challenges? Certainly not. However, Detroit has always been a barometer and a focal point when it comes to societal matters. Post industrial Detroit is only a microcosm of what may face post industrial America.

The cities that can best answer the questions posed by this major economic and social shift will attract those seeking greater opportunities. Detroit will not see a turn in its fortunes until competent leaders emerge who are willing and able to respond to the demands of an informed and involved electorate.

The pivotal issue facing Detroit is whether or not a significant number of its residents with that mettle will choose to remain.

Take care.

Peace.

[George Cassidy]

Bottom of the barrel and then turn it over to see what's underneath.

[iheartthed]

Now all the proclamations of rebirth and commitments to the City of Detroit appear hollow. In reality, Detroit has in many instances become unlivable.

Is Detroit the only city facing these challenges? Certainly not. However, Detroit has always been a barometer and a focal point when it comes to societal matters. Post industrial Detroit is only a microcosm of what may face post industrial America.

The cities that can best answer the questions posed by this major economic and social shift will attract those seeking greater opportunities. Detroit will not see a turn in its fortunes until competent leaders emerge who are willing and able to respond to the demands of an informed and involved electorate.

The pivotal issue facing Detroit is whether or not a significant number of its residents with that mettle will choose to remain.

Take care.

Peace.

I can answer that last line for him: No. How reasonable is it to expect someone to waste their life waiting for Detroit to "come back"?

Frankly, I'm getting the impression that the powers that be in Detroit are intent on completing the rebuilding of Detroit that was started 60 years ago. Except that the design is functionally obsolete, so maybe destroying is a better verb.

The state can still build 8 lane highways through the middle of nowhere, yet Detroit can't even get a silly little 3 mile light rail project -- down the most prominent thoroughfare in the entire state -- after nearly 10 years?! Or what about that Ann Arbor to Detroit commuter line? Having a train connection to the airport is like the most basic of services that any world class region can provide. BASIC!!!!

It was some time during the year before I moved away from Michigan that I first heard about the plans for the commuter rail. I thought that if they could do this then there was hope for the region to progress into the 21st century. And it seemed like a really simple thing to do... Run a few trains back and forth on existing tracks a few times per day. Not that hard, right?

Well, more than four years later the project seems no more than a pipe dream. And for a region as large and as relatively prosperous as Detroit still is [[albeit quickly eroding prosperity), to not be able to do something like that... Well, it isn't exactly a vote of confidence in the leadership or for the future of the Detroit area.

To be clear, it's not just Detroit that hasn't figured out her post industrial purpose, but largely Michigan as a whole. Detroit isn't the only post-industrial apocalypse dotting the landscape of that state. Flint, Saginaw, Pontiac, Benton Harbor... Pretty much the only bit of stability [[and dare I say it, sanity) seems to be the Grand Rapids area.

But just like being second worst doesn't bring Cleveland any love, being second biggest doesn't hide the disaster of Detroit. If Detroit were thriving and GR were the one faltering [[like the dynamic between New York State's two dominant cities), the story would be about how great Detroit is and not "what's wrong with Grand Rapids?" So Grand Rapids ain't gonna save Michigan, and all of those unicorn peddling politicians need to just can that right now. Like it or not, Detroit is Michigan's most prominent possession. And the fortunes of the entire state are inextricably tied to the future of that city.

[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.