The looting of Detroit Homes

[Hermod]

It would be filled with new McMansions, condos and super ranches. We all seen it happen on some Detroit ghettohoods like on E. Jefferson Ave. and St. Jean Rd. Herman Gardens, Rose Parks St. north of W. Grand Blvd. Dickerson and Freud St. Just use Google Maps and scan the area.

If you are talking about Victoria Park [[Dickerson and Freund), that is a very, very small collection of mcmansions.

St Jean looks pretty damn bleak unless the mcmanisons along it are under an invisiblity shield.

[kathy2trips]

Look the banks have every right to foreclose on a home and kick the owner into the street. But ultimately it's the banks who have suffered the greatest loss from this practice as the value of vacant homes quickly sinks to zero once it's unoccupied. If I was president of a bank that had alot of homeowners defaulting on their loans, I would have tried everything possible to renegotiate the payments to something they could afford. It’s better to take a marginal loss instead of taking a total loss once the house is vacant and sequentially destroyed.

You're exactly right. I wish you were the president of a bank There shouldn't be any homeless people in Detroit; banks should have homeless people move into foreclosures, just so someone is there and protecting the place. Better than a shelter, no?

Banks won't even let neighbors put curtains in the windows so they look lived-in. They have a right to foreclose, but they should be very liberal with terms and a little more human in their approach. AND they shouldn't give trick-term loans and balloon payments to anyone, period. And to think of all our tax money that bailed banks out in the first place! I'm just waiting for a strong neighborhood association to take a bank to court for their part in the decline of their neighborhood. That, I'd love to see!

[kathy2trips]

If you are talking about Victoria Park [[Dickerson and Freund), that is a very, very small collection of mcmansions.

St Jean looks pretty damn bleak unless the mcmanisons along it are under an invisiblity shield.

Building McAnythings in Detroit is missing the point of a city with a vintage vibe. If you want to live in a McMansion, or McRanchHouse for that matter, you can do that just about anywhere in the sunbelt or out west. So what would the draw be in buying a sprayed-stucco nightmare in Detroit when you could get the exact same thing in Dallas or Denver?

Better, would be to get a vintage floor plan and have an architect modernize it for you. [[Big kitchen, more than 1 bathroom, A/C, etc.) Detroit needs to enact some tough historical zoning ordinances or it will soon look like [[gasp) Houston. If you've ever been there you know what I mean.

Check out this link to the Houston Architecture Forum and see. Their new mayor is getting the ball rolling on this. http://www.houstonarchitecture.com/h..._1#entry365097 As far as I know, it hasn't cost the city any money to do this, and successfully managed vintage areas are much more desirable.

People scream and bitch, but until there are actual ordinances, history will continue to be trashed...both here and there.