What will happen to Oakland County?

[Pingu]

No, that isn't the translation.

My point is that Detroit has always been the feeder for Oakland County suburbs, just as major cities across the country tend to be the primary feeder for new residents to the suburbs. So if Detroit isn't attracting new residents to eventually feed the suburbs then what happens to the suburbs?

Detroit as Ellis Island. And a giant statue of Brooks Patterson on Belle Isle, holding a book and a torch, beckoning "Give me your tired, your poor/Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free".

[mwilbert]

You need a lot of people with gainful jobs to move in and overwhelm the problems with a high density of people, jobs, dwellings, and stores. The problem is that Detroit's problems are so embedded that people, developers, employers, and retailers will not move in.

Not exactly. Everyone doesn't value the same things, and you don't have to do the whole city at once; all you need is a piece at a time That seems to be happening in Midtown, and if it weren't for the impossibly bad schools you would probably already have reached critical mass there despite the economy--the problem is that you lose almost all the young families by the time their kids get to be four or five, so you have to replace a lot of people. I can think of two easy ways to fix it, neither of which is politically acceptable.

[DetroitDad]

As I see it, the future of Oakland County has to do with the type of, and reason for development. These places face several challenges in the years ahead. Some of those challenges that Oakland County will face include;

• The attitudes held by enough of the people who inhabit them [[homes viewed as investments).
• Issues of human nature, and how fragile the veneer of society is.
• A lack of culture and heritage in some of the newest exurbs.
• The fact that opportunity is mobile.
• Most of what has been built has been built as somewhat temporary; it is cheaper to build new than to renovate.
• Population erosion in the face of an overbuilt society

[DetroitDad]

A subdivision in Oakland County. While several of the large homes in this Oakland County subdivision are occupied with beautiful mcmansions, swimming pools, and swing sets in backyards, most of the subdivision is made up of foreclosures, partially built homes, and countless vacant lots for homes that were never built. The neighborhood takes on the chilling feeling of an urban prairie which were once only found in the older inner city neighborhoods.

Attachment 7467

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Just outside of the subdivision, a reuse has been found for a formerly vacant McDonald's. The buildings new life goes against the notion that everything here is "temporary". Surely life will go on for some time, utilizing what has been built here.

Attachment 7470

Meanwhile, vacant bill boards are becoming a common sight all over both Oakland and Wayne County. That is certainly a sign of the times.

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[Relayer76]

No doubt people are leaving because there are no jobs. Maybe Detroit could re-invent itself as a retirement community. Retired people don't need jobs, they need low cost smaller homes like the homes in older parts of the city. This is what the town of Elliot Lake Ontario did. It literally became a ghost town when the uranium mine shut down - now it is a town geared to senior living. This place is in northern Ontario - cold as hell - if they can do it surely Detroit can give it a shot. Check it out: http://outdoorwebsite.com/The%20Road...iot%20Lake.htm

Isn't there a developer out there who could buy up a neighbourhood cheap, renovate homes and then market them to older people as a return to the homes of their youth but with bright modern kitchens and baths.

[Hermod]

No doubt people are leaving because there are no jobs. Maybe Detroit could re-invent itself as a retirement community. Retired people don't need jobs, they need low cost smaller homes like the homes in older parts of the city..

They also need safety, security, and shopping. The city of Detroit has a severe lack of all three.

I am 71 years old. I live in Florida because my wife wants to live in Florida. If i was by myself, I would move back to SE Michigan, but no way in hell would I live in Detroit. I think I would like downtown Marine City or maybe downtown Rochester.

[rooms222]

No doubt people are leaving because there are no jobs. Maybe Detroit could re-invent itself as a retirement community. Retired people don't need jobs, they need low cost smaller homes like the homes in older parts of the city.

Isn't there a developer out there who could buy up a neighbourhood cheap, renovate homes and then market them to older people as a return to the homes of their youth but with bright modern kitchens and baths.

Retired people need safety, however, something which is lacking at present.....
A similar attempt to have expatriate Jamaicans return to retire in Jamaica has been a horrible failure where returnees have been targeted for violence and crime based upon their assets and retirement income.....

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000...614635158.html

BECAUSE THE WALL STREET JOURNAL LIMITS ACCESS TO ITS ARTICLES, I have put a shortened version of the article below to facilitate discussion in compliance with fair use guidelines



Jamaica's Growing Violence Threatens Retiree Economy [[EDITED)




By JOEL MILLMAN

COMFORT CASTLE, Jamaica—Two elderly pensioners in this mountaintop village joined hundreds of Jamaicans with a grisly fate: expatriates who spent their working lives abroad, then moved home only to be killed.

Jamaica has the highest homicide rate in the hemisphere, and retired returnees from all over the globe are feeling targeted. WSJ's Joel Millman reports.

</div>Neighbors say they heard 84-year-old George Passley, a retired bus conductor from the U.K., screaming last November as his home burned but couldn't rescue him. Eight days later, Mavis White, an 80-year-old widow who also returned from Britain, died in a house fire a mile from Mr. Passley's. Authorities are investigating both cases as arson.


This verdant island has one of the higher homicide rates in the world with 62 murders per 100,000 residents in 2009.
Jamaican criminals sometimes target returnees, waiting until their monthly pension checks arrive from abroad before striking. One of the gangs preying on the returnees was led by police officers.



The number of returning retirees—1,170 last year—has dropped in half since the 1990s. That's a big deal in Jamaica, which counts on retirees and their money to help pump up its troubled economy.
Some 2 million Jamaicans live abroad, nearly as many as the 2.7 million who live on the island. Their exodus began in 1946 and continues today.

The robbers are "targeting returned residents," Mr. DeSouza says. He says he knows of two elderly couples who moved home to Jamaica then fled back, one to Georgia and one to Florida.






Retiree Cynthia Edwards, shown with husband Ephrain, regrets moving back to Jamaica because of the crime.


any expat retirees, however, say they don't have the money to move back to the U.S. or U.K. Unable to sell in a depres



Another potential threat to returnees: their own families. Distant cousins, barely known to retirees, sometimes see returned residents as bank accounts to tap. Ethlyn Hyman-Dixon, a 69-year-old returnee from England, was stabbed to death in 2008 by a nephew who was convicted of the slaying last year.
Boxer Trevor Berbick, the last man to beat Muhammad Ali in the ring, was hacked to death in Portland Parish by a nephew, later convicted of the murder. Mr. Berbick was 54.
Crime has hit a retirement community called Southaven in the town of Yallahs, about 15 miles east of Kingston, that caters to returned expats. With its broad boulevards and white-washed stucco walls, Southaven could be any seniors' district in Arizona or Florida—except that many homes are abandoned.



"People are scared. They're leaving," says Cynthia Edwards, 71, who bought a place in Yallahs with her husband in 2005. Toiling 11 years at a Hyatt Regency Grand Cypress Hotel in Orlando, Fla., the Kingston-born woman had managed to scrape together $90,000 for a retirement home.
The moment she arrived in Southaven, she says, she realized her mistake. That first evening, she was robbed of nearly $500. "There was two gunmen who came in at us and took my bag from my shoulder and my friend's bag from her shoulder," she recalls. "I was out tugging at it and they said to me 'Gimme the bag because I don't want to kill you.' I let the bag go and they ran."
Mrs. Edwards filed a complaint. Police canvassed for witnesses, but made no arrests. They later found Mrs. Edwards' discarded bag on the beach.
Since then, the Edwardses have paid thousands of dollars to add electronic security to their home. They have hired armed guards to patrol their neighborhood at night. The couple sleeps with a "chopper," or machete, at their bedside, which they once used to jab at a trespasser's hands after a screen was yanked from its frame.
The Edwardses say they can't afford to move. Even if they could find a buyer for their home, their combined monthly income of less than $500 from U.S. Social Security and an English pension isn't enough to support them in retirement in the U.S., Mrs. Edwards says.
Returnees say they often are targeted by squatters. Last year Jamaica's Ministry of Water and Housing formed a special anti-squatters unit to deal with the estimated 600,000 Jamaicans living on land where they have no legal right. However, unit leader Basil Forsythe says he is only allowed to go after squatters living on public lands. Elderly returning residents, he says, "have to go through courts on their own. I advise them to engage a lawyer."


The crackdown hasn't made Jamaica's 30,000 returned residents feel safer. "They're really afraid now," says Percival LaTouche. The former London gas station operator is the president of Jamaica's Association of Returned Residents. The 69-year old retiree has documented the murders of 345 fellow returnees since 2001.
Pounding his desk in a tiny office in Morant Bay, he says pensions act like magnets for criminals, especially in provincial backwaters like Comfort Castle, where he investigated the murders of Mr. Passley and Ms. White last year. Both received pension checks on Oct. 30 and were murdered in early November.
Mandeville cop Horace Roberts was busted stalking elderly returnees arriving on the night flight from London's Heathrow airport five years ago, and following them home to rob them at gunpoint.
Meanwhile, police found a second gang, this one with soldiers targeting fresh returnees on flights arriving from London. "It's a copy-cat crime," acknowledged Deputy Superintendent Cornwall "Bigga" Ford, head of Kingston's anti-robbery strike force, who made one arrest in the case in March 2009.

For decades, Jamaican governments have counted on money from expats working in England or North America. Eighty percent of the country's college graduates work abroad, according to a World Bank study.
If expatriates give up on their native country, they are less likely to send money, to invest in businesses there, to buy land for retirement homes. Badrul Haque, the World Bank's Kingston representative, calculates returned residents' pensions contribute more hard currency to Jamaica—$10 million per month—than almost any industry save tourism and mining.
Jamaica's National Housing Trust has engaged the Kingston office of PriceWaterhouse Coopers to market a 429-acre parcel near Montego Bay as Jamaica's first dedicated retirement village. It would target higher-income retirees and protect them behind guarded gates.
Darren Singh, of PWC Kingston, concedes that crime comes up as a concern among focus groups. But he expects the tales of arson and murder, in a perverse way, to bolster the appeal of a gated community.
"People can't afford U.S. villages," he says. "Jamaica is a market opportunity at half the cost of the U.S."

[Hermod]

A subdivision in Oakland County. While several of the large homes in this Oakland County subdivision are occupied with beautiful mcmansions, swimming pools, and swing sets in backyards, most of the subdivision is made up of foreclosures, partially built homes, and countless vacant lots for homes that were never built. The neighborhood takes on the chilling feeling of an urban prairie which were once only found in the older inner city neighborhoods.

We had this in Detroit years ago. When we lived on Nottingham [[1941-1954), the neighborhood began to develop. This was stopped by the advent of WWII. I have a photo of me in my backyard and you can see all of the empty spaces on Beaconsfield south of Grayton. It wasn't till after WWII that builders began to in-fill the vacant lots. On our block [[Nottingham between Yorkshire and Grayton), the last vacant lot wasn't filled in until 1952. Most of the commercial blocks along Whittier between Harper and Kelly were empty fields with an occasional commercial building.

When I lived in the Virginia suburbs of DC [[85-92), our subdivision had three "waves" of development slowly filling in the vacant lots.

[Irvine Laird]

1. Oakland County paid off all legacy costs related to healthcare and pensions for its retired employees and set up a VIBA for all current employees. This gives the county an enormous advantage going forward.

2. Don't underestimate that AAA bond rating and Oakland County's innovative three-year budget system. It costs a lot less to provide government services in Oakland County than it does anywhere else in the Detroit region.

3. Oakland County represents one of the biggest concentrations of high tech jobs in the country and almost twice the rate of four-year college graduates than Michigan or the United States as a whole.

4. Health and life sciences are booming in Oakland County and are only going to grow even more. Almost 100,000 health sector jobs exist at present in Oakland County and that will increase by more than 40,000 by 2015.

5. The new medical school at Oakland University is expected to generate $3 billion in economic activity every year and create as many as 13,000 jobs. Applications are already coming in from all 50 states. Many of those people will choose to stay after they graduate.

6. Oakland County's focus on emerging sectors is already producing billions of dollars in investments in diverse high-growth sectors. Those are mere saplings that should grow and multiply over the next 30 to 40 years.

[lincoln8740]

1. Oakland County paid off all legacy costs related to healthcare and pensions for its retired employees and set up a VIBA for all current employees. This gives the county an enormous advantage going forward.

2. Don't underestimate that AAA bond rating and Oakland County's innovative three-year budget system. It costs a lot less to provide government services in Oakland County than it does anywhere else in the Detroit region.

3. Oakland County represents one of the biggest concentrations of high tech jobs in the country and almost twice the rate of four-year college graduates than Michigan or the United States as a whole.

4. Health and life sciences are booming in Oakland County and are only going to grow even more. Almost 100,000 health sector jobs exist at present in Oakland County and that will increase by more than 40,000 by 2015.

5. The new medical school at Oakland University is expected to generate $3 billion in economic activity every year and create as many as 13,000 jobs. Applications are already coming in from all 50 states. Many of those people will choose to stay after they graduate.

6. Oakland County's focus on emerging sectors is already producing billions of dollars in investments in diverse high-growth sectors. Those are mere saplings that should grow and multiply over the next 30 to 40 years.

oh yeah, well.....do they have choo choo train to nowhere?

sorry couldn't help it

good post

[DetroitDad]

oh yeah, well.....do they have choo choo train to nowhere?

sorry couldn't help it

good post

HEY... THOSE ARE INVESTMENTS! Roller coasters are trains to nowhere, and people love them. Remember, we got to do these things in stages. Y'all just wait and see, once we have the funding together for the gravity defying loop on the Woodward light rail line, things are goin' to be a changin' 'round here.

Seriously though, there are some really good posts in this thread. A few very compelling points have made me rethink some things.

[English]

We'll just have to wait and see, I guess. We have no idea where the OC, Detroit, Michigan, the United States, and the world will be heading in the short-term future.

[Irvine Laird]

Thank you, lincoln8740.

Brooks Patterson and his team are very smart. The evidence is OC's economic power [[and its potential to sustain the growth of that power over the next three to five decades) despite national and state economic crises like the decline in property values.

That being said, I would very much like to see an OC executive in the future who can figure out how to be a leader for the region. With great power and wealth come great responsibility and, no matter how much Brooks dislikes it, Detroit is still [[and always will be) the brand.

[iheartthed]

After three years of precipitous declines in property values in metro Detroit, Wayne County Equalization Director Philip Mastin is starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel.

The same can't be said for Oakland and Macomb counties, however.
"I'm just not sure how long the tunnel is," Mastin said Monday at the annual Tri-County Summit, featuring elected officials from Wayne, Oakland and Macomb counties and the City of Detroit. "But I think residential markets are starting to turn around."

Mastin said he thinks state equalized values -- which are roughly half properties' market values -- will begin to rebound in Wayne County in 2012, after dropping 32% through the end of 2011.

The equalization directors in Oakland and Macomb counties, however, aren't quite as optimistic, predicting that rising foreclosures and contested tax values will contribute to declines through at least 2013.

"We all hope that the real estate market grows more than what we're budgeting for," said Dave Hieber, Oakland County's equalization director. "Obviously, one of us is going to be wrong."

...

Rocked by property value declines, officials in Macomb and Oakland counties fear true recovery won't happen until at least 2014.


Read more: Will 2012 be rebound year for Wayne County property? | freep.com | Detroit Free Press http://www.freep.com/article/2010092...#ixzz10M0h5FJQ

I'm not sayin'... But I'm just sayin'...

[lincoln8740]

After three years of precipitous declines in property values in metro Detroit, Wayne County Equalization Director Philip Mastin is starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel.

The same can't be said for Oakland and Macomb counties, however.
"I'm just not sure how long the tunnel is," Mastin said Monday at the annual Tri-County Summit, featuring elected officials from Wayne, Oakland and Macomb counties and the City of Detroit. "But I think residential markets are starting to turn around."

The equalization directors in Oakland and Macomb counties, however, aren't quite as optimistic, predicting that rising foreclosures and contested tax values will contribute to declines through at least 2013.

"We all hope that the real estate market grows more than what we're budgeting for," said Dave Hieber, Oakland County's equalization director. "Obviously, one of us is going to be wrong."


Oh god-- another Wayne County official living in a dream world while Oakland and Macomb officials live in realiy and actually plan for it.

[casscorridor]

Oh god-- another Wayne County official living in a dream world while Oakland and Macomb officials live in realiy and actually plan for it.

No. Not really. Officials from all three counties were saying the same thing, just read the article.

They also say Oakland and Macomb have much further to fall than Wanye. And I am willing to bet there are way more big mortgages defaulting and houses underwater, because of how many new houses were built and likely financed with huge mortgages that buyers really couldn't afford. Wayne County's neighborhoods are not as wealthy but are older and I would say more resilient. Plus, Wayne County's sprawl is nothing compared to Oakland and Macomb, which seemed to be limitless. I think because of these reasons, Wayne is more stable.

And in coming years I think growth will be fueled by the development in Greater Downtown [[the light rail, Ann Arbor commuter rail line, WSU, DMC, HFH, Quicken, Blue Cross, new residents/retail/entertainment, etc), around the Airport [[aerotropolis), the inevitable construction of a new bridge and rail tunnel, and the rebound of General Motors and Ford [[two out of the three big auto makers are in Wayne Co).