Explanation for all the decay?

**blackmath** · September-21-10, 06:37 PM

The lack of front porches and the advent of attached garages that segregated people from their neighbors is one of the direct contributing factors to the sense of total apathetic isolation felt by the Gen Xers and Gen Yers, or whatever you want to call us.

Most people I know that are my age were never raised in a community around people who were different from what they were. They were never left to fend for themselves and come home when the streetlights came on. They never had a corner store they could walk to, or even a park that they could walk to as children. They were totally dependent on their parents and the car for everything so that even further isolated them from the world around them. I've always thought that a good portion of people in their 30s and below have been cheated socially by architecture, automobiles and parental paranoia.

I was lucky enough not to have ever lived a day in a soul sucking suburban neighborhood. Ive always lived in very old homes in the older parts of the city. The garage was in the back at the end of a long driveway up the side of the house. The home I grew up in was built in 1905 and its stood the test of time very well.

A house will last as long as the owners take care of it.

**Magnatomicflux** · September-21-10, 06:40 PM

Same goes for me blackmath. Elsmere and Hanna, yellow house across from the substation circa 1910.

**LeannaM** · September-21-10, 07:43 PM

Originally Posted by Hamtragedy

Most of Chicago's housing stock is brick, and has been, since they had a small fire there in 1879.

Most of St. Louis' buildings were made of brick after the fire of 1849. The law said they had to be built of materials that were less susceptible to fire. On top of that, St. Louis was a major brick-making area. So it made sense. Unfortunately bricks are also valuable, and thieves [[mostly on the North Side) are stealing the buildings brick-by-brick. The brick buildings do usually hold up well, though.

**wolverine** · September-21-10, 08:11 PM

There's been recent stories of some of STL's buildings being burned then scrapped

I'll point out again there are still some differences in construction. A building with walls that are made of load bearing brick will outlast most that are wood framed with brick exteriors. The brick is supported by the wood structure, therefore in the event of neglect or a fire, the building is likely to collapse.

Many brush park homes are built of brick that is load bearing, which is why the shells of the structures have lasted for so long. But drive around and look at some 'brick homes' on the East Side that have been long abandoned. You'll find a pile of bricks on the ground next to the wood skeleton.

**Magnatomicflux** · September-21-10, 08:13 PM

Windsor started building all our core buildings out of brick after our great fire as well. We lost nearly our entire buisness district, which didn't and still doesn't consist of much these days. Losing it twice I think would've killed Windsor.

**Danny** · September-22-10, 07:37 AM

Some the woodframe colonials is Windsor's neighborhood are compared to Detroit West and East side. But the residents are mostly white and well keep up. That what Detroit's neighborhoods should look like today.

**GOAT** · September-22-10, 08:15 AM

Things don't last forever; everything needs to be maintained eventually.

With that being said all of the new homoes are going to need major overhauls in the next 15-20 years. So then what? Leave those to move to yet newer homes? Then the sprawl [[unaffordable) continues and your taxes go up.

The only thing I can say with old vs new is that newer houses are more energy efficient. But that isn't always the case either.

Regardless, an older may have more costs up front [[re-doing bad remodeling jobs or replacing wiring, HVAC etc) but new houses will have those eventually. At least with older homes they have character and uniqueness that is very hard to find in newer models.

**GOAT** · September-22-10, 08:17 AM

Magnatomicflux. We have lost most of the buildings twice. 1st the great firre and the second through the 60s, 70s and 80s and even right up to today. There just isn't much left. I believe it is one reason our downtown suffers; there is no esthetics in the downtown. It is a mish-mash of mostly 60s and 70s dreary architecture with a piss-poor streetscape design done by one of the most incompetent urban planner around.

**Hermod** · September-22-10, 08:36 AM

Originally Posted by blackmath

Anything would beat the massive garage taking up 91 percent of the front of the house look that has infested new home building for the past few decades. Also, in this climate NEVER EVER EVER build with stucco. It should be outlawed here. We do not live in Arizona and pastels suck.

If you are going to have an attached garage on a relatively narrow lot, you end up with much of the first floor facade being garage door [[form follows function). It is consumer demand, most people like having an attached garage [[seems like we had a recent thread about problems with detached garages on the rear property line).

I do mourn the elimination of large [[relatively) screened in front porches and 3' by 3' concrete stoops in the back of the house. Now you have the concrete stoop in the front and a very palatial deck or patio in the back.

Growing up in Detroit [[before AC), most folks sat out on their front porches in the evening and talked back and forth across the street while the kids ran around [[supervised) in the front yards. In the suburbs now, every family sits out along on their deck/patio and the front yard is just for show [[what isn't covered by the driveway apron).

.

**blackmath** · September-22-10, 08:48 AM

Originally Posted by Danny

the residents are mostly white

Windsor is far from mostly white. We haven't been that way for a very long time, and it has benefited this city in innumerable ways. Where someone's parents come from has nothing to do with how people keep up a neighborhood or not and race has nothing to do with it.

Over here it comes down to who owned homes vs rented homes. Renters are by their nature less permanent than owners obviously, so a lot of them don't think its their "job" to keep up the house. At the same time, many people I know who rent do an amazing job at keeping up their house.

**Pickford-Bentler** · September-22-10, 08:48 AM

I disagree with the argument that climate and geomorphology contributed to the decay of Detroit housing stock. The decline was due to lack of TLC, arson for various reasons, and neglect.

I can give some examples from Pickford.

The first house to go down was left in the care of a real estate agency by a man who left the area to become a drummer at a Vegas Casino. The agency forgot to winterize the home and the pipes busted. The resulting damage left the house an economic loss in a neighborhood where one would have been lucky to get $18,000 on a sale for a home in full repair and up to code. As the hulk sat empty; from time to time, siding removers would arrive in a van to remove siding. Even though threats or a call to police would shoe these maggots away, some more damage would be done. My late mother actually had success writing a letter to the COD to have this dump torn down in the late 1980s.

Another home to die was across the street. In this case, the man who owned it was busted by the DPD for chopping stolen cars in the extra large garage that sat on the lot. As he did hid stint in Jackson, the pipes froze and lifted this cracker box off of its foundation. I have old photos of this stored away in my attic.

Another home became a drop during the crack war era that plagued the street during the 1980s. I would watch a car come by, men go in and out quickly, and drive off. Later a dude would come along, go in the house, and come out with a package. According to word on the street, that one got fire bombed by someone who did not like crack dealing.

Google Pickford from Bentler to Trinity to see the results of this ongoing process. Our home, which did get TLC, was as sound as the day my father purchased it in 1954, when sold in 1991. In fact, the steam heating system was all original, with the exception of the pipes I helped him replace.

**GOAT** · September-22-10, 09:09 AM

Blackmath, I think you are right when it comes to renters. The vast majority keep their places clean but most tend tolook at maintenance as something the owner should do.

I believe it is an owners job to maintain their rental places whether painting, cutting the grass etcx. But if I was a renter and the owner didn't do those things I would not hesitate to cut the grass myself or buy some cheap paint and paint a porch as best as I could.

Even not having much money, it doesn't cost much of anything to keep a yard clean, the grass cut. A can of paint is only $30.00

That is why I am in favour of having strict bylaws that are enforced with tickets directly to the owners. As it stands it is very cheap to receive these tickets. If a person complains about someones upkeep [[ei grass never cut) then a fine of $500 should go to the owner. If anothe charge is laid it should be $1000 and on and on...I am sure the slumlords wouldthink twice about leaving their property to rot.

**Pickford-Bentler** · September-22-10, 10:36 AM

A landlord will keep a property in A1 shape when maintaining or appreciating equity is a primary factor in the business model. A slumlord ignores equity and looks to income extraction as the primary benefit.

Let us assume that one can buy a cheap home in 48219 for about $8000 and can rent @ $400 per month. With a 70% rate of occupancy, that comes out to $2800 per year. If the slumlord can milk the property for about five years, then he or she has probably made a decent return on investment. Repairs subtract from earnings and will be largely ignored. A loss in equity can be used to offset capital gains in other ventures.

In the high end condos I rented, I made darn sure everything was repaired up to spec by me or someone I hired. The lame renter who felt he could hang pictures with cement anchors was sued for damages. In that economic model, appreciation of equity was paramount in that I ran them at a cash flow [[net income) loss to offset income from other ventures hoping to get a large capital gain upon sale. Which I did. The Pentagon City Mall, in Va drove up values in the area.

Until the day arrives in which real estate value appreciation trumps sucking blood out of a dead carcass, then there will just be more blight in Detroit.

**Hermod** · September-22-10, 11:00 AM

Originally Posted by Pickford-Bentler

A landlord will keep a property in A1 shape when maintaining or appreciating equity is a primary factor in the business model. A slumlord ignores equity and looks to income extraction as the primary benefit.

A more polite way to put it is that he is engaged in "capital rescue"

**iheartthed** · September-22-10, 12:12 PM

Originally Posted by Bearinabox

I think the real problem is that houses here have so little value. Where's the incentive to sink money into a worthless house in a declining neighborhood? Unless you have some sentimental attachment to the place, or have reason to believe that the low housing prices are temporary and the neighborhood will eventually rebound, there's probably a point at which it makes more rational sense to let the house go than to keep maintaining it. Detroit looks the way it does because more houses have reached that point here than in other places.

A well-built house will likely decay more slowly once abandoned, but that only matters if the housing market in the neighborhood improves at some point after it's abandoned. Otherwise, a house that wasn't economical to keep up in 1995 will be even less economical to rehab after 15 years of abandonment, even if it's still perfectly salvageable.

Yeah...

High homeownership rates are not indicative of a strong core city, nor can I find anything that suggests the two are positively related. However, there is some evidence that the two may be negatively related [[albeit probably loosely). If homeownership rates were indicative of a strong core, Detroit would be perhaps the greatest city in the country right now, since it has a very high homeownership rate among major cities.

According to the census bureau, these are the 2000 homeownership rates [[city only) for a few major cities that I selected semi-randomly [[median household income / median house value in parens):

New York - 30.2% [[$38,293 / $211,900)
Boston - 32.2% [[$38,625 / $132,400)
Miami* - 34.9% [[$23,483 / $120,100)
San Francisco - 35% [[$55,221 / $396,400)
Los Angeles - 38.6% [[$36,687 / $221,600)
Chicago - 43.8% [[$38,625 / $132,400)
Seattle - 48.4% [[$45,736 / $168,300)
Cleveland - 48.5% [[$25,928 / $72,100)
Pittsburgh - 52.1% [[$28,588 / $59,700)
Detroit - 54.9% [[$29,526 / $63,600)
Philadelphia - 59.3% [[$30,746 / $59,700)

Some points of note:

Income varied far less than home price amongst these cities. The cheapest city price wise was 15% the most expensive city, yet the cheapest median income was 42% the highest income.
Median income and median home price do appear to show a weak correlation, but the magnitude of change is much stronger among prices. For instance, NY and Boston both have similar median incomes and both are more expensive than Miami, but NY is over 40% more expensive than Miami while Boston is only 10% more expensive.
High homeownership rates apparently correlate more with lower incomes. The four cities with the highest homeownership rates [[Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Detroit, Philadelphia), were also among the cities with the lowest median incomes on this list.

**blackmath** · September-22-10, 12:42 PM

Goat I absolutely agree with you. I think [[now don't quote me on this) that on this side of the river the city has bylaws that dictate how a property should be kept up. I think it's just like it is in your scenario - if someone calls the city about a derelict property the owner of that property gets fined and ordered to straighten out the issue within 30 or 60 days depending on the severity and number of complaints, etc.

However, a lot of properties in certain parts of this town are still in pretty rough shape. I used to live in a cheapo apartment in an older section of town. My landlord did absolutely nothing to keep up the property, so I took it upon myself to go over to my parents house and borrow the lawnmower to go back to my apartment to cut the grass, pull the weeds and rake some leaves. No big deal to me. As soon as the neighbors saw me doing this they asked me if the landlord was giving me a break in the rent for all the work I was doing. She wasn't, and I never asked for it and never got it either. If I'm going to live somewhere, it's gotta look nice. It's just a rule I have I suppose...

But, my neighbors reaction to what I was doing was telling of the attitude of some of the renters out there. If I don't get paid to do some simple maintenance, then forget it I'll let the property go to crap. Luckily, people like that are in the minority and most people take pride in where they live.

**Hermod** · September-22-10, 03:29 PM

When I rented a single house, I always felt that lawn mowing and bush trimming was part of my responsibility. If something broke, I called the landlord and requested that he fix it. If I broke something, I had it fixed myself.

**Gistok** · September-22-10, 04:51 PM

Originally Posted by blackmath

The lack of front porches and the advent of attached garages that segregated people from their neighbors is one of the direct contributing factors to the sense of total apathetic isolation felt by the Gen Xers and Gen Yers, or whatever you want to call us.

Most people I know that are my age were never raised in a community around people who were different from what they were. They were never left to fend for themselves and come home when the streetlights came on. They never had a corner store they could walk to, or even a park that they could walk to as children. They were totally dependent on their parents and the car for everything so that even further isolated them from the world around them. I've always thought that a good portion of people in their 30s and below have been cheated socially by architecture, automobiles and parental paranoia.

I was lucky enough not to have ever lived a day in a soul sucking suburban neighborhood. Ive always lived in very old homes in the older parts of the city. The garage was in the back at the end of a long driveway up the side of the house. The home I grew up in was built in 1905 and its stood the test of time very well.

A house will last as long as the owners take care of it.

Geeze, not another "soul sucking suburban neighborhood" thread... it seems we have to disprove this nonsense every few months....

As someone living in the "evil suburb" of St. Clair Shores near Harper... I have a nice 55 year old brick house with a nice front porch, a 2 garage at the back of the lot, and "conversant" neighbors who's kids walk to school in our cul-de-sac free neighborhood, and hang out at the corner store. No "soul sucking" attributes nearby as far as I can tell...

Wait!! I tell a lie... their kids do watch hours of cable TV and play their Nintendo's and X-Boxes... so yes... there is some "under 30" soul sucking going on right under our noses...

**blackmath** · September-22-10, 04:52 PM

Whole lotta suckin going on...

Bearinabox · September-22-10, 04:54 PM

Originally Posted by Gistok

Geeze, not another "soul sucking suburban neighborhood" thread... it seems we have to disprove this nonsense every few months....

As someone living in the "evil suburb" of St. Clair Shores near Harper... I have a nice 55 year old brick house with a nice front porch, a 2 garage at the back of the lot, and "conversant" neighbors who's kids walk to school in our cul-de-sac free neighborhood, and hang out at the corner store. No "soul sucking" attributes nearby as far as I can tell...

Wait!! I tell a lie... their kids do watch hours of cable TV and play their Nintendo's and X-Boxes... so yes... there is some "under 30" soul sucking going on right under our noses...

Note that the poster didn't say "all suburban neighborhoods are soul-sucking."

**iheartthed** · September-22-10, 04:54 PM

So yeah, TIME agrees with me in this article written earlier this month:

Fifteen years ago, Andrew Oswald, a professor of economics at the University of Warwick in the U.K., was one of the first to note that places with high homeownership rates seemed to have high rates of unemployment as well. Indeed, some of the U.S. cities with the highest rates of homeownership have stagnant Rust Belt economies: Detroit; Allentown, Pa.; Rochester, N.Y.; Akron, Ohio

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/business/ar...#ixzz10IX7nt6k

**blackmath** · September-22-10, 04:55 PM

Yes, only the most soul suckiest are soul sucking - the ones with cul-de-sacs, fake lakes and meth labs.

**Gistok** · September-22-10, 05:09 PM

Originally Posted by blackmath

Yes, only the most soul suckiest are soul sucking - the ones with cul-de-sacs, fake lakes and meth labs.

LOL... OK forgot about those meth labs... they are "soul sucking"...

But then again... so are those X-Box....

**blackmath** · September-22-10, 05:15 PM

Not to mention Shop Vacs :P

**Patrick** · September-22-10, 05:36 PM

My recent trip to Cambridge, England helped my put things into perspective at least from an age point of view. To Detroiters, someting built in 1920 seems ancient and with god-like craftsmanship. The English view things the same way, but with structures that are from 1703. That shows that buildings can last if designed right and maintained, but the economy plays a direct role over the ability to maintain a home.

Hell, even the new middle-class construction in that part of England was so far above what we see way out in the burbs. The English haven't lost their desire for craftsmanship, even if it takes a little longer to build. Every new structure I walked into over there was built like a fortress. Can't the say the same for a new home in Oakland Township can ya?