Leaving East English Village with sadness and affection

[Detroitnerd]

Huh? Police presence alone can prevent crimes from happening. And preventative visits [[physicals/checkups) can help doctors determine factors which might lead to illness and take effective precautionary measures.

Police [[and doctors) are both reactive when things go wrong, and preventative when they could go wrong.

I dunno, you can't tell police to be police and social workers and teachers too. If you ask me, their job IS reactive, and should be.

[Zacha341]

Where...? I need to move there... LOL! All you can hope for is a higher percentage of safety and that percentage could mean the difference in having to plan a funeral or not having to. For example my block is safer than the same street four blocks east. So I've made a choice to live there as appose to the hell-hole section.

Yeah, on the individual level, zoomed in all the way. And you can bet that within three miles is a place with almost no serious crime and people living happily without a care in the world. Just want to point that out.

Please return to the 50-year-long game of complaining about crime in the city, in what is still one of the wealthiest regions in the world.

[BrushStart]

Where...? I need to move there... LOL! All you can hope for is a higher percentage of safety and that percentage could mean the difference in having to plan a funeral or not having to. For example my block is safer than the same street four blocks east. So I've made a choice to live there as appose to the hell-hole section.

I think he was referring to Grosse Pointe. If not, he might be referring to downtown. Either way, he's right. If you're so unhappy, then move.

[Zacha341]

It's not a matter of being so, er... un-'happy' as an emotional 'subjective' state of mind. Rather it is about evaluating and responding to the escalating crime that surely cannot be too 'merry' making or HEALTHY for anyone!

Oh, GP? No, I do not prefer the eastside city or suburbs. In reality downtown is out of my price range as it is for many... Lots of people would like to move but cannot immediately or easily do so. And I'd like to stay withstanding my concern for safety, as I have family ties in the city. As it is, I live in a fairly safe area amidst the mess, and the good -- the main thing is not be isolated. That makes you even more vulnerable. Be watchful and talk to people, and above all avoid making yourself a 'mark' for crime...

I think he was referring to Grosse Pointe. If not, he might be referring to downtown. Either way, he's right. If you're so unhappy, then move.

[canuck]

Detroitnerd

You want to talk about what's "American" and not, the "America" I knew well growing up is disappearing. Used to be nothing more American than little people. Forty years ago in this country, if you were debating an issue of public policy with a group of people, it wouldn't be long before somebody would ask, "How would this affect the 'little guy'?" Forty years ago, people saw themselves as a bunch of "little guys" trying to pay the bills and save for a better life. Where has that gone? The littler we get, the more we tend to frame policy in terms of "What if I became suddenly rich tomorrow?" It's ridiculous.

The game was rigged all along, but there is no such thing as a great leveling field in the past of America or Canada for that matter. I think we were in for surprises because we werent paying attention as per usual, we spend too much, we are living our life of privilege and complaining all the way to the slums of South America. There are fictions written and filmed in the Horatio Algier mold every single day to fit the underdog paradigm that we are wont to suck up. People vote for the Reagans and the Schwarzeneggers because they need to be told bedtime stories at high noon. That is why we are fucked. Some of the most popular politicians in Quebec are actors who just got a seat in the National Assembly a couple of years ago. They are trusted because they can sell analgesics as well as public policy with empathy and lots of makeup.

But I undersand what you are saying about the sympathy for the little guy of forty years ago. There has been a sympathy shift toward the winners of the corporate world and all the celebritymongering
has become acceptable and even rewarded. Gangsta Rap and Hard Porn have become respectable, because they are all about how much money there is in it. It's all about the bucks and it's no wonder we are all broke...

[softailrider]

Sorry DN, but you're mixing urban flight with suburban cooperation. They're somewhat mutually exclusive.... although perhaps urban flight may be causing upticks in crime in nearby communities. Either that or the lowlifes are moving farther out from the inner city neighborhoods, and on past 8 Mile.

I live in SCS... and a month ago I had 6 SCS police cars in the street in front of my house at 2:15AM. It seems like there was a car parked across the street with 3 people inside. Someone called police, they were interrogated, and then arrested. Within 20 minutes a tow truck pulled up and took the car away. So in 25 minutes [[2:15 AM - 2:40AM) the problem was taken care of completely.

In Detroit... the police response time is what is causing more and more Detroiters to leave the city. Fnemecek keeps harping [[justifiably) on this topic repeatedly. You want suburban cooperation? When the criminals move their operations to the burbs... the faster response time provides a much greater chance of them getting caught.

Granted, there are many regional issues that need cooperation between the city and surrounding communities... but a lack of Detroit police response time does not appear to be one of them... that is a problem [[like the Detroit Public Schools) that the city needs to fix itself... or get state or federal funding for more officers.

The police response you got in SCS is what you're suppose to receive for your taxes, it's great, but, it's what you get in almost any other city that I can think of other then Detroit.

I live in a modest part of Bloomfield Township. If I went to Flordia for a month and left my garage door open when I came back I would find nothing disturbed.

My brother lives on Hubbard, near the Boulvard, if he goes out for dinner and forgets to close his garage door, he'll come back 2 hours later and the neighbors will have helped themselves by then.

There's hardly any middle class tax base left in Detroit due to all of the problems mentioned above by various posters. It's definitely a huge problem to overcome.

[lincoln8740]

Sorry DN, but you're mixing urban flight with suburban cooperation. They're somewhat mutually exclusive.... although perhaps urban flight may be causing upticks in crime in nearby communities. Either that or the lowlifes are moving farther out from the inner city neighborhoods, and on past 8 Mile.

I live in SCS... and a month ago I had 6 SCS police cars in the street in front of my house at 2:15AM. It seems like there was a car parked across the street with 3 people inside. Someone called police, they were interrogated, and then arrested. Within 20 minutes a tow truck pulled up and took the car away. So in 25 minutes [[2:15 AM - 2:40AM) the problem was taken care of completely.

In Detroit... the police response time is what is causing more and more Detroiters to leave the city. Fnemecek keeps harping [[justifiably) on this topic repeatedly. You want suburban cooperation? When the criminals move their operations to the burbs... the faster response time provides a much greater chance of them getting caught.

Granted, there are many regional issues that need cooperation between the city and surrounding communities... but a lack of Detroit police response time does not appear to be one of them... that is a problem [[like the Detroit Public Schools) that the city needs to fix itself... or get state or federal funding for more officers.

Whoever thinks police work is reactionary must live inside their own little bubble. If police work is so reactionary then how did grosse pointe stay safe next to one of the most crime ridden cities in the world?

And Gistok don't take DN's words so literally--he once said that the suburbs are not actually safe you just have the perception that you are safe!! I swear to god he actually wrote that--I have no idea what world he lives in.

[lincoln8740]

Police are a reactive force. They do not prevent crime anymore than doctors prevent illness. People are not leaving the city because of police response times..

Yep they are leaving the city because there is no choo choo train to nowhere.

"I will put up with the drugs, the horrible schools, the cops never showing up not having any streetlights on but I am out of here because of a lack of mass-transit!!

[rooms222]

I was reading an opinion piece this morning that cited a study about societies with high inequality. I'm copying an excerpt that I thought might have relevance to this discussion:

Had not heard of the book. I went to amazon.com to put it on my wish list and found that it already has an "answer book" as to why it is factually incorrect:

The Spirit Level Delusion: Fact-checking the Left's new theory of everything

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/095...XAZC5QPFB7K910

There must be some powerful ideas in one or both of these books to get that kind of reaction.....

[daddeeo]

Yawn.
Moved out in 1978. Had same neighborhood problems then. Things have only gotten worse.

[English]

Perhaps there is only one solution left to us: nearly everyone should move out of the city, so that we can more easily consolidate resources. The current population of DPS will be educated in suburban schools of excellence, and the current criminal element will deal with the no-nonsense suburban police.

Actually, the federal government housing policy is moving low-income residents into suburbia all over the country through Section 8 vouchers. We should accelerate this process in metro Detroit. I am serious -- this will help spread those who need services the most to places where those services are located, so that no one municipality is overburdened. This will also help speed up the rate at which Detroit can be consolidated.

Some of this is already occurring, as many working and lower middle class Detroiters [[finally) are currently fleeing for the inner ring suburbs, but we can certainly come up with ways to do more.

[Richard]

Sorry I am not buying the story

Reasons for leaving
Underwater in his house = well so is 90% of the rest of the country

Clearly states that he was in danger of loosing his job = newsprint was on its way out a long time ago.

A paving stone was thrown through his window by someone that could be even totally unrelated or even thrown in the wrong window to begin with.

Was it not even ten years ago Pittsburgh was pretty much as bad off as Detroit is ?

My house was burglarized twice in one month while I was in the house it was a 3 story and you cannot hear what is happening on the first floor while on the third loosing thousands of dollars each time.

My next door neighbors car was broken into and her stereo stolen a dead body was found in a vacant house 2 blocks away and if you call the police will only respond to an emergency burglarized do not even call the police go down and file a report for insurance reasons only.

Geeze it almost makes me want to pack up and leave Detroit ..... sorry I forgot I do not live there
but if I did not know any better by reading this article I sure would not move there.

Rewrite the article and insert the words Any City USA and it will be more fitting IMHO

[citylover]

Sorry I am not buying the story

Reasons for leaving
Underwater in his house = well so is 90% of the rest of the country

Clearly states that he was in danger of loosing his job = newsprint was on its way out a long time ago.

A paving stone was thrown through his window by someone that could be even totally unrelated or even thrown in the wrong window to begin with.

Was it not even ten years ago Pittsburgh was pretty much as bad off as Detroit is ?

My house was burglarized twice in one month while I was in the house it was a 3 story and you cannot hear what is happening on the first floor while on the third loosing thousands of dollars each time.

My next door neighbors car was broken into and her stereo stolen a dead body was found in a vacant house 2 blocks away and if you call the police will only respond to an emergency burglarized do not even call the police go down and file a report for insurance reasons only.

Geeze it almost makes me want to pack up and leave Detroit ..... sorry I forgot I do not live there
but if I did not know any better by reading this article I sure would not move there.

Rewrite the article and insert the words Any City USA and it will be more fitting IMHO

Spare me.you really have little credibility when you respond this way.The guy lived in detroit and left based on his experience which is hardly anytown usa

[Richard]

Its not about my creditability and Detroit problems to an extent mirror the challenges that any other city faces so she does not have exclusive rights on the wrongs in this country today.

Like a poster mentioned above with the issue of section 8 that decision was made in 2004 after hurricane Katrina in New Orleans which if I am not mistaken did have a higher murder rate per capita at one time then Detroit did.with 1/3 the population.

If you look at the tax base before the hurricane it resembled though on a much smaller scale for the most part it was built on years of paid for houses in which the occupants relied on public asstiance therefore not really contributing to the city funds so couple that with a large number of Projects and the tax base is weak at best.

How can you rebuild a city with no tax base its tough but on the other hand how do you encourage the tax base to move into the city with so much crime,in-steps HUD and says no more large multi family projects and we are increasing the maximum allowable monthly assistance to $1500 to allow the residents of the projects to integrate into the suburbs,there are other reasons but this is the base of it for now.

Their thinking was if they removed the crime element from the city core and spread it out it would then be easier to manage and entice the taxpayers back.They have sense discovered some flaws in that thought pattern as have also many residents in every major city across the country.

The question is has crime really gotten worse or has it become more spread out so more notice it
in the past it was contained to certain eras so unless you visited or lived in those areas you were not affected by it.

City-lover I did not meen any disrespect in my post ,I have spent the last 30 years moving from one regen city to another [[Historic restoration preservation),raised my children in the same circumstances and under the same conditions they are grown now and have children of their own so you could even say that I have been down that road before, maybe to many times.

[detroitbob]

Was it not even ten years ago Pittsburgh was pretty much as bad off as Detroit is ?

Although the recession has hit Pennsylvania, I don't think Pittsburgh has suffered as badly as Detroit and/or Cleveland. Pittsburgh's problems started with the decline of the steel mills, but
Pittsburgh reinvented itself and revitalized significant areas of the city, both downtown and neighborhoods over the last forty plus years. Pretty much no comparison to today's Detroit.

[NorthEndere]

Perhaps there is only one solution left to us: nearly everyone should move out of the city, so that we can more easily consolidate resources.

At first I thought you were joking, but then you made it very clear that you weren't. So, I have a few questions for you.

Detroit has lost at least 51% of its population since it's peak in 1950. That's hundreds and hundreds of thousands of folks that have already left the city. First it was the wealthy, and then the middle class for a few decades, but most recently [[in the 90's and 00's) its' been hundreds of thousands of the working class and even the very poor. So, how many more people need to be moved out? Hundreds of thousands more? Honestly, where does it end?

I mean, once you go down this defeatist road, what will be left to consolidate? More important, how in the world will a city structucturally setting itself up to shrink, and thus actively and willfully facilitating the bleeding of it own tax base, find any way to pay for a mass-scale consolidation?

Seems to me that while there needs to be some kind of consolidation of the population [[within the confines of Detroit; this is important), many folks haven't really thought about what this means, or have forgotten or don't realize that shrinking in and off itself isn't economic development. Seems to me that Detroit should just as firmly as ever concentrate on economic development, just as quickly as it's running after this consolidation fad. Population isn't waste product; it's not something you spin off as in some common corporate merger. It's something to be developed like any other asset.

[Lowell]

Until our state and region starts seeing our family of communities as one and start sharing resources to address the decline we will continue to exist as an ever-hollowing tree, nice and leafy on the top, rotting and empty at the core. In the end the whole tree suffers.

An interesting small point of that article was in the headline. "Now he and his family are starting over in Pittsburgh, his hometown."

Well he didn't move to Pittsburgh; he moved to the suburb of Edgewood. This is only revealed at the very end, "But my daughters can run down the street from our rented home in Edgewood to play with newfound friends."

Maybe there is a cue there -- that the Pittsburgh community sees its core city and suburbs as one, as Pittsburgh.

[Fury13]

The most telling lines in the article:


"...as we waited more than two hours for the cops to arrive..."

"We called the police. No one came."

"We called police again but fell asleep before anyone arrived."

"I can't describe the feeling of calling 911 and knowing that the chances of prompt response, or response at all, are slim."



For all intents and purposes, there is no police force in the city of Detroit. You're on your own.

[milesdriven]

My brother's girlfriend lived in the same area, near Balduck Park, as did I before moving to Toledo. Their house was broken into, the perp attempted to rape her, and was chased off by one of her roommates with a knife. He stole her purse, and used her credit card at several area locations who had video surveillance. She went to the police with this information, after the merchants she spoke to said they would provide the video to them to aid in the investigation. The police said they would have to conduct their own investigation, and the detective assigned to the case never answered the phone, and the voice mailbox was full. After the trauma of the attack, and continued police apathy following several trips to the station, she left Detroit for good and now lives in Ferndale. To top it off, someone attempted but failed to steal her roommate's 10 year old Ford Escort the week before they moved out, and they didn't even bother to report this because they knew nothing would be done. I love Detroit, and always will come back to visit every couple of weeks, but living there these days seems like spending $5000 on an 85 Dodge Omni with a blown clutch, bald tires, and an exhaust system that is dragging on the pavement- it's just not a good deal.

[laurin]

And that's great to know - that the people on the bottom have a high rate of pathologies. But we are in the USA which has meritocracy in its DNA.

You might want to look up the origin of the term meritocracy. It's from a satirical essay from a British sociologist in the 50s. It's been co-oped in the US to mean what 'we' want it to mean, but originally was dispel the myth that hard work was really that highly valued.

[Zacha341]

Bingo... "you're own your own" to a large extent... some police officers will tell you this...

The most telling lines in the article:

"...as we waited more than two hours for the cops to arrive..."

"We called the police. No one came."

"We called police again but fell asleep before anyone arrived."

"I can't describe the feeling of calling 911 and knowing that the chances of prompt response, or response at all, are slim."

For all intents and purposes, there is no police force in the city of Detroit. You're on your own.

[English]

At first I thought you were joking, but then you made it very clear that you weren't. So, I have a few questions for you.

Detroit has lost at least 51% of its population since it's peak in 1950. That's hundreds and hundreds of thousands of folks that have already left the city. First it was the wealthy, and then the middle class for a few decades, but most recently [[in the 90's and 00's) its' been hundreds of thousands of the working class and even the very poor. So, how many more people need to be moved out? Hundreds of thousands more? Honestly, where does it end?

I mean, once you go down this defeatist road, what will be left to consolidate? More important, how in the world will a city structucturally setting itself up to shrink, and thus actively and willfully facilitating the bleeding of it own tax base, find any way to pay for a mass-scale consolidation?

Seems to me that while there needs to be some kind of consolidation of the population [[within the confines of Detroit; this is important), many folks haven't really thought about what this means, or have forgotten or don't realize that shrinking in and off itself isn't economic development. Seems to me that Detroit should just as firmly as ever concentrate on economic development, just as quickly as it's running after this consolidation fad. Population isn't waste product; it's not something you spin off as in some common corporate merger. It's something to be developed like any other asset.

Well, clearly this region, unlike most other large metropolitan areas in the nation, has decided that running away instead of holding our ground is the best course of action. Most with options have run out of Detroit, and now the flight from the inner ring suburbs is accelerating. At this rate, we'll all be living in Gaylord by 2050. Since that is what people feel "is best for themselves and their families," and I am all for individual human agency, then everyone ought to have the chance to move out of the city and enjoy peace of mind.

"Economic development" is vague and does not take into account the factors that have inhibited Detroit's economic development in contemporary times. Suggesting that we just empty out Detroit isn't radical or defeatist. It's what everyone has been doing, advocating, supporting with their wages and tax dollars, and advocating through policy for the past half century.

Look, of course I am playing devil's advocate. My comment simply advocates the age-old principle that what's good for the goose is good for the gander. If living conditions have become unbearable for one family, then that entire block or neighborhood is unbearable for all, and the entire block or neighborhood ought to preserve their human dignity by moving out. [[In fact, that is what has HAPPENED in many areas -- this is nothing new!)

To advocate that others should stay, while some should enjoy better living conditions, is antihuman and evil. At least the folks I know who have moved recently are ideologically consistent -- they tell everyone not to move to Detroit, no matter what their race, ethnicity, or socioeconomic class.

[NorthEndere]

You and others make an assumption that everyone that has moved out of the city is an upstanding citizens him or herself. The assumption is also that one can run from problems, forever. A municipality doesn't decline within a vacuum.

I'm not even suggesting that folks shouldn't have the freedom to choose, but I do take issue with this idea that the city and/or its surrounding communities should be facilitating this migration. I'd also really like if you never again use such loaded and offensive language as to call a simple difference of opinion "antihuman or evil" especially now that you see that I wasn't advocating tying people's feet to their current station in life. That was really irresponsible. My post wasn't so much meant as an attack of the one you wrote, so much as it was to get you and others to think more deeply about the idea behind and the negative consequences [[we already know the positive consequences) of "right-sizing".

Eventually something's gotta give. There is only so that can be sucked from a metropolis' original and central city before its surrounding communities start, themselves, to become irrelevant or at least less relevant on a state, national, global scale.

[English]

I'd also really like if you never again use such loaded and offensive language as to call a simple difference of opinion "antihuman or evil" especially now that you see that I wasn't advocating tying people's feet to their current station in life. That was really irresponsible. My post wasn't so much meant as an attack of the one you wrote, so much as it was to get you and others to think more deeply about the idea behind and the negative consequences [[we already know the positive consequences) of "right-sizing".

I apologize for offending you if you took my words personally, but I absolutely believe that it's more than a difference of opinion. What I said was this... and I quote:

To advocate that others should stay, while some should enjoy better living conditions, is antihuman and evil.

How can you refute this statement, or call it irresponsible? I'd like better to understand your point of view. Thanks.

[fryar]

Just reading that is dispiriting. Detroit broke him.