A Neighborhood Challenge for Bedrock/Dan Gilbert?

[belleislerunner]

There isn't much hope for many of the neighborhoods until middle class families come back. Over the next ten years, you'll have a continued hollowing out of entire swaths of the city converted to grass. It's simple economics. If the average household income is 26K - that is not enough money to maintain a house appropriately. It doesn't matter how many "tax forgiveness" plans there are, how many "water bill payment plans" there are or any other factors. Living in a single family home isn't a guaranteed right.

There can be multifamily developments, manufactured home communities, apartments that meet that need. The more economically stable neighborhoods [[Palmer/Sherwood/IV/Corktown/Woodbridge) will be fine. In fact, as the cities neighborhood's collapse, their values will actually increase because there will be limited supply and everything will be surrounded by grass, as opposed to blights or empty homes.

Then when entire swaths of land are grass, infill will begin Macomb subdivision style building up entire streets at a time. Given new home construction is rarely less than 150K - the "new Detroit" will be largely a middle class/upper class neighborhood.

The reality is 30K, after taxes, is only $2,000 a month for income. That isn't enough money to fix roofs, fix garages, do landscaping, fix windows, replace water heaters, eat, cars, gas etc. People will get excited thinking islands with trees on Jefferson [[which are nice) will make neighborhoods better. The reality is - the only way neighborhoods get better is 1) the people living there get much better jobs fast or 2) people with good paying jobs relocate into said neighborhoods and build them up block by block. Without the flow of green $$ for repairs by each owner [[as contrasted with government aid), the neighborhoods are doomed to continue to transition to grass.

The moral of the story - is one man, Dan Gilbert, can fix up a multifamily residential [[e.g. Scott Tower) and make it great for a few hundred. But Gilbert can't, nor should, be expected to repair neighborhood homes. Those are private property and it's up to each homeowner to either maintain their house or sell it to someone who will and move somewhere where they can live within their means, based on income. The reality is neighborhoods are dying because all the residents living in the homes are living beyond their means [[not in the sense that they can sell them for 10K and move) but living beyond their means in terms of not being able to afford the upkeep of a home. That's the pervasive cancer that continues to spread - block by block.