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Tearing Down Detroit: Demolishing Houses for the Economy

SouthernDemocrat said:
Virtually every major city in America is ran by Democrats and has been for decades. Since you credit Democrats with Detroits failure, do you also credit Democrats with the success of Denver, Dallas, Minneapolis, Houston, Seattle, Charlotte, and so on?
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Some of both.
 
faithful_servant said:
I keep trying to figure out hwy everyone thinks that tearing down unused buildings is a good idea. What am I missing here?? I work in the wood products industry, so tearing down those houses and hopefully replacing them with nicer homes with lots of wood doors and windows is alright by me, but how does it help Detroit?? Shouldn't the goal be to fill those houses with people?? With all the telecommute options available, Detroit could easily become a low cost place for young people working remotely to get a start. But tearing down the one asset (cheap housing) that Detroit has a lot of seems to run counter to that.
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These homes would be money pits because of the lack of maintenance over time alone. Also, burglars come in and steal anything they can scrap, so many of the pipes are gone. Not to mention that the house is probably vacant in the first place because no one wants to live in a crime ridden neighborhood.
 
Investors are buying up the properties for the sole reason of knocking down the structures and prepping the lot for new construction. They don't mind sitting on cheap property if the the return on investment looks good.
 
JC Callender said:
Parts of downtown are pretty nice. We have an area called "Greektown" with some nice restaurants and have two new ballparks. Dan Gilbert, owner of Quicken Loans, is buying up properties down there, so there are some areas that are being revitalized. There are a few other areas throughout the rest of Detroit that are pretty nice as well, but I would say that at least 80% of the city couldn't meet the standards of a poor, run down suburb. It's really odd driving into certain (well, many) parts of Detroit if you don't live there, as most of the suburbs are very clean, and many parts of Detroit have trash blowing around like tumbleweeds in the old west, graffiti everywhere, 3' tall weeds growing in the cracks of sidewalks. I remember seeing a fistfight several years ago in a suburb outside of a Taco Bell at about 2 am on a weekend, and that's the only one outside of high school I ever remember. I've seen three of them right on main streets in Detroit having spent 1/10,000 of the amount of time down there. There's obviously rampant crime and the 911 response time is appalling. The fire department simply doesn't have the gear they need to properly fight fires. They're just getting the lights turned on on many city streets that have burnt out years ago. They've also had to have an emergency manager as they were on the verge of bankruptcy, so yeah, it's bad.
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What do you think of Nicole Curtis? I love her show, "Rehab Addict". She's seems to be doing a lot of good work for Detroit, too. Who knows, maybe she inspired the guy in the video.
 
Geoist said:
You are welcome.

We recently saw what penny-pinching leads to with the Flint water scandal. I believe in being smart with our taxpayer dollars as much as the next guy. I agree there are many Democrat leaders who are dumb for what they spend... But I also think there are many Republican leaders who are dumb to what they don't spend.

But to reiterate what I said before, I believe this is a revenue source issue more than anything.
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So do you blame Detroit's economic demise on the 1967, 12th Street riots?

The article you posted concludes that "Detroit’s property tax base remains". But how could the property tax base remain the same after the collapse of the auto industry and the recent economic crisis that forced hundreds of thousands out of their homes and migrate to other cities or states? If Detroit's tax base was/is land value...then all that abandoned land isn't getting taxed and therefore Detroit's tax base has been reduced considerably. The article doesn't even mention the collapse of the auto industry contributing to Detroit's economic demise and lowered land values...and yet it played a major role.
 
Moot said:
What do you think of Nicole Curtis? I love her show, "Rehab Addict". She's seems to be doing a lot of good work for Detroit, too. Who knows, maybe she inspired the guy in the video.
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I'm not real familiar with her. I don't watch a lot of t.v., although I did watch a lot of the "Holmes" shows at one time and I like that guy.
 
Moot said:
So do you blame Detroit's economic demise on the 1967, 12th Street riots?
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By the time the 12th Street Riots occurred the politicians had so badly eviscerated the tax code it made it difficult for the city to rebuild.

The article you posted concludes that "Detroit’s property tax base remains". But how could the property tax base remain the same after the collapse of the auto industry and the recent economic crisis that forced hundreds of thousands out of their homes and migrate to other cities or states? If Detroit's tax base was/is land value...then all that abandoned land isn't getting taxed and therefore Detroit's tax base has been reduced considerably.
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The author states "the property tax base remains," "not the property tax base remains the same."

Detroit can recover. They just need to look back at what worked for them (and other cities for that matter).


The article doesn't even mention the collapse of the auto industry contributing to Detroit's economic demise and lowered land values...and yet it played a major role.
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It did. However, as the article clearly notes, Detroit was on the downswing well before the auto collapse.
 
Dibbler said:
Detroit’s seen a staggering 140,000 foreclosures in the last decade. Tens of thousands of homes have been left abandoned, turning entire neighborhoods into an urban wasteland. The Obama administration has been pumping billions of dollars into the Motor City in an effort to revive it, and last week the president paid Detroit a visit to see if the federal funding has had any effect.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4ZsGFCcf2U
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I looked into buying a foreclosure in Detroit and crime is the problem because it raises insurance rates. Even if I find a house to buy that isn't too torn up and paying the back taxes would be manageable I'd still have to deal with the insurance once I'm done. If I had decided to move to the neighborhood I was looking at my car insurance alone would have been over $5500 per year and that's just for no-fault, once I heard that I didn't bother to ask what homeowner's would have been. Blighted houses need to be torn down but I don't think that alone will help the city much when it comes re-population, for the effort the city is asking people to put in there are better, safer options in the near suburbs.
 
Chomsky said:
faithful_servant, I addressed this in my earlier reply to you.

There simply isn't enough free-market capital available in terms of ready, willing, and able buyers and renters.

It's purely supply & demand.

If buyers and renters of adequate means were there, privateers would renovate.

You've got to remember, there's been a mass exodus of population from Detroit! Many of those of financial means & wherewithal left, leaving behind those of more limited means (in general terms of working employed individuals).

And as has been pointed-out, in many of these buildings the costs of refurbishing may eclipse the cost of putting-up more modern cost-effective housing.
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One of the prime problems is Detroit demands the back taxes for these properties. These properties would sell quickly to long term investors and the like if that wasn't the case. I was seriously looking into taking over a whole neighborhood and refurbishing it into something really nice a very affordable. The back taxes and fees and all the rest of the government crap is what shot that plan down. I come back to the idea on occasion. Unfortunately Detroit's stupidity in such matters always raises its head. Apparently they don't realize that by eliminating the accrued taxes on the properties and just starting over with a new owner fresh will actually help their city and bring people in which is what they need. There is opportunity its just being blocked by the blockheads in Detroit.
 
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