the only way to halt white flight is to have the governing jurisdictions so dang large that any flight beyond its borders is utterly implausible
so that sinks all the "merge nearby community" ideas
At this point it's no longer white flight, it's anyone with money and kids flight.
I think you could convince them to pick up the slack as long as it wasn't for every service, and definitely not schools.
i think that it would need to be both inexpensive and the poor people would need to be kept out of their communities. Neither is viable, since building new infrastructure for them in their communities is expensive. End result would likely be more white flight or all the rich kids going to private schools and the public schools being neglected.
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AManFromEarthLet's get to twerk!The King in the SwampRegistered Userregular
Eminent Domain gets used to build shopping centers in this country, Ronya.
It could easily be used to seize the empty neighborhoods of Detroit if there was the political will to do so.
Which I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that there is not.
It's not lack of will, it's lack of money. You have to pay the homeowners, you have to pay lawyers for the inevitable suits, and you have to pay to clean up. Detroit has got no money and a ridiculously huge urban blight problem.
Can't wait for the inevitable Top Gear - Detroit special. Here's $5,000 dollars. Buy a car and a city block.
"And then what? What's our challenge?"
"No worries blokes. This adventure comes to you."
Anything of value has already been stripped from those abandoned homes / neighborhoods (1/3 of the fucking STREETLIGHTS in Detroit don't work because someone stole the copper). So expecting people to go in and clean this up for free is a pipe dream.
It's going to take money, and lots of it. On top of coming up with the money, is who does the work.
When and if this happens, where there are widespread demolitions, it's going to be Homrich and their subcontractors or a similar company. They will be mostly white guys who drive in from Royal Oak or Carleton or Livonia every morning, get on their equipment, and then drive home in the afternoon. Even in these blighted neighborhoods, there are homes that people live in, and have lived in their entire lives.
If the State / EM goes this route and wants to generate any good faith, they need to make sure that a sizable number of the workers are from Detroit and are keeping the paycheck in their community. Otherwise, the people in the city just see the white folk coming in again and taking even more of the little bit they've got. Yes, I get some cleanup needs to be done by professionals / experts, not neighborhood people with hammers and crowbars.
If they are going to bulldoze neighborhoods and turn them into parks, they should have unemployed Detroit residents doing the mowing and cleanup. Pay them a reasonable wage, let them work within walking distance of their homes, and give them something to be proud of in their community. Don't just contract from the suburbs.
Hell, in areas where there is no contamination, provide funding for community gardens. Provide training and free (state funded) day care / pre-school for these 'Public Works' workers. Detroit has some of the richest soil in the nation, so why not use it? Maybe even do a sort of homestead act for those workers, providing them with a free home in the neighborhoods that are being kept, and a guarantee that after X years of work they will own outright.
Also, as a side note...since nothing is happening anytime soon, it would be a good place to employ Phytoremediation to clean up some contamination. Stuff the biomass in the salt mines, and maybe even pick up a few bucks for the city in carbon credits.
But again, even in the pipe dream where we get funding for infrastructure and works projects that can employ a sizable number of workers, we still have a variety of other problems that are somewhat intractable.
Noone will like this idea, but wouldn't "reservations" for the poor actually be really good? You could make people live in efficient, high density housing with a small, easily maintained mass transit system, you would have a smaller number of schools which would make it easier to improve them, and in general, it would make the provision of high quality services to them much more viable.
you're talking about segregating people based on their wealth
literally government-mandated ghettoes
While skfm isn't proposing a ghetto (its not a ghetto if there is easy, cheap transport to places that aren't in the ghetto) the idea of income segregated housing has been tried multiple times by many countries, including the US. The problem is that while it concentrates the people, and WOULD make it easier to deliver services it also concentrates the problems. Now, the drug dealers and violent criminals have every incentive to increase their influence in the area, but conversely the government has every incentive to pull all those extra services which were the entire reason for creating the area since there are no rich people in the area to complain effectively about its problems. Then of course in the next step the area becomes so bad that the rich white folk outside it start pulling funding for the transit links the people there need to even be able to get jobs... Which then turns it into a proper ghetto.
What is really needed is for richer people to move out of the suburbs and back into the cities, and for commuter rail and buses to vastly expand so more areas become viable for people living without cars. If rich people also live in our high density area, then we get the best of all worlds. And then the area becomes too expensive for the poor people.... But thats why we need the public transit, so there are so many nice liveable areas that they cant ALL become unreasonably expensive.
Why couldn't you just have really vigorous law enforcement efforts in those areas?
Because it costs money, and in order to keep money flowing to those areas the area needs an effective voice in government and to be well integrated with the rest of the community (IE, people want to come to the high density area as well)
With every attempt to create housing for the poor and isolate people by wealth what happens is that the initial allocation of resources makes sense, lots of money for the dense inner city area where the workingman has to live, and less per unit area for the suburbs. That will of course include lots of policing for the dense area. Then the rich folk decide they don't want to pay taxes, and they lobby for them to go down, and then they lobby for school budgets to be cut (since their kids go to private schools, or to local public schools which receive regular vast donations from parents)
If you isolate the vulnerable elements of society with the intent to give them stuff, then the predatory elements will just take that stuff away.
I still say its not a ghetto if you can leave easily though... It just will eventually become one when the rich get the transport links shut down (other than the ones they need to get the poor people to work in their taco bells)
If the federal government were willing to spend some money on Detroit, maybe using the Army Corps of Engineers would be the way to go. The skillset matches (rehabbing bombed out warzones) and corruption should happen far less often than with any other type of contractor. Good luck shaking down the United States Army.
oh yes, more local-only contracting, I'm sure that would be utterly uncompromised by existing city corruption
Well, yeah.
I just figured if we're getting wishes granted, might as well go for broke.
In theory, with proper oversight, it could work. Not like there isn't rampant corruption in the contracting we'll see otherwise, and I'd rather see twenty or thirty thousand unemployed Detroit residents getting paid to do the work than some construction / demolition conglomerate.
there is no wage that would make that manageable, I suspect
anyway the "I'm king of this slum and you're not allowed to do anything here, dirty capitalist foreigner, without paying me a toll" attitude is precisely what tends to legitimize corrupt government
I just want to make an aside to the "relocated the poor into high-density housing to make it cheaper and easier to provide resources for them" a few pages back.
Its been tried, back in the 1960s there where these huge housing development project with this exact goal in mind in practically every major city in the US. It failed miserably, beyond failure into active malice.
Its from this age of urban redevelopment we have the synonym for Slum, Ghetto and Urban Hellhole: The Projects.
Sure a new try might work, but considering the last time produced multiple major failures across the continental United States(and beyond look up council estates in Britain) that proved a blight on the Urban landscape and an undeniable factor in perpetuating poverty across the generations. I am going to filled the entire thing under ideas that don't work and are bad.
The sky was full of stars, every star an exploding ship. One of ours.
public housing has worked better elsewhere. at any given time, unless your government has an active goal in sustaining a large share of the population in public housing, any remaining housing projects will be the remaining failures
it should be acknowledged that UK council estates have varying success, and the successful ones are sold off
it's actually pretty fascinating to read up the old theories of how to best provide universal housing, there was so much overtly fact-free theorizing back then, even the success stories were largely accidental. a lot of structures of the era fell victim to simple "whoops, it turns out that poured concrete stops looking shiny and appealing really, really fast"
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spacekungfumanPoor and minority-filledRegistered User, __BANNED USERSregular
Honestly, I think the idea is sound, but noone has the will to continue with it, and without funding, the whole thing falls apart.
public housing has worked better elsewhere. at any given time, unless your government has an active goal in sustaining a large share of the population in public housing, any remaining housing projects will be the remaining failures
it should be acknowledged that UK council estates have varying success, and the successful ones are sold off
it's actually pretty fascinating to read up the old theories of how to best provide universal housing, there was so much overtly fact-free theorizing back then, even the success stories were largely accidental. a lot of structures of the era fell victim to simple "whoops, it turns out that poured concrete stops looking shiny and appealing really, really fast"
I still think a 'homestead act' would be a good idea. Identify neighborhoods that have relatively low occupancy rates where a large portion of the homes are in moderately good condition. Offer those homes to residents from the neighborhoods you are trying to shrink at no cost. Have guidelines to screen out criminals, drug abusers, etc...pretty standard for public housing.
Offer discounted or free supplies like paint, lumber, etc along with training to encourage the home owners to fix up and maintain their homes and neighborhood. Possibly by offering tax incentives and preferential consideration to the suppliers / contractors, or as part of the terms of contracts for other work. After X years, allow the people who moved in and fixed up the homes to sell them.
If done right, you basically concentrated and gentrified the neighborhoods. The residents that plan on selling their home and profiting off their 'sweat equity' have an incentive to keep crime down and property values up. That will help break the 'stop snitching' mentality. Creating attractive neighborhoods may draw residents, pushing property values higher and bringing much needed wealth to the city.
Also, by concentrating the population, there is an incentive for businesses to locate to that area, bringing jobs. Local job programs, even if they are inefficient, put money right back into the local economy.
Who am I kidding though? This is America. Never going to happen, not even a single pilot neighborhood. Funding is the big problem, and nobody wants to give the black people something for free.
Or it'll happen but with a twist of allowing larger development companies to purchase the houses and they, along with the contractors, will start abusing all those things to provide the same poor housing but at lower costs to them.
It's like what's happened with homeless shelters and now charter schools.
If the federal government were willing to spend some money on Detroit, maybe using the Army Corps of Engineers would be the way to go. The skillset matches (rehabbing bombed out warzones) and corruption should happen far less often than with any other type of contractor. Good luck shaking down the United States Army.
Defense contractors do it all the time. Combining the city of Detroit and the Pentagon would probably create some unholy balrog of corruption that would swallow the entire nation whole.
Self-righteousness is incompatible with coalition building.
I think you are overestimating the desire of urban residents to put in hard labour for a house of dubious construction quality
sweat equity is nice though. maybe just painting and installing the final furnishings like doors, etc. will suffice
This is done on a small scale now. The general outcome is that the houses remain in good shape and do not go on the market much, because owners have more of an investment and poor people want houses to live in, not to get a jumpstart in the exciting world of real estate flipping.
See studies of Habitat and HUD projects for lots of data on how this works in practice.
the problem with having to summon massive local multiple-constituency support to get construction projects permitted, is that the only projects that get permitted are those where everyone sees a chance to loot the project.
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spacekungfumanPoor and minority-filledRegistered User, __BANNED USERSregular
I think that you could do a lot worse than saying "live in, pay taxes on, and maintain the house we build for you for 5 years and then you own it."
If the federal government were willing to spend some money on Detroit, maybe using the Army Corps of Engineers would be the way to go. The skillset matches (rehabbing bombed out warzones) and corruption should happen far less often than with any other type of contractor. Good luck shaking down the United States Army.
Defense contractors do it all the time. Combining the city of Detroit and the Pentagon would probably create some unholy balrog of corruption that would swallow the entire nation whole.
I suspect the materiel acquiring part of the pentagon and the ACE are run to different standards
the problem with having to summon massive local multiple-constituency support to get construction projects permitted, is that the only projects that get permitted are those where everyone sees a chance to loot the project.
I spoke to a major construction contractor who was bitching about having to set aside low-income housing. What he told me was that he and all his fellows hated building cheaper housing, because with 10 percent more labor and materials cost, they could turn any project into a future "luxury" home.
Which is why the nation spent so much of the last two decades pumping out McMansions while two entire generations of young people struggled to pay for any housing. As with any tragedy of the commons, actions that were economically rational for one player (put in a little more in construction costs and sell the house for twice as much) ended up fucking up the entire market. We have thousands, if not millions, of homes that the market cannot afford sitting empty while we have millions of college-educated professionals living 6 to a house like 19th century immigrants.
In some places Habitat has deals in place to be sold abandoned plots of land, from the City, for $1. In those places all Habitat has to do is maintain them until they are ready to build on them. So you could solve some problems by enacting the same policy in Detroit and at the same time funnel funding into the Metro Habitat. This would solve a lot of the blight issues right off the bat. It would also help to revitalize lived in premises of people who can't take care of them because that is an ancillary function of Habitat.
Mostly just huntin' monsters.
XBL:Phenyhelm - 3DS:Phenyhelm
the problem with having to summon massive local multiple-constituency support to get construction projects permitted, is that the only projects that get permitted are those where everyone sees a chance to loot the project.
I spoke to a major construction contractor who was bitching about having to set aside low-income housing. What he told me was that he and all his fellows hated building cheaper housing, because with 10 percent more labor and materials cost, they could turn any project into a future "luxury" home.
Which is why the nation spent so much of the last two decades pumping out McMansions while two entire generations of young people struggled to pay for any housing. As with any tragedy of the commons, actions that were economically rational for one player (put in a little more in construction costs and sell the house for twice as much) ended up fucking up the entire market. We have thousands, if not millions, of homes that the market cannot afford sitting empty while we have millions of college-educated professionals living 6 to a house like 19th century immigrants.
because building any housing with the intent to lower local housing prices is anathema
the problem with having to summon massive local multiple-constituency support to get construction projects permitted, is that the only projects that get permitted are those where everyone sees a chance to loot the project.
I spoke to a major construction contractor who was bitching about having to set aside low-income housing. What he told me was that he and all his fellows hated building cheaper housing, because with 10 percent more labor and materials cost, they could turn any project into a future "luxury" home.
Which is why the nation spent so much of the last two decades pumping out McMansions while two entire generations of young people struggled to pay for any housing. As with any tragedy of the commons, actions that were economically rational for one player (put in a little more in construction costs and sell the house for twice as much) ended up fucking up the entire market. We have thousands, if not millions, of homes that the market cannot afford sitting empty while we have millions of college-educated professionals living 6 to a house like 19th century immigrants.
because building any housing with the intent to lower local housing prices is anathema
Can you elaborate on that?
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spacekungfumanPoor and minority-filledRegistered User, __BANNED USERSregular
the problem with having to summon massive local multiple-constituency support to get construction projects permitted, is that the only projects that get permitted are those where everyone sees a chance to loot the project.
I spoke to a major construction contractor who was bitching about having to set aside low-income housing. What he told me was that he and all his fellows hated building cheaper housing, because with 10 percent more labor and materials cost, they could turn any project into a future "luxury" home.
Which is why the nation spent so much of the last two decades pumping out McMansions while two entire generations of young people struggled to pay for any housing. As with any tragedy of the commons, actions that were economically rational for one player (put in a little more in construction costs and sell the house for twice as much) ended up fucking up the entire market. We have thousands, if not millions, of homes that the market cannot afford sitting empty while we have millions of college-educated professionals living 6 to a house like 19th century immigrants.
To be fair, those were selling fast and at high prices. . . If its more efficient to build them and you can sell them for more, why would you ever build anything else?
the problem with having to summon massive local multiple-constituency support to get construction projects permitted, is that the only projects that get permitted are those where everyone sees a chance to loot the project.
I spoke to a major construction contractor who was bitching about having to set aside low-income housing. What he told me was that he and all his fellows hated building cheaper housing, because with 10 percent more labor and materials cost, they could turn any project into a future "luxury" home.
Which is why the nation spent so much of the last two decades pumping out McMansions while two entire generations of young people struggled to pay for any housing. As with any tragedy of the commons, actions that were economically rational for one player (put in a little more in construction costs and sell the house for twice as much) ended up fucking up the entire market. We have thousands, if not millions, of homes that the market cannot afford sitting empty while we have millions of college-educated professionals living 6 to a house like 19th century immigrants.
because building any housing with the intent to lower local housing prices is anathema
In their paper, the economists compared two ways of looking at the price of land. Suppose you want to calculate the value of a quarter-acre. One way is to take the difference in price between a house on a quarter-acre lot and the same house on a half-acre lot. A second way is to take the price of a house on a quarter-acre and subtract the construction cost of the building, leaving just the value of the land.
In an unrestricted land market, those two prices should be about the same, since each represents the value of a quarter-acre of land. When the economists did the two land-price calculations using statistical controls and a large set of housing data, however, they found very different results in places where housing is particularly expensive.
In Los Angeles, for instance, going from a quarter-acre to a half-acre lot for the same house costs about $2.60 a square foot, or roughly $28,000. But a quarter-acre lot with a house on it, minus the cost of the house, comes to almost 12 times that -- $30.44 a square foot, or about $331,000.
The difference represents the value of the right to build. Going from a quarter-acre lot to a half-acre lot in Los Angeles does not give you the right to build a second house.
The difference between the land prices is the implicit cost of all the local land-use controls, from zoning to the time it takes to get a permit. Some regulations simply raise the cost of building by slowing down the process. Others limit density, making it illegal to subdivide expensive land.
"If I look around me in Cambridge," Professor Glaeser explained, "there are a large number of $3 million houses on one-half of an acre. Cambridge is also filled with $1 million town houses on a 20th of an acre. If you're an enterprising developer, if you're not stymied by zoning regulations, you tear down the $3 million house, you use the half an acre, and you put up 10 town houses."
Presto: You've made $7 million, minus construction costs, and Cambridge has added nine units to meet the rising demand for housing. If land could be subdivided, that sort of process would happen whenever land prices became high.
But it cannot happen in Cambridge, or most other places in "blue America," because of land-use regulations. The result is soaring prices.
That's fine, of course, with people who already own their homes. "The overwhelming political story is that the majority of homeowners have absolutely no interest in there being affordable housing," Professor Glaeser noted. "The overwhelming reason that we have the web of zoning controls that we have is that local homeowners are powerful over their local areas, and they want to make their housing as expensive as possible."
postrel is a libertarian; I rather doubt that there is any land-use policy that isn't highly regulatory. But there are pro-development and pro-scarcity regulatory models
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SummaryJudgmentGrab the hottest iron you can find, stride in the Tower’s front doorRegistered Userregular
There are a few things brought up about Detroit since yesterday that I want to address.
Third, the buildings and infrastructure in Detroit city are outdated. The factories that haven't been torn down were built a half century or more ago, and it's far cheaper to buy a tract of farmland out in Dundee, or some brownfield in Trenton or Sterling Heights, and build a new modern / modular factory there. Old factories aren't designed for modern flexible manufacturing - they are designed for built in processes - and take long times to retool - say nothing of the hazardous material cleanup costs.
What I'm about to say isn't necessarily related to the Detroit discussion; but it always gives me chills (in a good way) to hear and talk with other Detroiters (Metro Detroiters?) on the internet. I grew up in Sterling Heights; I'm home in Shelby Township right now for break when my folks packed up and moved when I was in high school. My girlfriend is sitting next to me; her folks still live in Trenton. Small world, man.
And yeah, you called it as far as those two cities. Maybe someone will bulldoze McLouth Steel mill in Trenton and build right on top of it; or use space in any of the old industrial parks in Sterling Heights that are either vacant buildings or already-razed fields right now.
Some days Blue wonders why anyone ever bothered making numbers so small; other days she supposes even infinity needs to start somewhere.
let's hope that remains a "call by political commentators"
I know that in Crusader Kings II, whenever I have a useless bastard running around that might instigate a rebellion at any time I tend to put him in charge of some godawful fiefdom in the middle of nowhere.
the problem with having to summon massive local multiple-constituency support to get construction projects permitted, is that the only projects that get permitted are those where everyone sees a chance to loot the project.
I spoke to a major construction contractor who was bitching about having to set aside low-income housing. What he told me was that he and all his fellows hated building cheaper housing, because with 10 percent more labor and materials cost, they could turn any project into a future "luxury" home.
Which is why the nation spent so much of the last two decades pumping out McMansions while two entire generations of young people struggled to pay for any housing. As with any tragedy of the commons, actions that were economically rational for one player (put in a little more in construction costs and sell the house for twice as much) ended up fucking up the entire market. We have thousands, if not millions, of homes that the market cannot afford sitting empty while we have millions of college-educated professionals living 6 to a house like 19th century immigrants.
To be fair, those were selling fast and at high prices. . . If its more efficient to build them and you can sell them for more, why would you ever build anything else?
Because there are only a small number of customers who can afford your product, and every one of your competitors are competing for the same small number of customers. Driving your business into a ditch chasing an obvious bubble is not a smart business move.
let's hope that remains a "call by political commentators"
I know that in Crusader Kings II, whenever I have a useless bastard running around that might instigate a rebellion at any time I tend to put him in charge of some godawful fiefdom in the middle of nowhere.
So the Romney move makes sense, in a way.
I am so sad I can only Awesome this post once.
Guess Romney is pressing the weak claim on City of Detroit his father lost to rebellion in 1967?
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Clown ShoesGive me hay or give me death.Registered Userregular
it should be acknowledged that UK council estates have varying success, and the successful ones are sold off
That wouldn't have been so bad if the councils had been allowed (or forced) to use that money to build new houses. Unfortunately Thatcher wasn't really interested in helping people own homes just in helping the government to own fewer.
let's hope that remains a "call by political commentators"
I know that in Crusader Kings II, whenever I have a useless bastard running around that might instigate a rebellion at any time I tend to put him in charge of some godawful fiefdom in the middle of nowhere.
So the Romney move makes sense, in a way.
I am so sad I can only Awesome this post once.
Guess Romney is pressing the weak claim on City of Detroit his father lost to rebellion in 1967?
And at the moment there's no Pope to denounce him and create a theological schism that would incite further rebellion.
the problem with having to summon massive local multiple-constituency support to get construction projects permitted, is that the only projects that get permitted are those where everyone sees a chance to loot the project.
I spoke to a major construction contractor who was bitching about having to set aside low-income housing. What he told me was that he and all his fellows hated building cheaper housing, because with 10 percent more labor and materials cost, they could turn any project into a future "luxury" home.
Which is why the nation spent so much of the last two decades pumping out McMansions while two entire generations of young people struggled to pay for any housing. As with any tragedy of the commons, actions that were economically rational for one player (put in a little more in construction costs and sell the house for twice as much) ended up fucking up the entire market. We have thousands, if not millions, of homes that the market cannot afford sitting empty while we have millions of college-educated professionals living 6 to a house like 19th century immigrants.
To be fair, those were selling fast and at high prices. . . If its more efficient to build them and you can sell them for more, why would you ever build anything else?
Because there are only a small number of customers who can afford your product, and every one of your competitors are competing for the same small number of customers. Driving your business into a ditch chasing an obvious bubble is not a smart business move.
In the places they were building, I don't think the numbers were that small, a lot of them may be empty now or may have been repossessed, although I could be wrong and there could be a glut of these homes which neve sold.
let's hope that remains a "call by political commentators"
I know that in Crusader Kings II, whenever I have a useless bastard running around that might instigate a rebellion at any time I tend to put him in charge of some godawful fiefdom in the middle of nowhere.
So the Romney move makes sense, in a way.
Romney isn't going to instigate a rebellion and it is unlikely he'll be doing anything political relevant for some time. He'd be getting rewarded with this opportunity. Hasn't Detroit suffered enough? Why not get a competent Democrat in charge?
let's hope that remains a "call by political commentators"
I know that in Crusader Kings II, whenever I have a useless bastard running around that might instigate a rebellion at any time I tend to put him in charge of some godawful fiefdom in the middle of nowhere.
So the Romney move makes sense, in a way.
I thought that's what the Crusades were for.
Wait, shit, Romney already dodged that plan.
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SerukoFerocious Kittenof The Farthest NorthRegistered Userregular
let's hope that remains a "call by political commentators"
I know that in Crusader Kings II, whenever I have a useless bastard running around that might instigate a rebellion at any time I tend to put him in charge of some godawful fiefdom in the middle of nowhere.
So the Romney move makes sense, in a way.
Romney isn't going to instigate a rebellion and it is unlikely he'll be doing anything political relevant for some time. He'd be getting rewarded with this opportunity. Hasn't Detroit suffered enough? Why not get a competent Democrat in charge?
Putting your failed enemies in-charge of boondoggles is a win-win.
If they by some miracle fix it you get to take the credit for you managerial wisdom and ability to reach across the isle.
If they break it, well it was mostly broken anyway and you ensure they will never again rise to prominence.
"How are you going to play Dota if your fingers and bitten off? You can't. That's how" -> Carnarvon
"You can be yodeling bear without spending a dime if you get lucky." -> reVerse
"In the grim darkness of the future, we will all be nurses catering to the whims of terrible old people." -> Hacksaw
"In fact, our whole society will be oriented around caring for one very decrepit, very old man on total life support." -> SKFM
I mean, the first time I met a non-white person was when this Vietnamese kid tried to break my legs but that was entirely fair because he was a centreback, not because he was a subhuman beast in some zoo ->yotes
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I think you could convince them to pick up the slack as long as it wasn't for every service, and definitely not schools.
i think that it would need to be both inexpensive and the poor people would need to be kept out of their communities. Neither is viable, since building new infrastructure for them in their communities is expensive. End result would likely be more white flight or all the rich kids going to private schools and the public schools being neglected.
It could easily be used to seize the empty neighborhoods of Detroit if there was the political will to do so.
Which I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that there is not.
Can't wait for the inevitable Top Gear - Detroit special. Here's $5,000 dollars. Buy a car and a city block.
"And then what? What's our challenge?"
"No worries blokes. This adventure comes to you."
It's going to take money, and lots of it. On top of coming up with the money, is who does the work.
When and if this happens, where there are widespread demolitions, it's going to be Homrich and their subcontractors or a similar company. They will be mostly white guys who drive in from Royal Oak or Carleton or Livonia every morning, get on their equipment, and then drive home in the afternoon. Even in these blighted neighborhoods, there are homes that people live in, and have lived in their entire lives.
If the State / EM goes this route and wants to generate any good faith, they need to make sure that a sizable number of the workers are from Detroit and are keeping the paycheck in their community. Otherwise, the people in the city just see the white folk coming in again and taking even more of the little bit they've got. Yes, I get some cleanup needs to be done by professionals / experts, not neighborhood people with hammers and crowbars.
If they are going to bulldoze neighborhoods and turn them into parks, they should have unemployed Detroit residents doing the mowing and cleanup. Pay them a reasonable wage, let them work within walking distance of their homes, and give them something to be proud of in their community. Don't just contract from the suburbs.
Hell, in areas where there is no contamination, provide funding for community gardens. Provide training and free (state funded) day care / pre-school for these 'Public Works' workers. Detroit has some of the richest soil in the nation, so why not use it? Maybe even do a sort of homestead act for those workers, providing them with a free home in the neighborhoods that are being kept, and a guarantee that after X years of work they will own outright.
Also, as a side note...since nothing is happening anytime soon, it would be a good place to employ Phytoremediation to clean up some contamination. Stuff the biomass in the salt mines, and maybe even pick up a few bucks for the city in carbon credits.
But again, even in the pipe dream where we get funding for infrastructure and works projects that can employ a sizable number of workers, we still have a variety of other problems that are somewhat intractable.
Because it costs money, and in order to keep money flowing to those areas the area needs an effective voice in government and to be well integrated with the rest of the community (IE, people want to come to the high density area as well)
With every attempt to create housing for the poor and isolate people by wealth what happens is that the initial allocation of resources makes sense, lots of money for the dense inner city area where the workingman has to live, and less per unit area for the suburbs. That will of course include lots of policing for the dense area. Then the rich folk decide they don't want to pay taxes, and they lobby for them to go down, and then they lobby for school budgets to be cut (since their kids go to private schools, or to local public schools which receive regular vast donations from parents)
If you isolate the vulnerable elements of society with the intent to give them stuff, then the predatory elements will just take that stuff away.
I still say its not a ghetto if you can leave easily though... It just will eventually become one when the rich get the transport links shut down (other than the ones they need to get the poor people to work in their taco bells)
Well, yeah.
I just figured if we're getting wishes granted, might as well go for broke.
In theory, with proper oversight, it could work. Not like there isn't rampant corruption in the contracting we'll see otherwise, and I'd rather see twenty or thirty thousand unemployed Detroit residents getting paid to do the work than some construction / demolition conglomerate.
anyway the "I'm king of this slum and you're not allowed to do anything here, dirty capitalist foreigner, without paying me a toll" attitude is precisely what tends to legitimize corrupt government
Its been tried, back in the 1960s there where these huge housing development project with this exact goal in mind in practically every major city in the US. It failed miserably, beyond failure into active malice.
Its from this age of urban redevelopment we have the synonym for Slum, Ghetto and Urban Hellhole: The Projects.
Sure a new try might work, but considering the last time produced multiple major failures across the continental United States(and beyond look up council estates in Britain) that proved a blight on the Urban landscape and an undeniable factor in perpetuating poverty across the generations. I am going to filled the entire thing under ideas that don't work and are bad.
it should be acknowledged that UK council estates have varying success, and the successful ones are sold off
it's actually pretty fascinating to read up the old theories of how to best provide universal housing, there was so much overtly fact-free theorizing back then, even the success stories were largely accidental. a lot of structures of the era fell victim to simple "whoops, it turns out that poured concrete stops looking shiny and appealing really, really fast"
I still think a 'homestead act' would be a good idea. Identify neighborhoods that have relatively low occupancy rates where a large portion of the homes are in moderately good condition. Offer those homes to residents from the neighborhoods you are trying to shrink at no cost. Have guidelines to screen out criminals, drug abusers, etc...pretty standard for public housing.
Offer discounted or free supplies like paint, lumber, etc along with training to encourage the home owners to fix up and maintain their homes and neighborhood. Possibly by offering tax incentives and preferential consideration to the suppliers / contractors, or as part of the terms of contracts for other work. After X years, allow the people who moved in and fixed up the homes to sell them.
If done right, you basically concentrated and gentrified the neighborhoods. The residents that plan on selling their home and profiting off their 'sweat equity' have an incentive to keep crime down and property values up. That will help break the 'stop snitching' mentality. Creating attractive neighborhoods may draw residents, pushing property values higher and bringing much needed wealth to the city.
Also, by concentrating the population, there is an incentive for businesses to locate to that area, bringing jobs. Local job programs, even if they are inefficient, put money right back into the local economy.
Who am I kidding though? This is America. Never going to happen, not even a single pilot neighborhood. Funding is the big problem, and nobody wants to give the black people something for free.
sweat equity is nice though. maybe just painting and installing the final furnishings like doors, etc. will suffice
It's like what's happened with homeless shelters and now charter schools.
Defense contractors do it all the time. Combining the city of Detroit and the Pentagon would probably create some unholy balrog of corruption that would swallow the entire nation whole.
This is done on a small scale now. The general outcome is that the houses remain in good shape and do not go on the market much, because owners have more of an investment and poor people want houses to live in, not to get a jumpstart in the exciting world of real estate flipping.
See studies of Habitat and HUD projects for lots of data on how this works in practice.
I suspect the materiel acquiring part of the pentagon and the ACE are run to different standards
Oh, fuck no.
I spoke to a major construction contractor who was bitching about having to set aside low-income housing. What he told me was that he and all his fellows hated building cheaper housing, because with 10 percent more labor and materials cost, they could turn any project into a future "luxury" home.
Which is why the nation spent so much of the last two decades pumping out McMansions while two entire generations of young people struggled to pay for any housing. As with any tragedy of the commons, actions that were economically rational for one player (put in a little more in construction costs and sell the house for twice as much) ended up fucking up the entire market. We have thousands, if not millions, of homes that the market cannot afford sitting empty while we have millions of college-educated professionals living 6 to a house like 19th century immigrants.
In some places Habitat has deals in place to be sold abandoned plots of land, from the City, for $1. In those places all Habitat has to do is maintain them until they are ready to build on them. So you could solve some problems by enacting the same policy in Detroit and at the same time funnel funding into the Metro Habitat. This would solve a lot of the blight issues right off the bat. It would also help to revitalize lived in premises of people who can't take care of them because that is an ancillary function of Habitat.
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because building any housing with the intent to lower local housing prices is anathema
Can you elaborate on that?
To be fair, those were selling fast and at high prices. . . If its more efficient to build them and you can sell them for more, why would you ever build anything else?
http://www.nber.org/papers/w8835
one summary:
postrel is a libertarian; I rather doubt that there is any land-use policy that isn't highly regulatory. But there are pro-development and pro-scarcity regulatory models
What I'm about to say isn't necessarily related to the Detroit discussion; but it always gives me chills (in a good way) to hear and talk with other Detroiters (Metro Detroiters?) on the internet. I grew up in Sterling Heights; I'm home in Shelby Township right now for break when my folks packed up and moved when I was in high school. My girlfriend is sitting next to me; her folks still live in Trenton. Small world, man.
And yeah, you called it as far as those two cities. Maybe someone will bulldoze McLouth Steel mill in Trenton and build right on top of it; or use space in any of the old industrial parks in Sterling Heights that are either vacant buildings or already-razed fields right now.
I know that in Crusader Kings II, whenever I have a useless bastard running around that might instigate a rebellion at any time I tend to put him in charge of some godawful fiefdom in the middle of nowhere.
So the Romney move makes sense, in a way.
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Because there are only a small number of customers who can afford your product, and every one of your competitors are competing for the same small number of customers. Driving your business into a ditch chasing an obvious bubble is not a smart business move.
I am so sad I can only Awesome this post once.
Guess Romney is pressing the weak claim on City of Detroit his father lost to rebellion in 1967?
That wouldn't have been so bad if the councils had been allowed (or forced) to use that money to build new houses. Unfortunately Thatcher wasn't really interested in helping people own homes just in helping the government to own fewer.
And at the moment there's no Pope to denounce him and create a theological schism that would incite further rebellion.
twitch.tv/Taramoor
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In the places they were building, I don't think the numbers were that small, a lot of them may be empty now or may have been repossessed, although I could be wrong and there could be a glut of these homes which neve sold.
Romney isn't going to instigate a rebellion and it is unlikely he'll be doing anything political relevant for some time. He'd be getting rewarded with this opportunity. Hasn't Detroit suffered enough? Why not get a competent Democrat in charge?
I thought that's what the Crusades were for.
Wait, shit, Romney already dodged that plan.
Putting your failed enemies in-charge of boondoggles is a win-win.
If they by some miracle fix it you get to take the credit for you managerial wisdom and ability to reach across the isle.
If they break it, well it was mostly broken anyway and you ensure they will never again rise to prominence.
"You can be yodeling bear without spending a dime if you get lucky." -> reVerse
"In the grim darkness of the future, we will all be nurses catering to the whims of terrible old people." -> Hacksaw
"In fact, our whole society will be oriented around caring for one very decrepit, very old man on total life support." -> SKFM
I mean, the first time I met a non-white person was when this Vietnamese kid tried to break my legs but that was entirely fair because he was a centreback, not because he was a subhuman beast in some zoo ->yotes