Detroit house auction flops for urban wasteland
Life in "Progress" City
In a crowded ballroom next to a bankrupt casino, what remains of the Detroit property market was being picked over by speculators and mostly discarded.
After five hours of calling out a drumbeat of "no bid" for properties listed in an auction book as thick as a city phone directory, the energy of the county auctioneer began to flag.
"OK," he said. "We only have 300 more pages to go."
There was tired laughter from investors ready to roll the dice on a city that has become a symbol of the collapse of the U.S. auto industry, pressures on the industrial middle-class and intractable problems for the urban poor.
On the auction block in Detroit: almost 9,000 homes and lots in various states of abandonment and decay from the tidy owner-occupied to the burned-out shell claimed by squatters.
Taken together, the properties seized by tax collectors for arrears and put up for sale last week represented an area the size of New York's Central Park. Total vacant land in Detroit now occupies an area almost the size of Boston, according to a Detroit Free Press estimate.
These auctioned properties were only from one year (2006). Things have only got worse in the housing market since then and the Auto Companies just went bankrupt. I read that last year Detroit had 50,000 to 60,000 abandoned buildings. Wouldn't surprise me if that number is larger now.
Gordon Gekko at the Taxman Blog notes that it wasn't conservative administrations that turned Detroit into a cesspool of humanity. You can make that argument for every big city in decline in middle america.
That argument was made very well in the past by Steven Hayward:
Broken Cities- Liberalism’s urban legacy
. Sphere: Related Content
5 comments:
Shakes
I appreciate the link.
I have a question for you and other out there. Why is it that conservatives and/or republicans refuse to use the rot democrats created in our cities as evidence of what liberal policies do to communities/state/nations?
What better way to show how you competitor is incompetent than do a power point of the photos of Detroit.
Liberals would never win another election.
I just don't get it.
I don't get it either. I can't see how we can blame anyone but Democrats.
A large percentage of the urban population is African-American. The black vote has gone overwhelmingly Democratic over the years.
Back in the fifties Republican tickets like Ike and Nixon were still able to garner 40% of the black vote. And back in the fifties black families were still strong and young blacks could still get a decent education in public schools.
The sixties seem to be the line of demarcation that starts a rapid urban decline.
Democratic political machines in our cities are notoriously corrupt. Chicago and Detroit are the favorite examples. It happens on a lesser scale in Cincinnati too.
The number one thing I think we could do to help our cities is to advocate vouchers and break the teachers unions. So many people move out of town just because Cincinnati Public Schools can't offer their children a good education.
It is part of the housing bubble that is never discussed. Many people move out of cities to the more expensive suburbs because they felt they had to for the future of their children. Some of these people took on loans that they realistically couldn't afford, and they did so in an effort to give their kids a chance at a better life. I have sympathy for those people.
The teachers unions and the government monopoly in education have done much to destroy our cities. To get these cities back I feel we need to break the union and the government monopoly.
Things don't look that good for vouchers right now with Democrats in power. The party of "pro-choice" and "government option" advocates no choice for parents stuck in bad government schools, and no government option to get them out of those schools. Barack and Arne Duncan already killed the DC Voucher program even though the results were encouraging.
Democrats should shoulder the blame for urban decline. It is an amazing trick of the devil that they are allowed to get away with their history of failed policies.
Gordon Gekko: Why is it that conservatives and/or republicans refuse to use the rot democrats created in our cities as evidence of what liberal policies do to communities/state/nations?
Answer: Because they're afraid of being accused of racism.
When i first saw these photographs i thought they were taken in Glasgow Scotland...
GOptards are racists - is why blacks dont vote for them,
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