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Six crazy ideas for saving Detroit. Detroit's bankruptcy filing is designed to solve the city's short-term financial crisis and give city leaders a bit of fiscal breathing room. But the city's long-term prospects still look bleak. Over the past 60 years, the city has lost more than half of its residents. As its tax base declined, the city struggled to pay for basic city services. As service quality declined, the city became an even less appealing place to live and so more people left. Really turning Detroit around will require some outside-the-box thinking. And there's been some. 1. Jack Kemp, Detroit's savior? And all the regulations: Jack Kemp, the former congressman and housing secretary, 1996 Republican vice-presidential nominee and 1988 presidential candidate, had an idea for America's inner cities. 2. Sort of like the Caymans. Delaware's strategy of structuring its corporate tax code to favor corporate headquarters has brought billions of dollars of investment into the state. 3.

(bigstockphoto) 4. 5. 6. Detroit becomes largest U.S. city to enter bankruptcy. Detroit Race Riot (1967) The Intersection of 12th Street and Clairmount, Saturday, July 23, 1967 Image Courtesy of the Detroit Free Press Image Ownership: Public Domain The Detroit Race Riot in Detroit, Michigan in the summer of 1967 was one of the most violent urban revolts in the 20th century. It came as an immediate response to police brutality but underlying conditions including segregated housing and schools and rising black unemployment helped drive the anger of the rioters.

On Sunday evening, July 23, the Detroit Police Vice Squad officers raided an after hours “blind pig,” an unlicensed bar on the corner of 12th Street and Clairmount Avenue in the center of the city’s oldest and poorest black neighborhood. A party at the bar was in progress to celebrate the return of two black servicemen from Vietnam. Although officers had expected a few patrons would be inside they found and arrested all 82 people attending the party.

At 2:00 a.m. Sources:Allen D. Marilyn Salenger: ‘White flight’ and Detroit’s decline. By Marilyn Salenger By Marilyn Salenger July 21, 2013 Marilyn Salenger is president of Strategic Communications Services and a former correspondent and news anchor for several CBS stations. An almost palpable sadness has swept across the country at the news that the city of Detroit has filed for bankruptcy. While the possibility of this had been discussed, the reality of what was once the fourth-largest city in the United States sinking to such depths is disheartening, a moment people will remember for years to come. To understand that the decline and bankruptcy represent so much more than dollars and cents requires a step back to a time that many would prefer to forget but remains unforgettable. In the late 1960s,racial tensions engulfed parts of our country, at the cost of lost lives and abject destruction.

It was the beginning of the ending we are now seeing for a city that once stood tall with head held high. Opinions Orlando Shooting Updates post_newsletter348 follow-orlando true after3th. Eerie Before and After Images Show Urban Decay in Detroit | The Weather Channel. Perhaps no American city symbolizes urban decay more than Detroit, Michigan. Modern day ruins of the Motor City are not difficult to find, as nature has reclaimed much of the city and neighboring areas. When their occupants left, the homes in the slideshow above became examples of what happens when weather and nature take over unattended homes. Using Google Maps time lapse function, it’s easy to see how much the Detroit suburbs have changed over just the last few years. Several homes are captured in the slideshow above and shown across several years, between 2007 and 2013. A lot changes throughout those six years. Weeds, grass and trees grow in the abandoned homes, and take over parts of each neighborhood.

But the changes to these buildings stretch beyond natural occurrences. No street appears as devastated as Hoyt Avenue, which had two well-kept homes in 2009 that were completely overrun by grass and weeds by 2013. MORE FROM WEATHER.COM: Modern Ruins of Abandoned Detroit. Eight miles of murder | World news. Even by the low standards of Eight Mile Road, the Triple C bar was a seedy place to die. It is a squat one-storey building, windowless and dingy. The only hint at the nightclub inside is three white 'C's tacked to a dirty wall. It was here last week that local Detroit rapper 'Proof' died in a gun battle. It was a fight that ended another young black life in one of America's toughest cities. To many, Eight Mile is a familiar name - made famous by the semi-autobiographical movie of the same name by rapper Eminem. But unlike the white rapper Eminem, the black Proof - real name DeShaun Holton - showed that most people do not escape Eight Mile.

But Eight Mile means far more than another dead Detroit rapper, far more than one successful movie. Walking from one side of Eight Mile Road to the other is a jarring experience. In Detroit the unemployment rate is 14.1 per cent, more than double the national average. That decision goes to the core of the problem: race. Violence in rap. The Threat to Detroit’s Rebound Isn’t Crime or the Economy, It’s the Mortgage Industry. As a young married couple, Steven and Corey Josephson chose to begin their lives together in Detroit. They came from Greeley, Colorado, a city that couldn’t be more different. It was founded as an experimental utopian community; its majority-white population has more than doubled since 1970; and its unemployment rate is lower than the national average, and about half that of Detroit. But in August 2014, they left.

Corey, a theater and English teacher, grew up in Michigan, and Steven found a position in Detroit’s Teach for America program, teaching science to the youngest kids at Coleman A. Young Elementary School. Along with their beagle, Baley, they moved into a house in northeast Detroit near 8 Mile Road. “He bought the house originally for $40,000, but home values are not even close to that,” Josephson says. Two different stories are playing out in Detroit — though they seem like they should contradict each other. But at this point, at least, there’s room for everyone.

Taxes fall in Detroit neighborhoods. Many Detroit homeowners will see their property tax assessments drop 5%-15% this year, although bustling downtown and Midtown will see an increase of 5%, city officials said Monday. It's the latest adjustment in Detroit's three-year effort to reassess every one of the city's 220,000 homes, something that Detroit's chief assessor, Gary Evanko, said the city hasn't done in at least 45 years.

Officials want to ensure that property tax assessments more closely match home sale prices in a city deeply scarred by the subprime mortgage foreclosure crisis. City officials said large portions of northwest, north and northeast Detroit will see 15% reductions, while the southwest, near west and lower east parts of the city will see reductions around 5%. Some of the city's more stable neighborhoods — Boston-Edison, Indian Village and Sherwood Forest — will see increases of 15%, reflecting rising sale prices. Collection rates are rising, Duggan said. Volume of abandoned homes 'absolutely terrifying' Detroit — Detroit has had more homes foreclosed in the past 10 years than the total number of houses in several suburbs — or all of Buffalo, New York. Since 2005, more than 1-in-3 Detroit properties — 139,699 of 384,672 — have been foreclosed because of mortgage defaults or unpaid taxes, property records show.

The vast majority are houses, and the tally is so huge it shocked even those who spent years working on foreclosure in Detroit. "When you see it on a map, it's absolutely terrifying," said Chris Uhl, a vice president of the Skillman Foundation that is working to prevent foreclosures. To get a sense of the loss, consider all the houses in Warren, Livonia, Royal Oak, Southfield and Allen Park.

Empty them. The number is still less than all the foreclosures in Detroit. "Even if you are deeply involved, you can't help but be staggered by these numbers," said Steve Tobocman, a former state representative who served as co-director of the Michigan Foreclosure Task Force. "I'm hysterical. Detroit population rank is lowest since 1850. For the first time since before the Civil War, Detroit is not among the nation’s 20 most populous cities. Detroit’s population was 677,116 as of last summer, a loss of 3,107 residents from the previous year, according to estimates released Thursday by the U.S.

Census Bureau. That’s the smallest decline in decades, but it was enough to drop the city to 21st in the nation, surpassed by Seattle, Denver and El Paso, Texas. The last time Detroit wasn’t a Top 20 city by population was the 1850 census, when it ranked 30th, according to the bureau. In 1940, it was the fourth largest city behind New York, Chicago and Philadelphia. “A lot of Detroiters really think of themselves as being in one of the country’s biggest cities, and that’s just not true anymore,” said Kevin Boyle, an author and history professor at Northwestern University, who grew up in Detroit. “It’s just a fundamentally different place than it was a half century ago.” The good news is Detroit’s decline is the smallest in decades.

A Declining Population In A Widespread City - pg.1. White Flight - How Detroit Lost Its Way.