After bankruptcy, few options for Detroit to grow revenue. Slash costs, fix the balance sheet and take money that was once tied to debts and spend it on police, fire and other city services.
That's the premise of Detroit's bankruptcy: short-term pain for long-term benefit, and cuts for Detroit's creditors, but better outcomes for residents. But of the $1.7 billion that Detroit's post-bankruptcy plan is expected to generate, only about $900 million comes from restructuring the city's debts. About $483 million comes from projected new revenues, $358 million from cost savings. "We don't have $1.7 billion in the bank," said former Detroit emergency manager Kevyn Orr, who led the city through bankruptcy. "We think we've made our estimates reasonable. " Simple enough on paper, but in reality? Anatomy of Detroit’s Decline - Interactive Feature. Mayor Coleman A. Young of Detroit at an event in 1980. Richard Sheinwald/Associated Press The financial crisis facing Detroit was decades in the making, caused in part by a trail of missteps, suspected corruption and inaction.
Here is a sampling of some city leaders who trimmed too little, too late and, rather than tackling problems head on, hoped that deep-rooted structural problems would turn out to be cyclical downturns. Charles E. U.S. Automakers Thrive as Detroit Goes Bankrupt. Detroit Riot of 1967. Detroit Race Riots 1943 . Eleanor Roosevelt . WGBH American Experience. As the nation's most important production center during the Second World War, the city of Detroit was popularly known as the "arsenal of democracy.
" The city's overwhelmingly industrial landscape had been rapidly expanding since the manufacturing boom of the post-Civil War era. Yet its industrial prosperity masked underlying and deeply-rooted racial animosities. AMTRACK STUDENT CARD 50$ Businessinsider. America's 10 sickest housing markets - Business - Real estate. For three years, the real estate market has been going in one direction — primarily down.
Some areas, however, have begun to recover. Recent S&P/Case-Shiller data show that among the top 20 housing markets in the U.S., 18 had very modest improvements in sales prices during May. Others, like Washington and Boston, have began to at least stabilize from a year ago. Few markets, however, can match Washington and Boston. Robert Shiller has been stating that home prices could fall another 10 percent in the next year. Once this is resolved, economists fear the market will be flooded with even more vacant, unsold homes. 24/7 Wall St. has taken a new look at the housing market to find the very weakest cities by identifying those with the highest homeowner vacancy rates and rental vacancy rates.
So cheap, there’s hope. Return to suburbs is the new move to the city - Business - Forbes.com. For well over a decade urban boosters have heralded the shift among young Americans from suburban living and toward dense cities.
As one Wall Street Journal report suggests young people will abandon their parents’ McMansions for urban settings, bringing about the high-density city revival so fervently prayed for by urban developers, architects and planners. Some demographers claim that “white flight” from the city is declining, replaced by a “bright flight” to the urban core from the suburbs. “Suburbs lose young whites to cities,” crowed one Associated Press headline last year. Yet evidence from the last Census show the opposite: a marked acceleration of movement not into cities but toward suburban and exurban locations. Forbes Welcome. How Detroit Leaders Ignored Causes of Bankruptcy for 65 Years. By Lew Mandell The signs of Detroit’s decline have been well-recognized for 65 years.
Photo courtesy of Spencer Platt/Getty Images. For the past few months, Lew Mandell, author of “What to Do When I Get Stupid,” has been our retirement finance guru. He’s addressed multiple ways to close the retirement income gap, encouraging boomers to plan ahead before they lose their financial faculties to old age.
The best retirement deal, he thinks, is the one that guarantees an 8.3 percent return — for life: Single Payment Immediate Annuities. But Mandell’s expertise is vast. 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. Detroit just filed for bankruptcy. Here’s how it got there. By Brad Plumer By Brad Plumer July 18, 2013 On Thursday, the city of Detroit filed for bankruptcy — the largest city in the United States ever to do so.
(Carlos Osorio/AP) To get a better sense of just how Detroit got into such dire financial straits, it's worth browsing through this May report on the city's finances and this "Proposal for Creditors" from June. Whites Moving to Detroit, City That Epitomized White Flight. Whites are moving back to the American city that came to epitomize white flight, even as blacks continue to leave for the suburbs and the city’s overall population shrinks.
Detroit is the latest major city to see an influx of whites who may not find the suburbs as alluring as their parents and grandparents did in the last half of the 20th century. Unlike New York, San Francisco and many other cities that have seen the demographic shift, though, it’s cheap housing and incentive programs that are partly fueling the regrowth of the Motor City’s white population.
{snip} No other city may be as synonymous as Detroit with white flight, the exodus of whites from large cities that began in the middle of the last century. Detroit went from a thriving hub of industry with a population of 1.8 million in 1950 to a city of roughly 680,000 in 2014 that recently went through the largest municipal bankruptcy in U.S. history.
White Flight Is Reversing in Detroit, Overturning a 60-Year Trend. Detroit is essentially the poster-city for population flux and demographic shifts.
In 1950, the city’s total population neared 2 million people, 84 percent of whom were white. Detroit’s white population rises. Whites moving to Detroit, city that epitomized white flight. Marilyn Salenger: ‘White flight’ and Detroit’s decline. Complete List - How Detroit Lost Its Way. General Motors, Delphi and the unions: Last tango in Detroit? “IN THIS case, it takes three to tango.”
So said Rick Wagoner, the boss of General Motors (GM), this week—his re-working of an old cliché, capturing the contortions he is having to perform as he struggles to save the ailing giant of the car industry. Given its shrinking market share, GM would be hard enough to revive were it any firm in any industry. But GM is not any old firm, and designing more sellable cars is arguably the least of its problems. These, as Mr Wagoner says, require it somehow to find a way not only to get back on its feet, but also to dance simultaneously with Delphi, its now bankrupt parts supplier, and with one of America's toughest trade unions, the United Auto Workers (UAW).
No wonder the firm's share price heads ever lower, and observers talk gloomily about GM stumbling dangerously towards Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. Explicit cookie consent. Saving Detroit: Iron Orr. The city’s broke. Let me fix it.