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. Bowles, backed by the Ku Klux Klan, was in office for seven months in 1930 before people demanded his removal. Edward Jeffries, who served as mayor from 1940 to 1948, developed the Detroit Plan, which involved razing 100 blighted acres and preparing the land for redevelopment. Albert Cobo was considered a candidate of the wealthy and of the white during his tenure from 1950 to 1957.
Coleman A. Kwame M. Dave Bing, a former professional basketball star, took office in 2009 pledging to solve Detroit’s fiscal problems, which by then were already overwhelming. Detroit, MI - Unemployment Rate. The Struggles of Detroit Ensnare Its Workers. Great Migration, The (1915-1960) Black Family Arrives in Chicago from the South, ca. 1919 Image Ownership: Public Domain The Great Migration was the mass movement of about five million southern blacks to the north and west between 1915 and 1960. During the initial wave the majority of migrants moved to major northern cities such as Chicago, Illiniois, Detroit, Michigan, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and New York, New York.
By World War II the migrants continued to move North but many of them headed west to Los Angeles, Oakland, San Francisco, California, Portland, Oregon, and Seattle, Washington. The first large movement of blacks occurred during World War I, when 454,000 black southerners moved north. In the 1920s, another 800,000 blacks left the south, followed by 398,000 blacks in the 1930s. Between 1940 and 1960 over 3,348,000 blacks left the south for northern and western cities.
In additional to migrating for job opportunities, blacks also moved north in order to escape the oppressive conditions of the south. 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. “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 slide is a vivid reminder of shrinking clout in state and national politics and programs. “We are almost out of the woods,” Metzger said. 5 Days in 1967 Still Shake Detroit. But other scars from the riots remain. Hundreds of burned or looted businesses were never rebuilt. Tens of thousands of Detroiters moved to the suburbs, including many middle-class and affluent families. The city's tax base shrank and the quality of its schools declined. City officials have found it easier to fix a police force under their control than to repair the economic wounds left by the riots. Although public debate about the city's police force has largely disappeared, the struggle continues to rebuild what is also the nation's poorest big city. ''A lot has changed,'' said Detroit's Mayor, Dennis W.
But the Mayor acknowledged that other problems persisted. ''Whatever damage you inflict to your own city, it is likely to remain permanent,'' Mayor Archer said, ''because in the very same areas where there used to be flourishing businesses, they do not exist today, and in the very same areas where there used to be dense housing units, they no longer exist today.'' Mr. Mr. But to Mr. Mr. Research paper. The Racist Housing Policy That Made Your Neighborhood - The Atlantic. Before you read this post, read Ta-Nehisi's Coates powerful case for reparations, our cover story this month. In it, TNC (as he is known around here) relentlessly demonstrates the "compounding moral debts" of discriminatory practices, especially around housing. One of the most heinous of these policies was introduced by the creation of the Federal Housing Administration in 1934, and lasted until 1968.
Otherwise celebrated for making homeownership accessible to white people by guaranteeing their loans, the FHA explicitly refused to back loans to black people or even other people who lived near black people. As TNC puts it, "Redlining destroyed the possibility of investment wherever black people lived. " To understand the depth of the racism of these regulations, you have to read the descriptions of the grades that FHA gave to neighborhoods from A (green) to D (red).
TNC focuses in on North Lawndale, a neighborhood in Chicago, to make his point. But it's a similar story across the country. Detroit-and-the-property-tax-full_0. Billions in Debt, Detroit Tumbles Into Insolvency - NYTimes.com. Cookies are Not Accepted - New York Times. 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.
Detroit's emergency manager Kevyn Orr laid out all the problems and economic headwinds facing the city. . — Since 2000, Detroit's population has declined 26 percent. . — The official unemployment is now 18.6 percent, and fewer than half of the city's residents over the age of 16 are working. . — Low tax revenue, in turn, means that city services are suffering. . — High crime and blight are driving even more residents out of the city. . — Detroit is sagging under decades of bad governance. . — Meanwhile, Detroit owes around $18.5 billion to its creditors. Wonkbook newsletter Your daily policy cheat sheet from Wonkblog. Further reading: Cookies are Not Accepted - New York Times. Cookies are Not Accepted - New York Times.