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. 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. Detroit Redlining Map 1939 | DETROITography. Part of Detroit’s history of racial discrimination is comprised on housing discrimination, which in turn contributed to job discrimination, interpersonal racism, and continued racial inequity of opportunity. These areas of Detroit were targeted for “urban renewal” in the 1960s which displaced thousands of black residents to public housing complexes. Today these areas of Detroit have more vacancy (see map) than others either because the redlined properties were managed by slumlords whose properties deteriorated (see map) more quickly or from renewal efforts that didn’t consider the displacement of black residents.
The racial divisions we see in our neighborhoods today are the result of deliberate actions taken in the past. (State of Opportunity) This segregation of housing, which was legal up until the 1980s, also furthered school segregation and the inadequate education of Detroit’s black children. You can find other HOLC maps online at: urbanoasis.org Like this: Like Loading... Related. The Detroit Decision and "White Flight" on JSTOR.
Top 10 reasons Detroit went bankrupt. Detroit declared Chapter 9 bankruptcy July 17, making it the largest city in American history to enter the municipal bankruptcy process. A local judge ruled that filing unconstitutional July 19, but, as the city sorts out its next move, here are 10 key facts about the causes of Detroit's financial mess. 1. The population has collapsed in the past six decades. Detroit was America's fourth-largest city in 1950, when it had 1.8 million people. In the 2010 census, the city had fewer than 702,000 residents -- an astonishing decline of 60 percent in 60 years. Yes, fewer people means a smaller tax base, but the real problem is the city's government did not shrink along with the population -- more on that in a bit. 2. This is both a cause and an effect of the population situation. 3.
That's a lot more than some of the other high-profile municipal bankruptcy cases in recent years. "Detroit has been working its way to a level of insolvency for decades. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 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. Escape From Detroit: The Collapse of America’s Black Metropolis, by Paul Kersey - American Renaissance.
Escape From Detroit: The Collapse of America’s Black Metropolis by Paul Kersey 374 pages, SBPDL Books, $12 We last checked in with Paul Kersey with his earlier book Hollywood in Blackface, an exploration of the radically different realities of race in movies, and in the physical world. For his next venture, he has launched an exhaustively-researched inspection of the inward collapse of Detroit, MI. Whether Kersey is right or not distills to a question of root causes.
Many of us would argue that the cause of Detroit’s decline was abandonment by the middle class, which is inevitable once a mania for democratic equality becomes the norm, because democratic states focus on their poorest and least productive at the expense of the most productive in order to prove efforts are being made to enforce equality. A symptom of this, however, is a tendency to focus on ethnic minorities and civil rights at the expense of all other topics. Young was quoted as telling Rose in Detroit’s Agony: Rush Limbaugh: Detroit Went Bankrupt Because Blacks Drove Out Whites. By Alan Pyke and Igor Volsky Economists are attributing Detroit’s recent bankruptcy filing to problems facing the entire Rust Belt region: a shrinking tax base, high health and pension costs, sprawl, and general dysfunction. But on Tuesday, Rush Limbaugh added another cause to the long list of factors that have contributed to the city’s downfall: black people. During an appearance on Fox News’ On The Record with Greta Van Susteren on Tuesday, Limbaugh claimed that “unchecked” Democratic rule “since the last Republican mayor [in] 1957” created a lazy and bloated culture of out-of-control spending and corruption.
LIMBAUGH: You have massive welfare states where citizens are given things left and right in order to buy their votes. You have no opposition whatsoever. First, Coleman Young, who Limbaugh claims caused the riots, wasn’t elected to the mayor’s office until six years after violence broke out, in 1973. The riots of the late 1960s set off “a chain reaction in neighboring communities.”
Who's to blame for Detroit's collapse? - latimes. A for-lease sign on a building in downtown Detroit. The city filed for Chapter… (Bill Pugliano / Getty Images ) Detroit filed for bankruptcy Thursday, making it the largest U.S. city to ever seek Chapter 9 protection. It’s sad news for the once-great city. Still, the headline seemed to have delighted many.
Just check out The Times' comments section, with several readers gleefully blaming Democrats. “Detroit should be held up as a national example how liberal-socialist, Democrat policies can destroy a once vibrant city within a generation,” says “I hate the media.” In a 2011 Op-Ed about Detroit’s collapse, Scott Martelle, author of “Detroit: A Biography,” gave readers a view of the Michigan city through a different lens. Racism plays a significant role too. Earlier this year, Martelle wrote about Detroit’s demise for our Op-Ed pages again, explaining: So, what’s next for Detroit? Now is hardly the time for conservatives to indulge in schadenfreude. No federal bailout, period. Nine Reasons Why Detroit Failed. My hometown of Detroit has been studied obsessively for years by writers and researchers of all types to gain insight into the Motor City’s decline.
Indeed, it seems to have become a favorite pastime for urbanists of all stripes. How could such an economic powerhouse, a uniquely American city, so utterly collapse? Most analysis tends to focus on the economic, social and political reasons for the downfall. One of my favorite treatises on Detroit is The Origins of the Urban Crisis by Thomas Sugrue, who argues that housing and racial discrimination practices put in place after World War II played a primary role in the decline of Motown. I’d argue that it’s closest to the truth of an explanation for Detroit today, but not quite there. Everyone seems to know the shorthand narrative for Detroit’s fall. But here’s the thing. So why has Detroit suffered unlike any other major city?
If ever a city stood as a symbol of the dynamic U.S. economy, it was Detroit. Emphasis added. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. See the maps from the 1930s that explain racial segregation in Michigan today | state of opportunity. We know racial segregation exists in our communities. We know this segregation is rooted in history. And yet, sometimes we allow ourselves to believe that segregation is somehow a natural thing, that it happened all on its own.
But segregation in the United States did not happen happen that way. The racial divisions we see in our neighborhoods today are the result of deliberate actions taken in the past. Those actions, rooted in racism, were carried out by both individuals and institutions. One of the clearest visual representations of how racist policies shaped our neighborhoods comes from a mapping project launched in the 1930s by the federal Home Owners' Loan Corporation. The HOLC maps also give us the origin of the term "redlining. " Redlining is the practice of denying or limiting financial services to certain neighborhoods based on racial or ethnic composition without regard to the residents' qualifications or credit worthiness. Detroit Grand Rapids Flint Kalamazoo.
Detroit Taxes Are High, But City Spending Is Higher, Study Finds | The Huffington Post. April 1 (Reuters) - Detroit residents pay the highest local taxes on a per capita basis compared to other Michigan municipalities, while the city collects the biggest chunk of state shared revenue, according to an analysis released on Monday. The report by the Citizens Research Council of Michigan, a public policy group, comes just days after a state-appointed emergency manager stepped in to try and resolve Detroit’s fiscal problems. The council found that Detroit’s tax rates — including property, income and other local taxes — are high versus other Michigan cities. Its residents also bear a bigger tax burden as a percentage of income than those in other large U.S. cities even as the city struggles to stay fiscally afloat.
“They get a lot of money on a per capita basis. Detroit’s state and local tax burden as a percentage of annual family income surpassed the average for other large U.S. cities. Whites moving to Detroit, city that epitomized white flight. DETROIT — 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 is cheap housing and incentive programs that are partly fueling the regrowth of the Motor City’s white population. “For any individual who wants to build a company or contribute to the city, Detroit is the perfect place to be,” said Bruce Katz, co-director of the Global Cities Initiative at the Washington-based Brookings Institution.
“You can come to Detroit and you can really make a difference.” “A young person can move here with $10,000 and start up a small flex space for artists or artists’ studios,” Seger said. Elizabeth St. St. Detroit’s Bankruptcy Reflects a History of Racism. This is black history month. It is also the month that the Emergency Manager who took political power and control from the mostly African American residents of Detroit has presented his plan to bring the city out of the bankruptcy he steered it into. This is black history in the making, and I hope the nation will pay attention to who wins and who loses from the Emergency Manager’s plan.
Black people are by far the largest racial or ethnic population in Detroit, which has the highest percentage of black residents of any American city with a population over 100,000. Eighty-three percent of the city’s 701,000 residents are black. It continues to be an underreported story that a white state legislature and white governor took over the city and forced it to file for bankruptcy against the will of its elected representatives. It’s important to view what is happening to Detroit and its public employees through a racial lens. Government was involved at a more micro level as well. Detroit’s white population rises. Detroit’s white population rose by nearly 8,000 residents last year, the first significant increase since 1950, according to a Detroit News analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data. The data, made public Wednesday, mark the first time census numbers have validated the perception that whites are returning to a city that is overwhelmingly black and one where the overall population continues to shrink.
Many local leaders contend halting Detroit’s population loss is crucial, and the new census data shows that policies to lure people back to the city may be helping stem the city’s decline. “It verifies the energy you see in so many parts of Detroit and it’s great to hear,” said Kevin Boyle, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author and historian who studies the intersection of class, race, and politics in 20th-century America. The Northwestern University professor grew up on Detroit’s east side. “I think it’s a trend. The influx of whites helped slow Detroit’s population decline last year. The Downfall of Detroit: White Flight and the 1967 Race Riots | husseinbazzi. The 1967 Detroit riot, also known as the 12th Street riot, was a civil disturbance in Detroit, Michigan that began in the early morning hours of Sunday, July 23, 1967. The precipitating event was a police raid of an unlicensed, after-hours bar then known as a blind pig, on the corner of 12th (today Rosa Parks Boulevard) and Clairmount streets on the city’s Near West Side.
Police confrontations with patrons and observers on the street evolved into one of the deadliest and most destructive riots in United States history, lasting five days and surpassing the violence and property destruction of Detroit’s 1943 race riot, which occurred 24 years earlier. To help end the disturbance, Governor George Romney ordered the Michigan National Guard into Detroit, and President Lyndon B. Johnson sent in Army troops. The result was 43 dead, 467 injured, over 7,200 arrests, and more than 2,000 buildings destroyed (Rutgers.edu).
Works Cited Feagin, Joe R.. Like this: Like Loading... Why were the effects from white flight in Detroit so big? (middle-class, apartment complexes) - General U.S. - Page 3. How Detroit went broke: The answers may surprise you — and don't blame Coleman Young. The downfall of detroit.