Billions in Debt, Detroit Tumbles Into Insolvency

The municipal bond market will be paying particular attention to Detroit because of what it may mean for investing in general obligation bonds. In recent weeks, as Detroit officials have proposed paying off small fractions of what the city owes, they have indicated they intend to treat investors holding general obligation bonds as having no higher priority for payment than, for instance, city workers — a notion that conflicts with the conventions of the market, where general obligation bonds have been seen as among the safest investments and all but certain to be paid in full. Officials in other financially troubled cities may feel encouraged to follow Detroit’s path, some experts say. A rush of municipal bankruptcies appears unlikely, though, and leaders of other cities will want to see how this case turns out, particularly when it comes to pension and retiree health care costs, said Karol K.

Detroit, Losing Population, Makes Plans to Shrink “The biggest problems are those people who are on the outskirts more than anything else, where neighborhoods have gone down to a point where it makes no sense to reinvest,” he said. “People will say, ‘Well, why not me?’ And I’m saying, we don’t have the money to do that.” Detroit is already shrinking on its own, of course. But the losses have been spread around the city, meaning that vacant, dilapidated homes and empty lots speckle Detroit’s neighborhoods, rather than cropping up in consolidated, convenient chunks on the city edges, leaving a more vibrant core. And so, a contingent of private consultants and city officials like Ms. Among the dismal findings: more than 100,000 parcels, private and public, are vacant; and only 38 percent of Detroiters work in the city. The goal is to identify the strongest, most viable neighborhoods, which would receive extra attention and help from the city. Photo “I’m going to stay right here,” said Mr. Rumors are winding through neighborhoods. Mr.

Detroit area's battle with blight may be key to survival Population Of Detroit In 2016 Detroit the most crowded city of Michigan and the biggest city on the United States-Canada border. The seat of Wayne County and the most crowded in the state. The city’s metropolitan range, known as Metro Detroit, is where around 5.3 million people live, making it the fourteenth-most crowded metropolitan region in the country and the second-biggest in the Midwestern US and just behind the city of Chicago. With extension of the automobiles business, range rose as a critical metropolitan region inside of the United States in the mid twentieth century, when the city turned into the fourth-biggest in the nation for a period. The city had a population of 703,284 in 2011, 698,582 in 2012, 701,475 in 2013, 700,872 in 2014. Therefore, to get the projected population of 2015, we need to take an average of the trend of population from the year 2011-2014. The city is the focal point of the urban region. It is controlled and governed in accordance with the Home Rule Charter of the City of Detroit.

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.

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. But assessments on 95% of homes in the city will go down.