Federal takeover could fix blighted conditions
July 8, 2005
BY SUZETTE HACKNEY AND MARISOL BELLOFREE PRESS STAFF WRITERS
This grin looks too dayum suspicious to me.
The federal government took control of Detroit's public housing agency Thursday after decades of frustration with its money mismanagement, insubordinate employees and lax leadership that left thousands of Detroiters living in crumbling, rat-infested buildings.
For the poor residents served by the Detroit Housing Commission, such a takeover could be what is needed to provide safe and affordable housing. For years, residents have complained of broken elevators, busted plumbing, rodents and other deplorable conditions -- even after federal money was poured into renovating the buildings.
Only weeks before the city's mayoral primary on Aug. 2, Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick attempted to put a positive spin on the takeover by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. In an announcement Thursday, he said he looked forward to HUD getting the beleaguered department back on track.
But some city officials said Detroit's loss of control of a vital city department points to the mayor's failure to improve public housing. Detroit City Council members said they had no idea a takeover was in the works. They found out about it Thursday during their daily session.
In light of recent ruling on Eminent Domain by the Supreme Court none of this is surprising.
Considering the 'land grab' that's been going on in Detroit, it's even less surprising.
http://www.freep.com/news/locway/housing8e_20050708.htm
Detroit falls behind in fight against blight
City is running out of time to tear down 12,000 homes before Super Bowl in 2006.
By Joel Kurth / The Detroit News
DETROIT -- Less than a year before tourists and international media flock to the Super Bowl, politics and money have bogged down once-heralded efforts to rid Detroit of its 12,000 abandoned homes.
Wayne County's budget problems and political squabbling have hit hard an innovative program that used the courts to force owners to sell or fix more than 2,500 dilapidated Detroit homes since 1999. Last year, county lawsuits against deadbeat property owners fell to 104 from 1,163 in fiscal year 2003-04.
In Detroit, which operates separate programs to raze dangerous buildings, demolitions have declined significantly under Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick's watch. For the past 25 years, the city has leveled about 2,000 a year. Since 2003, the city has leveled 1,822.
http://www.detnews.com/2005/
Detroit Struggles to Overcome Urban Blight
Detroit's efforts to rid itself of dilapidated homes and buildings have drawn both supporters and critics, who worry about the lack of affordable housing for low-income residents. Hear various perspectives on the issue from: George Galster, professor of urban affairs at Wayne State University; Amru Meah, director of Detroit's Building & Safety Engineering Department; and Maryann Mahaffey, president of the Detroit City Council.
Listen to an argument over urban blight
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4254620
Appoint blight czar, unload land
Potent, independent authority should tackle abandonment
By Cameron McWhirter / The Detroit News
David Coates / The Detroit News
Experts recommend the city take a “Marshall Plan” approach to rid Detroit of abandoned buildings. Detroit has the worst abandonment problem in the nation.
DETROIT — To overcome Detroit’s abandoned building problem — the worst in the nation — the government needs to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on a massive, coordinated program.
Such an anti-blight assault would involve many city agencies and require determined, concentrated management from the highest levels of city government.
Proponents of this approach likened it to the “Marshall Plan,” the U.S. economic redevelopment
and aid program that succeeded in rebuilding a devastated western Europe after World War II.
http://www.detnews.com/.../
Detroit creates eyesore hit list.
141 decrepit properties need fixes or razing
By R.J. King / The Detroit News
DETROIT - In the most organized crackdown to date on vacant and dilapidated buildings, city leaders have compiled a list of 141 structures in Detroit that need to be demolished, renovated or cleaned up in time for the 2006 Super Bowl at Ford Field.
The Greater Downtown Partnership and the Detroit Economic Growth Corp. worked with the city of Detroit over the past year to identify the city's worst eyesores, who owns the buildings and the proposed remedy.
MADISON LENOX HOTEL: The building is one of Mike Ilitch's vacant structures and will be demolished or renovated.
LINDELL AC and 350 MICHIGAN: The adjacent buildings will be replaced with a new transit center.
STATLER HILTON: The hotel, abandoned for 20 years, will be razed later this year and replaced with housing.
JOY FASHION: The building, adjacent to Hughes & Hatcher, will be razed for a parking garage.
C.C. BAR: The former watering hole on Cass will either be demolished or renovated.
OPERA HOUSE GARAGE: The parking garage will be razed for a new parking deck and office building.
SCHICK DOLLAR DRY CLEANERS: It hasn't been determined whether the former cleaners will be razed or renovated.
RESTAURANT: The restaurant at 2114 Cass, adjacent to the former C.C. Bar, will either be razed or renovated.
http://www.detnews.com/.../
Derelict buildings haunt school kids.
Lagging war against blight troubles Detroit families
By Cameron McWhirter and Brian Harmon / The Detroit News DETROIT --
This is a ploy..........no city office has convinced me that they care about the well being of the children of Detroit.....'The City' sat by and watched the Burnley administration bankrupt the Detroit Public School system.
The house at 2900 Pingree could pass for the Hollywood set of a horror movie. Profane graffiti and gang symbols mar the siding and wind rushes through shattered windows. The roof sags and the battered front door hangs on a hinge. Strewn inside the vacant home is detritus common to Detroit's thousands of abandoned buildings: heaps of soggy clothing, condoms, empty bottles of cheap vodka. At the entrance lies a cat's skeletal remains. The rooms reek of urine and decay.
Even after vacant homes played a role in at least three of 10 rapes of schoolgirls last fall, the pace of tearing down abandoned structures -- at a cost to the city of about $7,100 each -- has done little to shrink the city's swollen inventory of empty buildings near schools. Detroit razes five buildings a day, according to city documents. But a survey released in July counted roughly the same number of vacant structures in Detroit as two years ago, or about 12,000.
http://www.detnews.com/2000/metro/0009/24/a01-124613.htm
This appears to me to be all by design. The propaganda necessary to sway the public opinion has been conducted successfully.
If you don't believes this to be related in some way to the corporate land grabbers' plans for this city now supported by Supreme Court decisions I've got a bridge that connects the US to Canada for sale....In addition, you can get a bit of the surrounding residential area as well, for the Public Good of course!!
I wanna let you in on a little secret....
This is what they're really after......
The jewel of Detroit
1 comment:
Thank You
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