East side Detroit residents say fire not a “natural disaster”

[Hannah Bell]

Residents on Detroit’s east side rejected Mayor Dave Bing’s claim that recent fires were a “natural disaster...” According to residents on Moenart Street, a fire that swept through their block was started by a line that had actually come down the previous day...several people called 911. “We were there waiting for over an hour before the first fire truck came. Every time we heard a siren we thought it was coming here, but it went somewhere else.”

The residents explained that the fire fighters desperately tried to get water pressure from several hydrants after the first one failed. They also tried, unsuccessfully, to connect to a hydrant on the next block. Finally, the firefighters had to go a block and a half away to make a connection.

The neighbors were particularly incensed by the attitude of the Detroit Police. “When the firefighters came they told us to get buckets and hoses and do whatever we could to spray things down,” Ian said. “Once the police came they told people to get the f___ back or we would be arrested. They didn’t help. This was after an hour of waiting for the fire department to come.”

A Detroit firefighter with 15 years of service told the WSWS that many firemen were unable to respond to the neighborhood fires because they were preoccupied with securing downed power lines. His commanding officer estimated that 15 of the 58 fire companies activated to deal with Tuesday’s fires were “sitting on DTE’s lines.” Among these were Initial Response units, which could have put out the fires before they spread.

The Bing administration has expanded cuts to the Fire Department that have been ongoing for about a decade. Between 8 and 12 of the city’s 66 fire companies are now “browned out” each day, temporarily decommissioned and unavailable to fight fires, due to budget cuts.The Bing administration moved to destroy the fire-damaged homes within days. Bing has expressed no outrage that the fires have taken place; instead the administration has pushed ahead with meetings to shut down parts of the city.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/sep2010/fire-s20.shtml

[Starry Messenger]

1. They just want to run people out.

Starving them of services is part of the plan. Disgusting.

[Hannah Bell]

2. same as in nyc & other cities in the 70s.

[Starry Messenger]

3. These guys aren't creative.

Just consistent and malevolent.

[EFerrari]

4. So what is the plan? They run these families out

and what is the pay off? Gentrification? I'm dense tonight. lol

[Starry Messenger]

6. Well, there's a couple of different scenarios I think.

One involves a guy named Hantz who has been proposing a large urban farm in Detroit after the "downsizing". The locals are pretty sure it's a land grab.

http://markmaynard.com/?p=7243
http://michigancitizen.com/hantz-farms-we-can-all-get-along-p8534-1.htm
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2010/01/future-farming-in-detroit.php

http://money.cnn.com/2009/12/29/news/economy/farming_detroit.fortune/index.htm

Some of Hantz's biggest skeptics, ironically, are the same people who've been working to transform Detroit into a laboratory for urban farming for years, albeit on a much smaller scale. The nonprofit Detroit Agriculture Network counts nearly 900 urban gardens within the city limits. That's a twofold increase in two years, and it places Detroit at the forefront of a vibrant national movement to grow more food locally and lessen the nation's dependence on Big Ag.

None of those gardens is very big (average size: 0.25 acre), and they don't generate a lot of cash (most don't even try), but otherwise they're great: as antidotes to urban blight; sources of healthy, affordable food in a city that, incredibly, has no chain supermarkets; providers of meaningful, if generally unpaid, work to the chronically unemployed; and beacons around which disintegrating communities can begin to regather themselves.

That actually sounds a lot like what Hantz envisions his farms to be in the for-profit arena. But he doesn't have many fans among the community gardeners, who feel that Hantz is using his money and connections to capitalize on their pioneering work. "I'm concerned about the corporate takeover of the urban agriculture movement in Detroit," says Malik Yakini, a charter school principal and founder of the Detroit Black Community Food Security Network, which operates D-Town Farm on Detroit's west side. "At this point the key players with him seem to be all white men in a city that's at least 82% black."

Hantz, meanwhile, has no patience for what he calls "fear-based" criticism. He has a hard time concealing his contempt for the nonprofit sector generally. ("Someone must pay taxes," he sniffs.) He also flatly rejects the idea that he's orchestrating some kind of underhanded land grab. In fact, Hantz says that he welcomes others who might want to start their own farms in the city. "Viability and sustainability to me are all that matters," he says.

And yet Hantz is fully aware of the potentially historic scope of what he is proposing. After all, he's talking about accumulating hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of acres inside a major American city. And it's clear that he views Hantz Farms as his legacy. Already he's told his 21-year-old daughter, Lauren, his only heir, that if she wants to own the land one day, she has to promise him she'll never sell it. "This is like buying a penthouse in New York in 1940," Hantz says. "No one should be able to afford to do this ever again."

That might seem like an overly optimistic view of Detroit's future. But allow Hantz to dream a little. Twenty years from now, when people come to the city and have a drink at the bar at the top of the Renaissance Center, what will they see? Maybe that's not the right vantage point. Maybe they'll actually be on the farm, picking apples, looking up at the RenCen. "That's the beauty of being down and out," says Hantz. "You can actually open your mind to ideas that you would never otherwise embrace." At this point, Detroit doesn't have much left to lose.

[EFerrari]

7. Thanks. This is probably going on all over the country.

I have this horrible Mad Max kind of feeling about the next twenty years. I'm glad my sons are grown up but wish I still had that 30 year old energy because it just feels exhausting.

[Starry Messenger]

8. Mad Max is a good way to put it.

That or "Brazil" by Terry Gilliam. Neoliberal weirdness for sure. I'm going to be 40 in a couple of weeks and I feel more obnoxiously punk rock than I have in years. :D

[Hannah Bell]

9. in most major cities there seem to be moves to price out the poor & move them into the burbs.

the "urban farms" thing makes me wonder too.

[EFerrari]

10. They really can't count on gentrification because the middle class,

or what used to be the middle class, is broke. Who will buy up?

This is going to be wild.

[Hannah Bell]

11. in some of these areas, decent properties are going pretty cheap. so it doesn't

have to be that much of a "buy-up" situation.

why do you think these cities are building so many yuppie attractions in their downtown cores? who is that all for?

[EFerrari]

14. That's what I mean. Who is it for?

I'm afraid these developers are going to be massively disappointed. Or, they are going through the motions and expecting to cash out in some other way.

My family has been in commercial real estate for a long time in the Santa Clara Valley and it's dead, dead, dead here.

[Hannah Bell]

16. well, washington dc, per news reports, lost about 6% of its black population

since michelle rhee started & gained 5% whites, 6% latinos (don't quote me on the figures, doing this from memory, but it's in that range).


Bedroom community blues: foreclosure crisis creating suburban slums
By: Bill Myers and David Sherfinski
Washington Examiner
October 22, 2009

Neighbors have gone from worrying about curb heights to fighting to keep drug dealers from setting up shop in boarded-up homes, such as this one in Manassas. (David Sherfinski/For The Examiner)

Two years of economic collapse have pockmarked the D.C. region's affluent suburbs with blight and experts are worried that the foundering cul-de-sacs and towns are on the verge of becoming the region's next ghettoes.

"What you're looking at now is a structural problem," Brookings Institute scholar Christopher Leinberger said. "We have structurally overbuilt the fringe...It ain't coming back."

Consider, for instance, Prince William County's Georgetown South community. The signs there used to say, "For sale." Then they said, "foreclosed." Now they say, "For rent." ...Tales are now pouring in from nearly every bedroom community about overcrowding, housing code violations, blight and petty crime -- the kind of problems those suburbs were created to escape.

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/local/Bedroom-community-blues_-foreclosure-crisis-creating-suburban-slums-8412468.html


chicago gained 4% population 1990-2000 (but is estimated to have lost 1.5% since -- mainly black).

the mad max scenario is that the economy gets worse for the bottom 20%, gas gets pricier, the top 20% moves into their gated cities which they fly in & out of, & eat designer vegetables produced by drones living outside the city & the rest of the country is a wasteland of stuck people managed by the military (the biggest employer) & doing any & all business at walmart if they have any money at all.

or something like that. that's tongue in cheek -- but if the burbs go "bad" for whatever reason -- poor moving in, esp poor black into white areas -- there would be reverse white/upper-middle-class flight. and if there are lots of distressed properties -- poor people may follow -- classic pattern.

capitalism gets rich off stuff like that -- arbitraging differences & movements. especially if they have foreknowledge, which is what you get by pushing the changes that lead to the movement you want.

i posted an op on north st. louis a while back where one guy was buying up distressed properties under various fronts & letting it go to seed, further depressing property values --

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x7944600

turned out there was some plan afoot to make st. louis a regional distribution center for chinese goods -- hard to tell what they have up their sleeves.

[leftstreet]

12. Large concentrations of impoverished people make Teh Rich nervous

Break 'em up, make them nomadic

sad

[Starry Messenger]

13. Well, there is this:

http://www.nuwireinvestor.com/articles/foreign-real-estate-investors-snapping-up-detroit-homes-54463.aspx

Foreign Real Estate Investors Are Snapping Up Detroit Homes
Published on:
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
Written by:
Kevin Brass


Despite its tough economic climate, Detroit's real estate market is attracting long-term global investors who are purchasing and renovating properties for the rental market. With quality brick construction, a large blue collar population fueling the rental market and low median home prices, Detroit represents a unique opportunity for foreigners seeking a long-term investment that could see significant returns as the US economy recovers. See the following article from International Property Journal for more on this.

Detroit real estate

Searching the globe for investment opportunities, London-based Experience International settled on, of all places, Detroit, the U.S. poster child for tough economic times. More than 25 percent of the work force is unemployed in the Motor City, the murder rate is among the highest in the country and the median price of a home sank to somewhere around $18,000 in the last year.

“When Detroit was first presented to me, my first reaction was, ‘no thanks,’” said Stuart Johnson, project sourcing manager for the investment firm, which is also working on projects in the French Alps, Brazil and Panama. “We’d heard all the bad stories about Detroit.”

But Detroit, Johnson soon decided, offers a unique investment opportunity. Experience International is participating in a program to buy and renovate homes for the rental market, usually paying about $45,000 to buy and spruce up a property, which typically generates $800 to $900 a month in rent.

So far Experience’s clients have purchased 10 homes, with plans to buy 30 more by June. There are certainly plenty of houses available—almost 16,000 houses in Detroit faced foreclosure filings in November, according RealtyTrac.

“What’s important is picking streets where people are moving into,” Johnson said. “A lot of what is being pushed out in the market in the U.K. are cheap houses on streets where every fourth house is boarded.”

[EFerrari]

15. Interesting. "Absentee landlord" goes global. n/t

[Hannah Bell]

18. already was, though. all the empty properties on my street are owned by the same transnational corp

= bank of america.

our half-empty mall also owned by a transnational = Simon Property Group.

[Hannah Bell]

17. vindicated. where's the twit who laughed at me when i said the detroit market was a good buy?

[EFerrari]

20. People haven't bent their minds around globalization yet.

Denial is a survival response as much as anything else.

[Starry Messenger]

21. *crickets*

[Hannah Bell]

22. found him in the other thread....

[Starry Messenger]

23. I think he has a crush on you.

:D

[Hannah Bell]

24. yeah, i know. :>)

[notadmblnd]

5. DTE should be charged big time for babysitting their downed lines

by the City of Detroit. The homeowners who lost their homes should sue DTE for damages for neglecting the downed power lines.

[RandomThoughts]

19. BP, then PG&E, how many of these corporate mess ups have to happen

before it is obvious that money first profit motive will not do what needs to be done for society.

Although them stepping up and setting up a fund to help people is a good idea, will have to see the follow through on it though.


The point is when a company does not have a motive to do what is good for society, it wont. It wont ever do what is best if that goes against making a profit. People in the company might, but only if they fight back against the company.


So help them, regulate them, and break up the big corporations. It makes complete sense. That way they don't have to do bad things that hurt people to make money.


It really is not that hard to understand.