Saving Detroit ...and other troubled American cities

[drbubb]

Length of downturns - this was first posted on the Singapore thread

On 5/2/2017 at 6:17 AM, DrBubb said:

Haha. Yeah:

"The best time to buy a property is always 5 years ago"

Anyone who says something like that is unaware of cycles - which are real and observable - just look at prices over a long enough period.

Idiot estate agents will show you a graph going back 10-15 years, showing prices rising over the whole period, and think that this makes a case that prices will go on rising. When I see that, I have a model in my mind: "14 years up, 4 years down... the last 2-3 years of the up-phase are the most dangerous."

So if I see 10-12 years of rising market - worse yet: 14 years! - I will be very wary, and want to wait for the drop. That is my attitude towards Hong Kong and Manila right now. I would rather buy in a place like Singapore, after a 3-4 year drop. Even in Singapore, I am somewhat cautious, for reasons that I have described above.

"The best time to buy a property is always 5 years ago"

- was definitely not true in Detroit, where in 4-5 years, nearly a decade of gains were wiped out

http://www.drawingdetroit.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/slide05-624x468.jpg

And some houses went down to $100-$1000 in value.

Instead:

"The housing price index in Michigan hit its all time low in 2011. The housing index in Michigan is currently at 139.66, 40 percent higher than its value in 1991. This current index is approximately the same as that from 1997."

> source: http://www.drawingdetroit.com/michigans-housing-price-index-compared/

The US House price drop was widespread, and even San Francisco saw a drop of 72 months (= 6 years)

http://www.firstam.com/assets/economics/img/rhpi/peak-prices-san-francisco-detroit-2.jpg

- so we cannot expect that the entire drop will always be confined to 3-5 years

=

Once the lows were in place, prices improved dramatically, even in Detroit

But they are still below the price levels of 10 years earlier

[drbubb]

DETROIT's Pitch... for Amazon's 2nd HQ

With numerous cities offering tax breaks and subsidies (and even hashtagged holidays), does this create a race to the bottom, with Amazon ending up with the city willing to pay the most for the privilege? (It certainly seems less transparent than Toronto’s celebrated victory yesterday in landing Sidewalk Labs as a development partner for a future smart city district, since Toronto offered no subsidies or tax breaks). Is this how we should fund transformative urban development in the United States, a contest to impress a retail giant as opposed to a larger version of the Smart City Challenge, which spurred on progressive tech and city design in multiple cities?

Curbed broke down the good, the bad, and the somewhat embarrassing submissions made by cities around the country.

Best production value: Detroit’s “Move Here Move the World” video

As a Curbed Detroit reader commented, this plays like a “21st century version of the glossy chamber of commerce brochure.” Produced by Bedrock, the real estate development firm owned by billionaire Dan Gilbert, a big force in downtown Detroit, it’s glossy, well-narrated, and daresay poignant.

Detroit has gotten some positive press for its bid, which is the only trans-national bid, due to the inclusion of Windsor, Canada. Even urbanist Richard Florida listed the city as his sleeper pick. The city seems to be playing off its past, and well as its potential, and this video hits both those points perfectly.

> https://www.curbed.com/2017/10/19/16504426/amazon-hq2-bid-urban-planning

 

Conor Sen's Top Five Cities : Toronto, Boston, Washington, Atlanta, Dallas - I'm not buying this list !

Five Cities With the Best Shot to Get Amazon

 

Sep.19 -- Conor Sen, a Bloomberg View columnist, discusses the race to become the site of Amazon’s second headquarters and what cities will do to attract companies. He speaks on “What’d You Miss?”

Which cities are front-runners for Amazon's 2nd headquarters?

 

Philadelphia has got to be in the Top 2-3. And may well be the winner

[drbubb]

Distress property in Detroit Podcast .  58 minutes | Apr 27th 2021
Alex Alsup: Keeping People in Their Homes in Detroit

When it comes to housing, Detroit's struggles could be seen as a portent of things to come for other parts of America. Over the past fifteen years, one in three properties in the city have entered into tax foreclosure auctions, with speculators "milking" foreclosed homes for however much money they can get in the short-term, all while letting the property deteriorate. Meanwhile, residents of the home (either the owners themselves or renters) face the possibility of eviction. The ultimate cost for the city in dealing with these poorly maintained homes—not to mention losing population, homeownership, and tax generation potential—comes out to more than if property taxes had simply not been collected from the homeowners. "If the economics are what you want, you cannot say that there is not a far better economic equation to keep people in their homes and collect zero dollars in property taxes for them,"

...says Alex Alsup, director of the Detroit-based Rocket Community Fund, "Preserve those properties, preserve that tax base. It's clearly a far better option." This week on the Strong Towns Podcast, Alsup talks with Strong Towns president Chuck Marohn about Detroit's past and present in regard to housing. Alsup is the director of housing stability at the Rocket Community Fund, an organization that is working to keep people in their homes in Detroit by helping them to navigate issues like completing exemption applications, or, in the case of tenants, assuming ownership if foreclosure proceeds on the property they're occupying. It's work that other communities in the country should be paying attention to. After all, as former Detroit mayor Coleman Young put it, "Detroit today has always been your town tomorrow." 

> https://www.stitcher.com/show/strong-towns-podcast/episode/alex-alsup-keeping-people-in-their-homes-in-detroit-83473775

[webmaster]

Detroit and its beloved football team have long struggled. Could the city be like the Lions and roar again?

 Fall from a peak in the 1950s

Once hailed as a great American city as it dominated automobile manufacturing, as the home of General Motors GM, +0.06%, Chrysler STLA, +0.28% and Ford F, +0.44%, Detroit has experienced significant decline over the last few decades and a profound population loss. From a peak of 2 million residents in the 1950s, the city only has around 600,000 people living in it, based on the Census Bureau’s latest count. 

Over the years, the city has been beset by a number of issues, including poverty, crime and unemployment, that precipitated much of the residential flight. While several efforts have been made to boost the city’s standing, including rehabilitating parts of the city and offsetting population declines through immigration, some doubt its ability to fully recover without strong employment opportunities. 

‘I think that story of reinvention is very much in parallel with the story of our city.’

— Chris Ilitch, CEO of Ilitch Holdings

There are glimmers of fresh development in Detroit, but it’s hard to see it spreading into neighborhoods, Fisher said. Much of the economic growth in the region remains in the suburbs. The problems can be traced back to so-called white flight in the 1970s, Fisher said: Between 1970 and 1980 alone, more than 310,000 white Detroit residents fled to the suburbs, one researcher noted. Eventually, the Black middle class also moved out. 

In 2012, there were more adults living in Detroit who hadn’t graduated from high school than had earned a college degree, Fisher said. “The city was an enclave of poor people.” 

> MORE: https://www.marketwatch.com/story/detroit-and-its-football-team-have-long-struggled-could-the-city-be-like-the-lions-and-roar-again-a8e13c61

[webmaster]

Feds Using Freight Program Money to TEAR DOWN a Detroit Highway

September 22, 2022

This stretch of I-375 is like a scar in Detroit. The Biden administration is encouraging change

By Aaron Short

Federal highway grants that typically lavish billions of dollars to build or widen freeways will now be spent to dismantle a Detroit expressway that has separated communities for generations.

In an unconventional move, the U.S. Department of Transportation officials recently leveraged the Infrastructure For Rebuilding America program — a discretionary grant initiative typically aimed at improving freight delivery times — to give Michigan $105  million to kickstart the removal of Interstate 375. The mile-long sunken freeway decimated two Black neighborhoods when it was first built six decades ago, and residents have suffered decades worth of  lost generational wealth and damaging health outcomes since.

> https://usa.streetsblog.org/2022/09/22/feds-finally-using-highway-money-to-tear-down-highways

LOL!  They weren't always "Black neighborhoods".  My grandmother lived near there

[webmaster]

Seven Years ago.  The election of a new mayor was CELEBRATED...

In Detroit, the end of blight is in sight

What happens when a city accustomed to bad government elects a good one

Sep 16th 2017 | DETROIT

“SPERAMUS meliora; resurget cineribus”: the Latin incantation, offered by a French Catholic priest after a fire nearly destroyed the city in 1805, is Detroit’s motto—“We hope for better things; it will rise from the ashes.” The once-great city, the “arsenal of democracy” during the second world war and home of the world’s most innovative manufacturers, has almost been ruined a second time. National interest in Detroit has waned since its bankruptcy proceedings, brought on by decades of mismanagement, ended in December 2014. Most tales of the city now take one of two tacks. Either Detroit remains mired in poverty and unemployment, its doom merely forestalled by a few years. Or the hipsters flooding in are, with each overwrought coffee contraption and jam-jar cocktail, returning the city to something like its former glory.

HE WON, as a Man with a Plan

Detroit's first white mayor in 40 years

 

What both accounts miss is that Detroit seems on the point of doing something remarkable: re-electing a mayor whose singular achievement has been to knock bits of the city down faster than his predecessors, and swapping racially tinged politics for a more managerial sort. Mike Duggan took office in 2014 after an unlikely write-in campaign. In August this year he won 68% of the vote in the primary, and is likely to win the election proper in November. This despite the illustrious lineage of his opponent, Coleman Young II. Mr Young’s father was the city’s first black mayor, ran Detroit for two decades and has his name inscribed on city hall. Mr Duggan was the city’s first white mayor in 40 years. In the past four decades the city has undergone a racial transformation: from 70% white in the 1960s to just 10% now.

> https://www.economist.com/united-states/2017/09/16/in-detroit-the-end-of-blight-is-in-sight

Duggan received national attention following his election in 2013, in part for being the first white mayor of the majority-black city since Roman Gribbs in the early 1970s, when Detroit's population still had a white majority.^[1][2] Duggan was reelected mayor in 2017 and 2021. In 2020, he enjoyed an approval rating of over 68%, the highest approval rating of any mayor of Detroit

In the 2017 Detroit mayoral election, Duggan was re-elected in a landslide, taking 72% of the vote to challenger Coleman Young II's 27%.

One of the initiatives Duggan is focusing on is affordable housing. Mayor Duggan and other city Council Members developed a $203 million plan to provide affordable housing for Detroit residents. The money got divided between seven services and programs, including homeowner assistance programs, apartment building rehabs, and a Detroit Housing Services division. The goal is to convert vacant apartment buildings into rental housing, expedite the approval process for affordable housing projects, help landlords bring properties into compliance, and more.^[37] Duggan believes this plan is "one of the most comprehensive strategies for providing affordable housing." However, the $203 million is not an annual allocation and is only for 2022.^[38]

> wiki