On July 19, 2013, the City of Detroit petitioned to declare bankruptcy. Here is a look at the now-dilapidated Motor City
“Enter Detroit at your own risk.” This was the official message behind a protest by Detroit police officers made last October outside of a Tiger’s Major League Baseball game. Although virtually everyone knew that many parts of Detroit are subject to anarchy already, this official admission by the force responsible for keeping the city safe came as a stark message even to those most familiar with the city. In 2012 alone, Detroit experienced 411 homicides; in a city the size of Toronto, this would translate to over 2,000 homicides per year. This, accompanied by a homicide clearance rate hovering around 12% means that you can get away with murder in Detroit (actually, you can get away with pretty much anything considering an overall case clearance rate of 8.7%). The city also experiences the second highest violent crime rate in the entire United States, second only to Flint, Michigan, which is a satellite city of Detroit devastated by the same economic factors which have killed the Motor City. It’s hardly surprising that Detroit suffers from a high crime rate, considering that on average it takes a police officer 58 minutes to respond to an emergency, compared to a national average of 11 minutes in the United States and 8 minutes in Waterloo Region. There is little deterrent to committing a crime in a city where you are probably not going to get caught in the act, and it is just as unlikely that you will be caught after committing the crime. However, crime is only one of Detroit’s many threats.
At one point, Detroit was home to 2 000 000 people. Now the city provides residence to under 700 000, a startling exodus of close to 75% of its original population. Unfortunately for the city, these people left behind the homes they lived in, the schools the attended, the factories they worked in, and all the other buildings that it takes to run a city. According to reports, approximately one third of all of Detroit (which covers 363 square kilometers) is vacant or derelict. Of the 90 000 abandoned homes in Detroit, 67 000 have been rendered completely valueless by pillagers collecting scrap metal, wiring, and useful plumbing from the house. These empty shells of houses stand as invitations for squatters, drug dealers, and, as covered later in this article, arsonists. Each of these buildings costs an average of $8000 to demolish, leaving the cashless city little choice but to let these homes remain a haven for some of America’s darkest behavior. Of course, this behavior is conducted by a population was never given much chance in life and are disadvantaged, to say the least.
To illustrate this fact a shocking report released by the National Institute for Literacy in May 2011 revealed that 47 percent of all Detroit residents are “functionally illiterate.” To add some comparison and to further illuminate the blight of Detroit, this literacy rate is just 1% higher than that of Haiti and is significantly lower than that of impoverished nations Mozambique, Ivory Coast, and Bangladesh. These horrendous numbers can be largely attributed to abysmal public schools. In 2009, Detroit Public School students recorded the lowest scores on the national math proficiency test ever recorded nationwide over the test’s 21 year history. They also tied Washington, D.C. for last place nationwide in reading skills measured in the eighth grade. In 2011, the school system patted themselves on the back for attaining a high school graduation rate of 62%, the highest recorded in four years. Of course, further investigation revealed that the term “graduation” is relevant. Despite slightly less than horrible graduation rates, only 1.8% of graduating students from Detroit public schools were deemed ready for college-level work. With such poor education, it is little wonder that the overwhelming majority of students who get screwed over by the public school system turn to drugs, crime, and the other scourges that have killed Detroit. It is even less surprising that those students, who actually survive the school system and manage to move on to a career, immediately leave Detroit, where jobs, opportunities, and public services are virtually non-existent.
To understand the dismal state of Detroit’s public services, we need only to look at one of the most important services any city can provide to its citizens: firefighting. In recent years, one third of the Detroit Fire Department has been shut down due to budget cuts. 500 fire fighters have been laid off over the past five years and fire chiefs endlessly complain of equipment being held together with “duct tape and bubblegum.” Eight now vacated fire stations are being sold to private investors in an effort to raise money for the beleaguered city. Of course, the results of ravaging of the city’s fire department has been further anarchy. Detroit has been relabeled by many as “the City of Fire.” In 2012, Detroit suffered from an astounding 5000 cases of arson: 14 per day. With such a poorly staffed fire and police service, only one in five of these cases are ever even investigated, and it is doubtful that many of these cases are actually solved. Last year, the city suffered $200 million in property damage due to arson. The incredibly high arson rates have led to insurance quotes in Detroit that are three times higher than for homes located in less crime-ridden suburban areas. This does little to help Detroit’s atrocious housing market.
In an effort to limit the length of this article, I have simply listed some other startling facts about the Motor City to further underline the extent of Detroit’s blight: currently, the unemployment rate of Detroit is more than 18% (however most officials believe it is actually closer to 50% if including part-time workers and those who have given up looking for jobs), 60% of children in Detroit live below the poverty line, the median price of a home in Detroit is just $9,000, and there are still many areas in Detroit where you can buy a house for less than $100. Two out of every five streetlights are broken, out of a total of 95 000, the city has over a third more retired workers then it does workers paying into the system, and, perhaps most startlingly of all, 28% of Detroit’s population has left since the turn of the new millennium. This list could easily be much longer.
There is no doubt that Detroit is dead. The only question remaining for many is how did this city possibly retain a line of credit for so long before petitioning to declare bankruptcy? Regardless, Detroit will never be the economic powerhouse it was in the post-WWII years. The road for reviving Detroit will be a long one and it will take honest political leadership, economic innovation, investment from longtime corporate partners (i.e. General Motors, Ford, etc.), and a focus on stemming the current banes of the city: drugs, corruption, violent crime, poor public education, and poverty. Detroit remains a symbol for the industrialized world of the dangers of letting a city fall to devastating market trends. There is little doubt that residents of the city hope that the declaration of bankruptcy will be the end of Detroit’s fall, and that revitalization can now begin to take place. For now, however, Detroit remains an embarrassment for America: a drug infested, crime ridden, apocalyptic hellhole that has been ignored for far too long.
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