Is Detroit fixable? How would you fix it?

[memphis]

Muon2, housing in Detroit is literally close to free. I don't think many places can make that claim.  The trick is to make the place, or larger swaths of it, livable for those not destitute (who are just trapped) or criminals. 

Making it livable would actually involve making the housing cost substantially more than present because one reason for the almost free housing is the fact that most of it is not fit for human habitation.

  ^^^^^^^^^^^^^
All that free housing has long since had all the wiring ripped out for scrap, roofs caved in, inoperable plumbing. And it's impressive how quickly things decay in a humid environment with several freeze/thaw cycles each year. If there were a magic bullet, the people in charge woud have seized upon it. If not in Detroit, then in one of this nation's many urban slums. If I had too go with one thing though, it's probably crime and perception of it. Maybe the folks at City Hall could get together with the Police Department and the folks at the PR at a major company. It'd be an enormous uphill climb, obviously.

[memphis]

If I lived near Detroit I'd like to buy one of those super-cheap houses and open a show venue in it.

You willing to invest some serious cash in security and getting it up to code? It'd be cheaper and safer to just rent an actual venue in Minneapolis and be a professional if that's what you want to do with your life.

[memphis]

If I lived near Detroit I'd like to buy one of those super-cheap houses and open a show venue in it.

You willing to invest some serious cash in security and getting it up to code? It'd be cheaper and safer to just rent an actual venue in Minneapolis and be a professional if that's what you want to do with your life.

A house show venue. None of that would be needed, I'd just need a spot in the living room or basement big enough to hold shows and set up a sound system.

Pretty sure there are laws that govern commercial activity. Especially in a residential neighborhood. Even without that, you down for no electricity or heat? And a roof ready to cave in at any moment, with all the potential for lawsuits that that brings. I don't think you get the severity of the disrepair of these houses.

[memphis]

Pittsburgh is inapposite largely, because it never had the degree of crime Detroit did and does, did not get its infrastructure gutted in riots driving out most businesses (Detroit has zero appliance stores in the city) and actually has many picturesque hilly neighborhoods that folks actually want to live in. It is also substantially white. The issue going forward, is will Cleveland end up more like Detroit or Pittsburgh.

The west side of Cleveland is like Pittsburgh in this regard and the east side is like Detroit. Most of the houses on the west side are occupied and liveable. Many, perhaps most even, of the east side looks like a post-apocalyptic movie. The Cuyahoga River acts as a buffer between neighborhoods, keeping the historical differences between the two still true.

^^^^^^
Although Memphis doesn't have a tidy river, we more than have our "good" and "bad" areas too. And everybody knows where they are. And they can be quite close together. My brother ex-wife lives on a street of adorable historic bungalows. Go one block down the right way and you have well-kept mansions. Go the other way, and you have boarded up shacks. Sometimes, you just have to know. But East Memphis, where I live, is primarily fancy pants white folks (I live in a little working class pocket next to the interstate). Anyhow, point is those of us from cities like Cleveland, Detroit, and Memphis have a better feel for the challenges ruined neighborhoods bring. There are no easy catch-all solutions. You can spend $75,000 bringing one of these ruined shacks up to code, but then nobody with the means to pay you a reasonable amount in rent wants to live in the area. For all the talk of white flight a few decades ago, there has been an equally impressive exodus of blacks with the means out of these neighborhoods as well. Here in Memphis, the black flighters mostly fled to the old white flight neighborhoods, which in turn led to a new round of white flight in the 90s. But that a separate issue. The following house is available in one of these obsolete slums in my hometown for $3,000. Any of you suburban white kids are more than welcome to come dump some family money in it. I think it would be hilarious. Just do yourself a favor, don't linger around after dark.

[memphis]

If I lived near Detroit I'd like to buy one of those super-cheap houses and open a show venue in it.

You willing to invest some serious cash in security and getting it up to code? It'd be cheaper and safer to just rent an actual venue in Minneapolis and be a professional if that's what you want to do with your life.

A house show venue. None of that would be needed, I'd just need a spot in the living room or basement big enough to hold shows and set up a sound system.

Pretty sure there are laws that govern commercial activity. Especially in a residential neighborhood. Even without that, you down for no electricity or heat? And a roof ready to cave in at any moment, with all the potential for lawsuits that that brings. I don't think you get the severity of the disrepair of these houses.

Yes, these house shows tend to be illegal, but they still happen all the time. If tons of people get away with them in Minneapolis and even in Bismarck, ND I'm pretty sure that the police will be a bit more pre-occupied in Detroit. They go on in Memphis too by the way. Obviously I'd need electricity for the soundsystem, but heating wouldn't be an issue most of the time. It's not your top priority when you have a bunch of running around moshing into each other in a small enclosed space, trust me. During the winter I could rent out some industrial heaters. Some guys in Mankato did this whenever they booked winter shows in an unheated barn outside of town. I guess I'd have to get the roof repaired though.

I'll take your word that these illegal house shows happen in Memphis. We have a more than adequate supply if dive bars that would suit the purpose much better, but whatev. However, I can 100% guarantee you these house shows do not go down in the neighborhoods we're talking about. Your "scene" kids wouldn't last 5 minutes in South Memphis.

[memphis]

Well, this thread has veered off track.

Much like Detroit itself, no?

This thread is still fixable. It would  be more like Detroit if the mods hijacked the good parts off to another Forum and filled this one with viruses.

[memphis]

What's larger than Detroit is the issue of American ghettos. Every city has them. Detroit's boundaries just happen to be such that the anchor city is largely coextensive with the metro's ghetto.  The whole metro is still quite a viable area and much wealthier than many others. It should be clear by now that "the market" will not fix ghettos. By definition, some markets, locations, and people fail the market test.  And our weak patchwork of anti-poverty programs haven't solved underlying issues either. And I suppose if you wanted to go all totalitarian, you could force everybody out, bulldoze the whole slum, but you still have poor people who need cheap housing.  And wherever they go, by definition, becomes the new ghetto because nobody with the means is going to want to live there.  You can't have America witghout the ghetto. The low wage jobs and the people who have them are integral parts of the nation. And you can send everybody to Harvard if you want to. All that will do is give you Harvard educated slum dwellers. On the other hand you could take radical steps to address inequality, but the political will is not even close to exisiting. And so we all live with Detroit or South Memphis or West Virginia or wherever.

[memphis]

...And so we all live with Detroit or South Memphis or West Virginia or wherever.

And coming soon the majority of us will live in Detroit or South Memphis or West Virginia, etc.  Actually I think that's happened already.

That certainly seems to be the way the wind is blowing. The owners wouldn't have it any other way. They can always have walls built if they are needed.