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This is really sad:
It may be tough to get financing for a new car these days, but in Detroit you can buy a house with a credit card.
The median price of a home sold in Detroit in December was $7,500, according to Realcomp, a listing service.
Not $75,000. Remove a zero—it’s seven thousand five hundred dollars, substantially less than the lowest-price car on the new-car market.
Among the many dispiriting numbers that bleakly depict the decrepitude of this onetime industrial behemoth, the steep slide of housing values helps define the daunting challenge to anyone who wants to lead this shrinking, poverty-pocked city of about 800,000 people.
… Detroit, which has lost half its population in the past 50 years, is deceptively large, covering 139 square miles. Manhattan, San Francisco and Boston could, as a group, fit inside the city’s boundaries. There is no major grocery chain in the city, and only two movie theaters. Much of the neighborhood economy revolves around rib joints, hot dog stands and liquor stores. The candidates travel around this sprawling city, some invoking the nostalgic era of Big Three dominance and vowing that Detroit can be great again.
If you think $7,500 is bad, then think twice. You can get a house in Detroit for less than $1,000.
It’s sad, but this is what happens when corrupt Democrats are allowed to run amok with no repercussions for inflicting their horrible liberal policies onto their constituents. Detroit can be brought back to life, but the voters of Michigan need to wake up first, and make some changes. Until that happens, Detroit will continue to rot. Melissa Clouthier sums this up the best:
The contrast couldn’t have been greater in Michigan: gorgeous landscape, bereft of people. Again, I am reminded of Upstate New York, where the death occurred fifteen years ago. The Finger Lakes region possesses the striking loveliness that characterizes Michigan. And yet, these once vibrant areas are devoid of industry and the people who fuel it.
Government policies and politicians do have an affect. Cities, states and the whole country rise and fall on one small law at a time. Cumulatively, policies punitive to industry and innovation kill business, kill revenue and kill a family’s ability to survive. Their only choice is to wither with the economy or move.
I don’t want Michigan to die. The death seems so senseless and premature. Like a meth addict who rots from the inside, the big-government politicians have created a craving beast that needs a hit. The true nourishment that comes from innovation and production has been traded for the quick fix of raising taxes.
I don’t want Michigan to die. People I love live and work there. They need jobs. They need to keep their money, not give it all to the government.
I don’t want Michigan to die. It’s home.
It’s not too late for Detroit to be saved. However, the rest of us should take notice. This is what happens when liberals are allowed to make all of their dreams a reality (well, maybe combine Detroit and San Francisco). Once great cities are reduced to a shell of their former brilliance.
Do we want this to happen on a larger scale?
Hat Tip: Gateway Pundit
And I want my house to sell..
(in Lansing MI.. and a nice neighborhood, so there’s that)
Chris says: The voters of Michigan don’t matter. Over 50% of the state’s population lives in the Metro Detroit (a three county area or six county if you count the suburbs). The idiot politicians in Lansing only pay attention to Detroit and ignore the rest of the state. We might as well not bother voting in statewide elections, as Detroit gets what Detroit wants. Detroit have made their own bed and now they are forcing the rest of Michigan to lie down with them.
The Democratic politians rule this state and their useful idiots (the people who depend on the state’s bloated welfare programs for their livelihoods) will never relinquish power until enough Detroiters leave this state for this calculus to change.
You should be able to hear the snorts of Michigan politicians lining up at the piggy trough of Washington’s borrowed money all the way in Florida. They were actually briefly talking about cutting state spending for the first time in half a century (rather than just slowing the rate of increase, which is what politicians usually call “cuts”). President Spendalot is making sure they can all line up and spend like drunken sailors and the useless leeches will continue to collect money for sitting on their rears and this problems of Michigan government will continue.
It’s harsh to say (and I’ve lived in this state my entire life), but I think the only thing that will ever fix the government around here is for the economy to continue to crash until enough leeches leave for the rest of us to force a change in Lansing. This will not happen as long as Detroit continues to vote for more of the same goodies they’ve been voting for themselves for 50 years. All western and northern Michigan are good for is to continue to pay the bills they rack up, as far as they are concerned.
/rant off
5kidsnadog says: When my grandparents came here to Michigan, Detroit was the center of all the action. My parents married and lived in the city, while my father got his degree at the University of Detroit. I was born in 65, and I think we were just on the outer edges of what they called the “white flight”. My father took a job that brought him closer to the burbs for work, so we moved out, but within several years, the flight was in earnest.
It’s hard to say what all the factors are in what has happened here, but I think at least since the days of Mayor Coleman Young, white people have not had the impression that they were welcome, at least at the end of the day. We’ve had scandal after scandal, and yet things don’t change. The taxpayers of that city have been robbed of their meager treasure in order to line the pockets of folks like the illustrious Kwame Kilpatrick and Monica “start a fight in a council meeting” Conyers.
The schools are a mess, and a those who can afford to scrape up the money go elsewhere. The suburbs deal constantly with children whose parents use any address they can get to establish residency for schools other than Detroit Public Schools. Heck — even the son of John and Monica Conyers doesn’t attend the schools that they so vociferously defend. The children of Detroit are being robbed by the very people who should be defending them.
Add to that a manufacturing sector dominated by unions where union work rules prevent the efficiency that would help the companies be successful, union benefits are crippling the bottom line, and union control is absolute, and you’ve got a recipe for disaster.
If I’m going to be poor, I’d at least like to be somewhere warm. Unfortunately, I’m one of those doofuses that put half down on the house, so there’s no bailout that’s going to allow me to walk away from this place anytime soon.
Once again, another good reason to be from the South. Our little, hillbilly state has managed to lag behind the nation in unemployment and run a fiscal surplus. OF course, despite those things, our Democratic governor is lapping up the “stimulus” money like a horse at a trough.
Bob says: So all we need to do is give the auto-makers a few hundred billion so they can afford to pay union workers even more to do even less, that way they will be able to attract more people to the area and reverse the trend. Never mind that they’ll be propped up at the expense of people doing *actual* work elsewhere, or that their cars won’t really be bought anywhere, and that they’ll be a net loss to the government, and that they’ll need another bailout in a few more years. Ignore all that.
We need to save Detroit and the big three; just so long as we don’t actually address the problems that led to them needing to be saved.
SicSemperTyrannus says: I think people are fleeing because they want to get away from Debbie Schlussel.
Well, you know the liberal mantra is that everyone should be able to afford a home. Now they can
/sarc off
Nick says: The people posting on this website blaming liberals are morons. I just thought I’d throw out another generalized comment in addition to what’s being said here.
Todd says: Bitch please!! ! liberal my Ass!!!!!!!!!! republicans did this shit! George Bush , George W. Bush, because they are greedy thieves just like our ancestors, all for the love of oil !!!! They stole this country from the indians, spread disease to the Indians, and that wasnt enough they enslaved those Africans, because they wanted this country to be rich like Africa. My European ancestors are kidnappers ,liars, and will always be greedy,unfair, thieves. Yes Obama is doing a good job with cleaning up behind our mess, just like in the Big house when his ancestors cleaned up behind master. Its fair housing. dont have such a selfish HEART.
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