Detroit

I have, unfortunately, no pictures on this one.

We toured Detroit today (April 2). The level of poverty we saw almost defies despcription. Not two blocks from Grosse Pointe Farms, accross Alter street lay block after block of damaged, burned, and collapsing buildings. Many built between 1870 and the 1940’s, closely placed and run down, they lack paint, they lack electricity, and there was evidence of at least one which lacked indoor plumbing.

People were sparse, though a group of four or five young children played in front of one of the houses. Very thin, they looked at our vehicle (a large RAV4) with half-hearted wonder as we drove past. Many blocks had swaths of overgrown and garbage-strewn lots which had been bulldozed. The only businesses in view were churches. At least one house of worship could be seen for every two blocks. Also, run down, they offer only the false hope of a nonexistant god. A billboard which almost made me scream declared that “You can be saved by Jesus”.

The answer to the poverty brought into what had once been a working class neighbourhood does not lie in this direction. The decades-long decline- closings of factories and the ripple effects of local businesses shuttering as workers leave or run out of money will not be reversed by prayer, no matter how earnest.

Very near to downtown Detroit is a neighbourhood which in 1993 saw the deaths of seven children in a housefire which has become known as the Mack Avenue Fire. With officials originaly scapegoating the parents, it became clear due to a citizens’ commission that the children (the youngest one just 7months) were victims not of parental neglect, but of poverty and systemic neglect.

Their water had been turned off- unknown to the parents, as the utility company sent no word of the shut off- for non-payement of the bill. ($225 at that point). The father, who held an accounting degree, but who had most recently been employed in the peripheral construction business, went into the basement under the impression that the pipes had frozen. This was February, so it was not irrational to think so. His attempt to heat the pipe with a small flame of course did not bring water through to his family. It did, however, set the unpainted beams of the house smoldering. The fire broke out later that afternoon, when the parents were out scavenging metal to sell for scrap- their only source of income.

The tragedy was compounded by the lack of up-to-date equipment for the fire department- including equipment to remove window bars- a common fixture of the houses in the area.

In the course of the citizens’ inquiry, it beame clear that, far from unusual, this family’s story was too too common. The closings of the factories starting in the 1970’s removed the sources of income and hope for gaining other employment for broad layers of the working families in the area. Even a four-year degree did not help this father find a place to earn a wage.

Many people owned their houses, so leaving the area for work was difficult on the family members who would be left behind, and there was scant hope of selling a working class house in a time of economic decline.

Interestingly, the wealthy areas of Grosse Pointe and Grosse Pointe Farms, built during the same era, suffered not a whit. The houses there- a great number of them mansions, including one of Henry Ford’s houses, are as well-kept as ever. There are plenty of well-stocked stores, and a distinct lack of offers to Buy Your House Any Condition written on crude posters and plastered on poles and walls in the area. The yacht club remains undisturbed by the effects of mass unemployment.



Here is an article from December of 2000 about yet another house fire in the area which has some information on the Mack Fire, as well as on the cuts for firefighting in the area. I wish the article was no longer germaine. Sadly, the conditions not only persist, but have deepened in the area.