Detroit Current Events

[Account Closed]

I receive lots of questions regarding Detroit.  Here is a link to the current events in Detroit.

http://insider.foxnews.com/2015/04/03/gutfeld-concealed-carry-permits-only-piece-brings-peace

Nancy Neville

[Joshua Woolls]

Originally posted by @John T.:

@Joshua Woolls

I think that Nancy is pointing out that violent crimes impose large costs on communities through lower property values, higher insurance premiums, and reduced investment in high-crime areas.

https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/economy/report/2012/06/19/11755/the-economic-benefits-of-reducing-violent-crime/

Detroit has a high crime rate.  The high crime rate lowers property values in Detroit.

I think it was a backhanded way to try to slander the city. Everyone knows that Detroit has high crime rates and there are issues in the city. 

The fact of the matter is though that the police Chief is from Maine and he attributes the relative safety of Portland Maine(hardly a war zone) to the fact that so many people had concealed carry permits. Nancy felt the need to pull a misleading headline out of the article and sensationalize it. It's almost as if she has a preconceived notion of what the city is like and she had an agenda and wanted everyone to agree with her.

Something that I did not understand about Detroit until I moved to this area is that there is a serious City Vs. Suburb divide. I am certain that it can be traced back to the race riots, but unlike the rest of the country, the Detroit metro never moved on. Now, we have a couple of generations of people that have fled the city and never go back unless it is to attend a sporting event or a concert. They literally sit in their homes in the burbs and spew rhetoric of hate and fear. Some of this hate and fear is justified and some is not. 

The fact of the matter is that Detroit does have issues. But much like every city in America, there are some areas that have more issues than others. There are more "bad" areas. Less "good" areas, and the good areas in Detroit are not as good as the "good" areas in other cities. You would never know this speaking to many of the people in the burbs though.

Times, they are a changing though. There are already areas of the city that have started the rapid ascent. There are areas that have stabilized. And there are even areas that are already "back". That being said, there are areas that are bad, and will never be better until they are wiped off the map and rebuilt.

In the last year and a half, Dan Gilbert has moved 17,000 Jobs downtown and he has incentives in place for workers to live in the city. The Illitch's(Little Ceasers, RedWings, Olympia entertainment) have moved 11,000(more) jobs downtown. Mars Advertising moved their headquarters dowtown. Ally financial just announced their move to downtown... That's 35,000(ish) white collar jobs moving into the city in a little over a year.

Nancy's post is designed to create fear. What good does that do anyone? It's unproductive at best. If we want to look at the city realistically, we could spend all day talking about the bad(and good things) that are going on, and we could have constructive conversations about how to fix some of the city's(many) problems.