| Author
|
Post |
 
|
|
untanglingwebs
El Supremo
|
Many African American leaders have expressed the belief that Flint faces a future of gentrification that will eventually force poorer African Americans out as they will be unable to purchase the higher price homes and that rents will increase to an unaffordable level.
These individuals point to Washington DC, Cleveland and other urban areas where development under the name of urban development has changed the nature and indeed the color of neighborhoods.
The area around Hurley and Carriage Town has had many homes demolished. These college students are able to purchase homes, even federally subsidized homes, at low costs because they have not realized their earning potential yet.
Most of the lofts downdown have been built with a $100,000 price tag in mind and those that are rentals are also commesurate in cost. While not excessively priced they are out of range for many who would like to leave the high crime areas. Plus many minority families were caught up in the reverse redlining scams and are so deeply under water, they cannot leave.
For some the only option is to leave their mortgages and buy a HUD home or a Land bank property that is cheap and can be repaired easily. White families and minorities alike are buying thse homes. Former mansions on Welch blvd. have sold for $5,000 to $8,000 but have required the ability to afford to make the necessary repairs.
Walling has said the downtown area needed 500 new homes to accomadate the needs or downtown workers. Smith Village has 50 % of th 83 homes subsidized and the rest are to be sold at market value.
Meanwhile the unaddressed crime in some areas of flint is driving many residents out and whole areas are available for demolition. Indeed the vandals have left nothing for a rehab and whole blocks of homes are gutted .
Flint is definitely changing, but I bwlieve only time will tell what the long term changes will be. Will the racial makeup of Flint change in a dramatic fashion. Will the ultimate goal become to gentrfy most of downtown Flint?
More college students buying houses in Flint
Published: Monday, February 20, 2012, 7:00 AM Updated: Monday, February 20, 2012, 10:32 AM
By Blake Thorne | bthorne1@mlive.com
Sean Work MLive.comCade Surface, 23, sits on the front porch of his home in Flint, Mich. on Friday, Feb. 17, 2012. Surface, who bought his house while attending class full-time.
FLINT, Michigan -- They were built for auto workers and their families decades ago. Then thousands sat empty for years, havens for crime and neglect.
Now, the city's vacant houses have an unlikely savior: college stude
"It's really weird how everybody is saying 'you got to get out of Flint,'" said University of Michigan-Flint student Brendon Beede. "Well, this is where the cheap houses are."
Beede, 24, bought a five-bedroom, 2,000 square foot house in the city's Carriage Town neighborhood in September for $45,000. He finished an undergraduate degree last year at UM-Flint and is studying for a masters degree in business while also working at the university, which is walking distance.
"I never use my car anymore."
His new home was restored by the Flint Neighborhood Improvement and Preservation Program, or NIPP, a non-profit group that remodels homes. The home has all new heating, electrical and appliances, Beede said.
"They basically knocked everything down to the studs and remodeled everything," Beede said.
The program also gave him the adjacent vacant lot, which he uses as a parking lot.
Beede lives alone in the home, but friends stay over often. The home has served as a sort of promotional tool for the city's redevelopment efforts. When friends visit, they're often shocked at how nice the house is and what he paid for it.
He is part of a growing network of 20-something friends and classmates who have bought homes in the city, he said.
"It's booming, I guess," Beede said.
Flint-area Realtor Chris Theodoroff has noticed the boom.
"We've seen a number of younger people, period," said Theodoroff, who also serves on the board of directors for the Flint Area Association of Realtors. "Some are still students."
Theodoroff said the uptick in young home buyers began about five years ago, as declining property values translated to good deals. About two years ago, realtors started to notice more young home buyers who were still college students. In many cases, a parent will help with the purchase.
Popular neighborhoods for students are Mott Park, Carriage Town and the neighborhoods around Miller Road between Hammerberg Road and S. Ballenger Highway.
Prices depend on the neighboorhood, but Theodoroff said most of these homes genereally are selling for $15,000 to $30,000.
Theodoroff said he even knows a student who bought near his own home in Woodcroft Estates, a stately neighborhood between Miller Road and the city's Swartz Creek Golf Course.
The students and other young home owners are good for the neighborhoods, Theodoroff said.
"It doesn't become party central. ... They're stabilizing some neighborhoods. They're actually improving the housing stock," Theodoroff said.
Rob McCullough and his girlfriend moved into their new home in the Carriage Town neighborhood in June. McCullough, 28, works downtown and is finishing a bachelor's degree at UM-Flint.
They had been living in Swartz Creek and commuting to Flint.
"I went from spending $80 a week on gas to like $40 in three weeks," McCullough said.
Their new home is a three-bedroom, two-bathroom, 1,400 square foot house renovated by NIPP. McCullough declined to say how much the couple paid for the home, but said the cost was so low it allows them to spend more in the local economy by visiting businesses downtown.
With so many people their age buying homes nearby, McCullough said he feels like part of a modern renaissance in Flint.
"Flint at one time was just the coolest city in the world," he said. "It means a lot to us to be part of Flint finding a new heyday."
Cade Surface, a 23-year-old studying urban planning at UM-Flint, bought his three-bedroom Carraige Town home in May. He expects to finish his degree in a year. He's aware that buying a home is tougher than selling a home here, should he chose to leave the city after graduation.
"I think I'm pretty committed to this area," Surface said. "I think it's really interesting. I don't think it's going to be able to improve very much if young, educated people don't give it a chance."
Despite the low cost of entry in these burgeoning young neighborhoods, buying a home in Flint comes with challenges. Beede said he's had cars broken into and bought a security camera. Many lament the November closing of Witherbee's Market and Deli, a downtown grocery store.
McCullough said he'd like to see some downtown businesses that sell practical things for residents. As it is now, he has to drive to Flint Township's Miller Road and Corunna Road business districts for things like groceries and hardware.
That will change, he hopes. Flint is already a cool place for young people to live, he said.
And it's only getting cooler.
"People are starting to believe," McCullough said. |
|
|
Tue Feb 21, 2012 1:41 pm |
|
|
untanglingwebs
El Supremo
|
FROM M-LIVE:
furple February 20, 2012 at 10:53AM
I believe the gist of the article is that the low property values in the city are allowing people who are not traditionally able to invest in homes to do just that. Sort of a silver lining kind of thing. Or are you unable to see the positive in things?
From what I remember from college, there was no way the average student could have ever afforded a home. Good for these students for taking advantage of the times, and deciding to call Flint home. These people are privileged, but not in a way to be ashamed of. It takes people willing to take risks, to work hard, and to invest to turn a place around.
Bradley Baughman February 20, 2012 at 11:51AM
"Politically Correct":
Cynicism is understandable. However, you're absolutely wrong in this case. I know two of the three men featured in this article pretty well, as well as several other people who are buying in the city right now, and they know very well the risks involved. They just thing the benefits outweigh the risks. And, being intelligent (i.e. not stupid), they also know that blowing the risks out of proportion and being blind to all else isn't going to help things. THAT would be stupidity. Stupid would be: not participating in the way of life these people are trying to build (rebuild?), and heckling them from the sidelines. |
|
|
|
Tue Feb 21, 2012 1:51 pm |
|
|
untanglingwebs
El Supremo
|
Is Gentrification Always Bad for Revitalizing Neighborhoods?
Kaid Benfield
Oct 19, 2011
l
I undertake today’s topic with more than a little trepidation, since it is by its nature emotionally and, not infrequently, racially charged. The title is deliberately chosen but somewhat rhetorical, since the answer ultimately depends on one's definition.
Most urban thinkers agree that the massive abandonment and resulting disinvestment of large areas of our cities by the (largely white) middle class, beginning in the 1960s and only now beginning to be reversed in many places, was terrible for cities, for populations left behind, and for the environment. But many residents whose families remained through those years of disinvestment and until the present day are understandably fearful that addressing these problems by bringing new residents and economic activity into their neighborhoods will only benefit the newcomers while disadvantaging the existing community. The biggest fear is that current residents will be displaced to make room for redevelopment.
There is a political dimension, too, as African-American and other nonwhite populations gained a majority of the voting power in many districts and cities after whites left. If the whites return, minorities’ ability to influence civic affairs and protect interests of importance may be diminished. (Sometimes lost in the equation is that the diminution of the proportion and influence of African-Americans in central cities is due not only to white return but also to middle-class “black flight” in recent years to suburbs perceived to be safer and with better schools.)
Elections now can be won or lost on these issues, as former Washington, D.C. mayor Adrian Fenty could possibly attest. Fenty’s administration pushed school reform, bike lanes, revitalization and streetcars, all of which were to one degree or another associated by many city residents with a gentrification agenda. Even dog parks became a symbolic issue associated with newcomers in revitalizing neighborhoods. Fenty (whose father is African-American) was tossed out, with voters split along racial lines.
After the primary, Washington Post columnist Courtland Milloy could hardly contain his gleeful contempt for the loser. He leveled many charges at Fenty in his celebratory column, not all of them unfair in my opinion. I’m not so sure about this one, though:
"
As for you blacks: Don't you, like, even know what's good for you? So what if Fenty reneged on his promise to strengthen the city from the inside by helping the working poor move into the middle class. Nobody cares that he has opted to import a middle class, mostly young whites who can afford to pay high rent for condos that replaced affordable apartments. “Don't ask Fenty or [former DC school chancellor Michelle] Rhee whom this world-class school system will serve if low-income black residents are being evicted from his world-class city in droves."
]While many would dispute Milloy’s hyperbole, he was nonetheless expressing the sentiments of a substantial part of the city's electorate. The return of middle-class whites to once-disinvested neighborhoods presents a tough, tough set of circumstances in which it can be hard to remain rational.
[/b
]My own belief is that we should be working for revitalization that encourages mixed-income neighborhoods in which new residents and businesses are welcomed while displacement is avoided or minimized. But make no mistake: that revitalization must continue to take place in America’s cities. It is absolutely essential if we are to have any hope of a more sustainable tax base to fund civic restoration and improvement, a more equitable civil society, and a more environmentally sustainable pattern of growth that reduces sprawling consumption of the landscape while bringing our rates of driving emissions down (central locations with moderate or greater density and nearby conveniences facilitate walking, transit, and shorter driving distances).
I have a few favorite examples of neighborhoods that seem to be revitalizing in the right way: for example, the LEED-ND certified Melrose Commons in the South Bronx; Old North Saint Louis; and Boston’s Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative. In each of these, existing residents are fully committed to their community’s revitalization and to shaping rather than opposing it. All are achieving levels of success, though the national real estate slump of the last several decades hasn’t helped any.
[b]The truth is that what some badly disinvested cities, districts, and neighborhoods desperately need is some form and degree of ‘gentrification.’ The challenge is to have enough without having too much.
On that point, and also here in D.C., Jeremy Borden recently wrote in The Washington Post that residents have formed a community development task force to influence the shape of development along our city’s Georgia Avenue corridor, a major north-south thoroughfare. Lined with mostly smaller storefronts and mid-rise older buildings, Georgia Avenue was once the scene of mass riots and crime but now is poised for an update. A historic theater is being restored and a new, mixed-use development under construction will house, among other tenants, The United Negro College Fund. Kent Boese reported last year on the Greater Greater Washington blog that, for its part, the city is contributing an $8 million “Great Streets” infrastructure upgrade, which will improve and replace sidewalks, install new trash cans and park benches, install “historically sympathetic” street lighting and signals, create textured crosswalks, improve two parks and install green infrastructure to manage storm water.
Flickr/takomabibelot
Several important new projects are also on the table, including major redevelopment on the site of the famous but recently closed Walter Reed Army Medical Center; a campus plan for Howard University, along with the nearby Howard Town Center development; and a controversial Walmart.
The Georgia Avenue Walmart, one of four likely to be built in D.C., could unfortunately pose a threat to just the kinds of businesses that the city and residents are hoping to attract and support. An economic impact analysis prepared by Public and Environmental Finance Associates and filed with the city found that “there is every reason to anticipate” that the store “will cause substantial diversion of sales from existing businesses in . . . immediate and nearby neighborhoods, and from elsewhere in the District,” particularly increasing the probability that existing supermarkets could close as a result of lost business. (The report does not appear to be online, but I was furnished with a copy.) Nonetheless, the city’s planning office has found the proposal “not inconsistent” with the city’s comprehensive plan, and is allowing the massive store to go forward, apparently concluding that economic impact is not an issue the office was allowed to consider in the review process.
In other words, if citizens really want a community-oriented process for revitalization, they need the city to fix the planning and zoning process pronto.
More hopeful for Georgia Avenue, perhaps, is a report that the city is considering building the corridor’s new streetcar line, which had been put on the back burner, sooner rather than later. In the meantime, the community development task force has created a history trail and is sprucing up blank walls with murals and empty storefronts with art projects. The idea is to bring a sense of pride and progress that will make the neighborhood more pleasant while helping to attract the right kind of investment. “We do want new people along Georgia Avenue,” one of the task force leaders told Borden, “but we want to make sure that the people who want to stay can stay and shape Georgia Avenue in the way we want.” I'm hoping that the task force will be a strong, responsible, and influential voice as new businesses and people come to the corridor.
Even at best, though, revitalization can be messy, as well as dependent on the legal framework and economic context in which opportunities are presented. And the reality is that the “middle class, mostly young whites” disparaged in Courtland Milloy’s election gloating are going to be critical to any urban resurgence. In his always-thoughtful blog Rebuilding Place in the Urban Space, Richard Layman describes some of the reasons:
“[F]or the past 20 years . . . DC's black population has been dropping--in large part as the black middle classes decamped to the suburbs, abandoning the city, just as the whites had done in the 1950s ... if not for an influx of white and Hispanic residents, DC's population would have steadily declined over the past 20 years because of black outmigration.”
While I haven’t researched the numbers to discern the extent to which Washington’s changing demographics reflect those of other cities, I think they suggest a truth likely to be universal: we need cities capable of attracting new residents with incomes that can strengthen the tax base and support new economic activity, while at the same time being strong and hospitable enough to hold on to existing residents. And we must provide both groups with the services and amenities required to meet their needs. Is that too much to hope for? I think that getting there is going to be a rough and rocky road, but I am optimistic for the long run.
Fashioning the more equitable, prosperous, and sustainable cities of the future will require more, not less, revitalization and more, not fewer, new residents. But it will also require providing high-quality affordable housing in neighborhoods where revitalization is occurring. It will require bringing existing residents to the table early and often in the planning process, but to help shape good neighborhood development, not to prevent it. And, where wounds over gentrification exist, we must take steps to heal them, because divisive rhetoric only hurts everyone involved and, ultimately, the viability of our communities
.
This post originally appeared on the National Resources Defense Council staff blog, Switchboard.
Keywords: Washington, DC, Development, race, White Flight, Gentrification
Kaid Benfield is the director of the Sustainable Communities and Smart Growth program at the Natural Resources Defense Council, co-founder of the LEED for Neighborhood Development rating system, and co-founder of Smart Growth America. All posts » |
|
|
|
Tue Feb 21, 2012 2:01 pm |
|
|
untanglingwebs
El Supremo
|
Gentrification poses a new
dilemma for many US cities
By City Mayors’ Special North America Correspondent
29 September 2011:
Gentrification has been a characteristic of major American cities like New York and Boston for over a century, but in the past decade it has become part of the growth cycle of smaller cities as well. Minority and working class neighborhoods such as Pittsburgh’s South Side; Northwest Fort Lauderdale, Florida; and East Austin, Texas are being transformed as white and middle-class residents move in.
In the United States, central urban neighborhoods — close to theaters, museums, restaurants, and downtown offices — are typically home to the poor, minorities, immigrants, and elderly. But demographic change has led to an increase in one- and two-person families, and this has made proximity to cultural and entertainment venues a desirable feature in real estate markets. Baby boomers — those born during the huge birth rate increase that accompanied the post-World War II economic expansion — traditionally have bid up the value of suburban housing in school districts with better academic reputations and paid more for open space and high levels of safety. Now that their children are grown and on their own, aging baby boomers (and their financially-independent childless children) seek the conveniences of urban centers.
The new arrivals often bring different expectations and resources, which change the dynamics of central urban neighborhoods. Because the more affluent newcomers are better educated and typically vote in higher percentages than poorer residents, they can influence municipal budgets. Mayors of very poor cities often must choose between spending on dog parks and bicycle lanes for new residents or affordable housing and job training for the old.
This creates a new dilemma for mayors of many cities, and they have difficulty getting their arms around it. Mayors get elected to stimulate economic development, but gentrification may be an unwanted side effect of development that is beyond their control.
“I am concerned and I am frustrated because I don’t know what the alternatives to gentrification are,” Norm Rice said a few years ago when he was mayor of Seattle. “The process clearly isn’t racist; it’s economic. The real question you have to ask yourself is: Is this good or bad?”
Positive or negative?
The conventional narrative of gentrification is that middle- and upper-class whites, sensing bargains in real estate markets, buy properties in distressed neighborhoods, fix them up, drive up rents, and force poor, mostly minority, residents to find affordable housing elsewhere. This was certainly true in Manhattan, San Francisco, and parts of other large cities that grew in population during the past 50 years, even while the rest of urban America was in a free fall.
Recent census data and studies sponsored by the non-partisan, non-profit National Bureau of Economic Research and others suggest that current patterns of gentrification may be more nuanced. As white retirees and young professionals move into once-distressed neighborhoods, so do college-educated African Americans and elderly Blacks and Latinos, as well as Latino families with children
.
The total number of people displaced through gentrification is difficult to gauge. Moves are often made within the same neighborhood, but to properties in worse condition or to households of families and friends. It’s also hard to know how many people moved, not because of rising rents, but because they were unhappy with neighborhood changes or because of harassment from landlords who want to “upgrade” their properties. Most likely, the total number of neighborhood residents forced to relocate is small — around five per cent — and predominantly minority
.
But this is not the whole story. Studies of gentrification and neighborhood change consider variables such as household income, home values, and the race, ethnicity, and educational attainment of householders. However, gentrification affects many more people than can be captured with those numbers: long-time residents who are psychologically uneasy with neighborhood changes, clients and employees of businesses that close to make way for more expensive shops and services, and kinship and friendship networks which become strained as people move away. Moreover, rising overall property values may slowly displace more people over the long term than can now be accurately estimated. And minorities who relocate from gentrified urban neighborhoods to the inner-ring suburbs for cheaper housing may re-ignite a white flight from inner to outer suburbs and exacerbate sprawl. These effects are difficult to quantify, in part because widespread gentrification is a relatively recent phenomenon in America.
Despite the difficulties in quantifying gentrification in an objective manner, it can be an emotional issue. Mayor Byron Brown of Buffalo, New York recently announced the fourth round of his Gum-Buy-Back program, in which the city pays people for unused chewing gum to prevent it from ending up as a sticky mess on sidewalks. The program is being criticized by minority neighborhood activists for serving “a role in the Mayor’s overall strategy of the city’s gentrification.” Ironically, Buffalo is one of the poorest cities in the United States and in desperate need of investment. The city lost nearly 11 percent of its population between 2000 and 2010 and 30 percent since 1980.
Public policy and the market
Demographics drive real estate markets, but so do public policies. Government financial subsidies can stimulate private investment in market-rate housing, but also create hardship for those who can no longer afford the rents. Code enforcement and historic preservation ordinances are intended to regulate the physical condition of properties, but may make neighborhoods attractive to private developers. Zero-tolerance policing policies may help attract middle-class white investors to a neighborhood, but also antagonize African-American residents, especially young males, who feel they are unjustifiably targeted by police. Public spaces may be redesigned or regulated in ways which make the most vulnerable feel unwelcome. On the other hand, housing costs can be kept affordable through rent stabilization policies, and neighborhoods sometimes can be protected through residency requirements and the taxation of profits from speculation.
Should a local government seize a tired property from an irresponsible owner and sell it to someone who will convert it to a market-rate use? What level of policing is adequate to maintain public safety? These are difficult policy questions because every neighborhood is different and every application of policy is unique. Therefore, the line between fueling gentrification and ensuring economic inclusiveness can be quite fine.
Former mayor Ron Dellums of Oakland, California established a Small Business Task Force to slow gentrification in his city. The idea was to create neighborhood jobs so that long-time residents could earn enough to afford to stay in gentrifying neighborhoods and benefit from declining crime and improving schools. The Task Force reacted to the real estate market rather than shaped it, and thus had mixed results according to most observers.
The stakes can be high for mayors. Anger over gentrification is a key reason Adrian Fenty was not re-elected as mayor of Washington, DC in 2010. Both Fenty and Mayor Brown of Buffalo are African-Americans, and the hostility towards them is generated by their minority constituencies who feel betrayed, rather than protected, by their efforts to redevelop their cities.
The future
Charles Dickens wrote about the “quiet poor”, those who live the best they can on modest incomes. Gentrification brings investment and resources to center cities, but often through the quiet expulsion of the quiet poor.
However, the widespread gentrification of American urban neighborhoods may be short-lived. In 25 years, the demographic impetus to current gentrification will have ended: most of the baby boomers will be dead and their young-professional children raising families in suburban areas with open space and adequately-performing schools.
The ultimate question is: Will urban neighborhoods be a temporary playground for well-to-do whites who will inevitably abandon them as their lifestyles change, or can Americans use public policy to leverage market forces over the next couple of decades to rebuild urban America as a desirable home for everyone? |
|
|
|
Tue Feb 21, 2012 2:22 pm |
|
|
untanglingwebs
El Supremo
|
A Study's Surprising Finding: Gentrification Can Attract Minorities
By CATHERINE BILKEY, Special to the Sun | June 19, 2008
Middle-class minority households are a big factor in gentrification, a new study shows, and the families that move into gentrifying neighborhoods see their incomes grow.
Using U.S. Census data, the study examined urban neighborhoods across the country with average family incomes of less than $30,000 in 1990. Of those neighborhoods, it then called "gentrifying" those that saw average income increase at least $10,000 between 1990 and 2000.
While the conventional wisdom is that gentrification displaces minority residents, the study found that more middle-income minorities were attracted to the gentrifying neighborhoods, especially college-educated black families with children ages 20 to 40, and Hispanics ages 40 to 60 of most education levels.
In particular, black high school graduates remained in neighborhoods that were gentrifying, the study found, and their average incomes increased 20% more in gentrifying neighborhoods than in non-gentrifying neighborhoods.
"The study shows that, on average, the displacement patterns some people are concerned about were not happening," one of the study's authors, Randall Walsh, said.
Mr. Walsh, an assistant professor of economics at University of Colorado at Boulder, published the study last month with Terra McKinnish, also of the University of Colorado, and Kirk White of Duke University.
Although the data showed that minorities are not always pushed out of areas that are gentrifying, the numbers are averages and do not apply to all situations, the authors said.
The study "certainly does not mean that in certain areas that displacement isn't happening," Mr. Walsh said. "But it does provide some evidence that, on average, this is not as big of a concern."
Community advocates questioned the conclusions of the study.
"
Low-income communities, especially communities of color, are being hard hit by gentrification in New York City," the director of research policy at the Community Development Project of the Urban Justice Center, Laine Romero-Alston, said. "The black community in Harlem is clearly facing issues of displacement and other issues with gentrification, like substandard living."
Still, the study underlines that many communities do benefit from the changes, the chairman of the sociology department at New York University, Dalton Conley, said.
In neighborhoods where residents own homes, they can turn a profit if they want to sell their properties to wealthier people seeking to move in, he said. "Even if gentrifiers develop plots that are abandoned, and the people next door own their homes, their property value goes up."
Small local businesses also can benefit from the changes, Mr. Conley added.
"Our results show that for the groups that you would expect to see displacement, we did not see evidence that they were moving out of houses at a higher rate than they move out of neighborhoods that were not gentrified," Mr. Walsh said.
new york sun's |
|
|
|
Tue Feb 21, 2012 2:35 pm |
|
|
untanglingwebs
El Supremo
|
One answered question is whether the activists that are continually citing statistic that purport to represent the percentage of African American residents as they demand more minority leadership are the ones that fear gentrification. They always cite a higher than actual percentage of African Americans is their rhetoric.
The people (whites and minorities) who paid $89,000 for a home now worth less than $40,000 may be helped if more individuals purchase homes in their area and help stabilize the neighborhood. Unfortunately I meet some people who bought homes several years ago and their neighborhood is so deteriorated they say they are "stuck" and unable to move. They ask if moving is worth destroying their credit? Realtors are telling some of these people to just stay put and the property values will return. |
|
|
|
Tue Feb 21, 2012 2:51 pm |
|
|
Hardwood
F L I N T O I D
|
Decades of disinvestment in the Carriage Town neighborhood had caused the housing stock to reach a point where most of the structures could not get any worse and still be habitable. At that point, there is no other option but for the neighborhood to improve -- either by restoring the homes or by demolishing them.
If 50 years ago the city of Flint had a rental inspection program that they actually enforced, this city would be totally different today. We wouldn't be facing block after block of abandoned homes that are no longer on the tax rolls. Besides, people deserve clean and safe places to live. |
|
|
|
Tue Feb 21, 2012 3:29 pm |
|
|
untanglingwebs
El Supremo
|
Even in more recent times the council cut the funds for code enforcement and building inspections whenever they wanted to cut the budgets.
On at least one occassion they forgot to also eliminate the revenue they anticipated receiving from an entity that no longer existed.
For years the administration viewed gangs as merely youth groups and allowed their criminal activities to proliferate and make whole neighborhoods unsafe. The crime in carriage town and the Kettering neighborhood has to be eradicated.
Add that to the the issues that face all of the rustbelt cities in the midwest and flint has a housing crisis. You are correct about Carriage Town and at least two mayors wanted to eliminate the historic designation here so they could do demolition and rebuild.
Then after 25 years of disinvestment and unkept promises, the proposed reinvestment was stopped by the discovery of indian bones. Carriage Town may finally be getting a portion of the promised reinvestment, however the original plan for investment in carriage Town has been hijacked once again.
With 500 houses promised in the downtown and near downtown area, Carriage Town has to be a player in the rebirth of flint. It is close to downtown and can easily be a part of a walkable Flint. |
|
|
|
Tue Feb 21, 2012 7:57 pm |
|
|
untanglingwebs
El Supremo
|
It is sad that I and others are communicating with those who believe they are being forced out of their homes by the uncontrolled violence and the unavailability of programs to help them. Especially feel for the grandmother caring for her grandchildren and being told she makes too much money to qualify for help fixing her home. She is barely getting by and frustrated when she see others get help that she is told she can't qualify for. She fears for her life and the lives of her grandchildren when the shooting happens on a nightly basis.
I am told that some blame certain ministers for the violence as they point to the teens associated with these ministers as the perpetrarors of the violence. Could these gangbangers be conning the ministers or as I am told the ministers are just not right? Games people Play. |
|
|
|
Fri Feb 24, 2012 3:20 am |
|
|
|
FAQ
Search
Memberlist
Register
Profile
FlintTalk.com Forum Index
> Political Talk
