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crippen

Unburied bodies tell the tale of Detroit — a city in despair
Tim Reid in Detroit


The abandoned corpses, in white body bags with number tags tied to each toe, lie one above the other on steel racks inside a giant freezer in Detroit’s central mortuary, like discarded shoes in the back of a wardrobe.

Some have lain here for years, but in recent months the number of unclaimed bodies has reached a record high. For in this city that once symbolised the American Dream many cannot even afford to bury their dead.

“I have not seen this many unclaimed bodies in 13 years on the job,” said Albert Samuels, chief investigator at the mortuary. “It started happening when the economy went south last year. I have never seen this many people struggling to give people their last resting place.”

Unburied bodies piling up in the city mortuary — it reached 70 earlier this year — is the latest and perhaps most appalling indignity to be heaped on the people of Detroit. The motor city that once boasted the highest median income and home ownership rate in the US is today in the midst of a long and agonising death spiral
After years of gross mismanagement by the city’s leaders and the big three car manufacturers of General Motors, Ford and Chrysler, who continued to make vehicles that Americans no longer wanted to buy, Detroit today has an unemployment rate of 28 per cent, higher even than the worst years of the Great Depression.

The murder rate is soaring. The school system is in receivership. The city treasury is $300 million (£182m) short of the funds needed to provide the most basic services such as rubbish collection. In its postwar heyday, when Detroit helped the US to dominate the world’s car market, it had 1.85 million people. Today, just over 900,000 remain. It was once America’s fourth-largest city. Today, it ranks eleventh, and will continue to fall.

Thousands of houses are abandoned, roofs ripped off, windows smashed. Block after block of shopping districts lie boarded up. Former manufacturing plants, such as the giant Fisher body plant that made Buicks and Cadillacs, but which was abandoned in 1991, are rotting.

Even Detroit’s NFL football team, the Lions, are one of the worst in the country. Last season they lost all 16 games. This year they have lost eight, and won just a single gane.

Michigan’s Central Station, designed by the same people who gave New York its Grand Central Station, was abandoned 20 years ago. One photographer who produced a series of images for Time magazine said that he often felt, as he moved around parts of Detroit, as though he was in a post-apocalyptic disaster.

Then in June, the $21,000 annual county budget to bury Detroit’s unclaimed bodies ran out. Until then, if a family confirmed that they could not afford to lay a loved one to rest, Wayne County — in which Detroit sits — would, for $700, bury the body in a rough pine casket at a nearby cemetery, under a marker.

Darrell Vickers had to identify his aunt at the mortuary in September but he could not afford to bury her as he was unemployed. When his grandmother recently died, Mr Vickers’s father paid for her cremation, but with a credit card at 21 per cent interest. He said at the time it was “devastating” to not be able to bury his aunt.

What has alarmed medical examiners at the mortuary is that most of the dead died of natural causes. It is evidence, they believe, of people who could not afford medical insurance and medicines and whose families can now not afford to bury them.

Yet in recent weeks there have been signs of hope for Mr Samuels that he can reduce the backlog of bodies. Local philanthropists have donated $8,000 to help to bury the dead. In the past month, Mr Samuels has been able to bury 11 people view-source:Unburied bodies tell the tale of Detroit — a city in despair - Times Online

Chairman Mao

3rd world Yankerikka... Awwww

Boon Mee

More reason for anyone left in Detroit to haul-ass down to Texas where the economy is booming.

California Was Among States With Record Unemployment (Update3) - Bloomberg.com

Chairman Mao

Or emigrate while other countries will still have them.

blackgang

Specs.

Detroit Population .


CategoryCountPercent Total Population-951,270-100%
Male-448,319-47.1%
Female-502,951-52.9%
Under 18-295,709-31.1%
18+655,561-68.9%
65+99,056-10.4%
Median Age-30.9
Average Family Size-3.45
White-116,599- 12.3%
African-American-775,772-81.6%
Asian-9,268-1%
American Indian & Alaskan-3,140-0.3%
Other-24,199-2.5%
Mixed Race-22,041-2.3%
Hispanic (included in categories above)47,1675%

Chairman Mao

My maths teacher has a lot to answer for in reference to her teaching of percentages... Crazy lass was of the mind that the maximum possible was 100.

blackgang

Look again, Where did you say you were from??
Really do not take a rocket scientist does it?

CRSD

Just a short time ago they were auctioning off foreclosed homes in Detroit. Minimum bid was $500 US and nobody was bidding.

blackgang

Yes, Detroit, St. Louis and Wash DC keep trying for Murder Capitol of US record, I don't know who is ahead at present.

Muadib

All this taking place while the US government continues to don the rose colored glasses and are more concerned with providing foreign aid to underprivileged countries while the US falls apart... Truly insane...

CRSD

Of course! They also know that little of the aid if any goes beyond the underprivileged country's government coffers. But it is much easier to exploit the non-democratic countries while still praising one's self to the world, beating one's chest and telling everyone how much you are contributing. It's strictly business presented to the public in a manner to give the public that warm, fuzzy, feel-good, so that they are free to ignore the real problems, both at home and abroad.

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Milkman

I rarely if ever, hear anything good about Detroit.

chitown

^ There are many Thais living there and a bunch of tasty restaurants.

I made multiple business trips to Detroit to meet with several clients I had there and we would always eat Thai. Normally ran me $200 for the luncheon.

Milkman

Chi,

Interesting.

Can you elaborate a little more on the Thai community in Detroit?

chitown

I dated a Thai girl and a Vietnamese girl in Detroit. There are may Thais and Thai restaurants in Detroit and the outlying suburbs. Most of the Thais and Asians go there to attend universities in the area and end up staying. The girl I dated worked for a company and at a Thai restaurant part time. I always enjoyed my trips to Detroit and never felt like I was in a place where I might get robbed or jumped. Of course there are some rough areas in Detroit, but hey Chicago is no Shangri-la either.

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It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

Happyman

On my last trip back to the UK on buisness in 2005, a potential customer - knowing I lived in Thaland insisted that he took me for lunch at a great cheap traditional authentic Thai restaurant he had found in the city (London)

Lunchtime special menu

Tomyam gung starter
Green curry main course
Sticky rice with mango and coconut cream for desert
1 Bottle of Chang and a thimblefull of Mekhong

37 GBP (1920 baht !!) per person !!!

Can do the same any day here for about 450-500 baht for 2 -including a few more beers and a half bottle of devils piss !

larvidchr

It really do not look good for that once so great city, there is no racism intended in this- but it cant be good when there is 7 African American to every 1 white, to me that sounds like the city slowly is turning into a ghetto and from there there is only one way, it is still unbelievable that GM, Ford and Chrysler, with all those supposedly smart marketing people employed, did not see the trend growing for higher build quality, much smaller and more fuel efficient cars, and started years ago to change their model line up ??

I just found this looking a bit on google for stuff about Detroit, it's really quite depressing.





Detroit house auction flops for urban wasteland



Life in "Progress" City

In a crowded ballroom next to a bankrupt casino, what remains of the Detroit property market was being picked over by speculators and mostly discarded.
After five hours of calling out a drumbeat of "no bid" for properties listed in an auction book as thick as a city phone directory, the energy of the county auctioneer began to flag.

"OK," he said. "We only have 300 more pages to go."

There was tired laughter from investors ready to roll the dice on a city that has become a symbol of the collapse of the U.S. auto industry, pressures on the industrial middle-class and intractable problems for the urban poor.

On the auction block in Detroit: almost 9,000 homes and lots in various states of abandonment and decay from the tidy owner-occupied to the burned-out shell claimed by squatters.

Taken together, the properties seized by tax collectors for arrears and put up for sale last week represented an area the size of New York's Central Park. Total vacant land in Detroit now occupies an area almost the size of Boston, according to a Detroit Free Press estimate.

These auctioned properties were only from one year (2006). Things have only got worse in the housing market since then and the Auto Companies just went bankrupt. I read that last year Detroit had 50,000 to 60,000 abandoned buildings. Wouldn't surprise me if that number is larger now.



Gordon Gekko at the Taxman Blog notes that it wasn't conservative administrations that turned Detroit into a cesspool of humanity. You can make that argument for every big city in decline in middle america.

That argument was made very well in the past by Steven Hayward:

Broken Cities- Liberalism’s urban legacy

. Sphere: Related Content

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Gerbil

^ would make a good location to shoot a zombie film.