"His plans are based on a study funded, in part, by Living Cities. Members of that national organization include the Bank of America, Deutsche Bank, J.P. Morgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, and Prudential Financial, along with “philanthropic” groups like the Ford, Kresge, Kellogg and Skillman Foundations."
BYE, BYE DETROIT http://www.michigancitizen.com/default.asp?sourceid=&smenu=1&twindow=&mad=&sdetail=8374&wpage=1&skeyword=&sidate=&ccat=&ccatm=&restate=&restatus=&reoption=&retype=&repmin=&repmax=&rebed=&rebath=&subname=&pform=&sc=1070&hn=michigancitizen&he=.com Bing downsizing means neighborhood relocation By Diane Bukowski Michigan Citizen DETROIT — Mayor Dave Bing told WJR radio’s conservative commentator Frank Beckmann Feb. 24 that he plans to shrink the city, a modern-day “trail of tears” for Detroiters. Many living in sparsely populated areas will be forced to move as he cuts city services to their locations. His plans are based on a study funded, in part, by Living Cities. Members of that national organization include the Bank of America, Deutsche Bank, J.P. Morgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, and Prudential Financial, along with “philanthropic” groups like the Ford, Kresge, Kellogg and Skillman Foundations. “Relocation, absolutely,” said Bing, who moved to Detroit when he became mayor. “If we don’t do it, this whole city is going to go down. I’m hopeful people will understand that. If we can incentivize some of those folks in those desolate situations, they can get better opportunities.” He added: “There is just too much land and too many expenses for us to continue to manage the city as we have in the past. There are tough decisions that are going to have to be made. There will be winners and losers, but in the end we’ve got to do what’s right for the city’s future.” The Wall Street Journal reported recently that Bing is also expecting a population decline as Census 2010 approaches. “Nationwide, each person counted translates into about $1,000 to $1,200 in federal funding to municipal governments,” stated the Journal. Population loss could mean the lost of millions of dollars in federal money. One Journal reader said online that acres of Detroit should be bulldozed and turned into farmland. Another objected, “Excepting that Detroit has all the infrastructure utilities in place to support dense residential housing/commercial use. Why did we abandon Detroit and pave over all the outlying suburban farmland to live there in the first place? Hour long commutes? Where does that brilliant lack of long-term planning leave us now? We have a major city half empty, underutilized and wasting away. Encourage people to move back and invest in Detroit and then bulldoze the wasteful suburban sprawl and its half-developed Pulte subdivisions and return them to farmland.” ‘Why did we abandon Detroit?’ The Detroit Data Collaborative published a survey of Detroit land parcels Feb. 18, claiming 30 percent of Detroit’s land is vacant. Collaborative members are the Detroit Office of Foreclosure Prevention and Response (part of the Detroit Economic Growth Association, whose president is Detroit’s Chief Development Officer, George Jackson, Jr.), Data-Driven Detroit, Community Legal Resources, and the University of Michigan’s Ginsberg Center. Living Cities is a “supporting partner.” While estimating that up to 30 percent of Detroit’s land is vacant, the study says that just 10.2 percent, or 33,529 of Detroit’s 343,849 residential structures, are vacant. A multi-colored map of the city (see box) shows bright red areas, mainly inner city neighborhoods, which researchers claim are largely devoid of housing structures. However, the map’s legend says the red areas are anywhere from 1.7 percent to 57.3 percent occupied by housing. A zip code map of Detroit published by CityData.com shows only two zip codes with low population density. Those are 48211, which has large industrial areas, including the Poletown GM Assembly Plant, and 48242, which has no residents. City Data reports that fourteen zip codes, 48201 through 48206, 48210, 48213, 48219, 48221, 48224, 48227, 48228, 48235 and 48238 have high density occupancy, while the remaining zip codes have average population levels. Study’s methodology questioned The Collaborative report says that U-M students from the Ginsberg Center and unidentified “Detroiters” assessed vacancies through a visual survey, without getting out of their cars. Attorney Ted Phillips, Executive Director of the United Community Housing Coalition (UCHC), questioned those methods. UCHC and Michigan Legal Services, with city council members including JoAnn Watson, have conducted a city-wide survey of Detroit homes annually for the last seven years as part of their Foreclosure Prevention Project. “We do mailings to addresses listed for foreclosure beforehand, and repeat home visits at different times of the week,” Phillips said. “We knock on doors, and if we get no answer, we check the premises to see if there are curtains at the window, mail piled up, a padlock or other indicators. We also ask the neighbors if the homes are occupied. Our goal is to save homeowners and prevent situations such as a foreclosure on a senior who may be in the hospital. Many properties that appear vacant are not, and many that appear occupied are not.” He said Detroiters should be wary of “incentives” offered to move. “I hope whatever they come up with will truly benefit the people,” Phillips said. “The Planning and Development Department under the [Dennis] Archer administration conducted a removal of many Delray residents with the promise they would knock $40,000 off the price of newly-built homes worth $120,000. But how is someone living on SSI or other forms of Social Security, who has paid their home off, going to afford an $80,000 mortgage?” Study’s funders caused foreclosure crisis Living Cities funneled $3.75 million to the DEGC to set up the Office of Foreclosure Prevention, according to a 2008 press release. Ironically, its Wall Street members are responsible for the tidal wave of foreclosures that has devastated neighborhoods throughout Detroit and the nation. Not satisfied with billions in bailout money funded by taxpayers, they evidently are planning a windfall from “downsizing” Detroit and other cities. “Wells Fargo Bank just sold my client’s home to a hedge fund for $2,833,” said attorney Vanessa Fluker, who works long hours fighting foreclosures. “They put up a ‘for sale’ sign on the property, even though we had already won a victory and got the foreclosure set aside. They want to move everyone out and replace them with people that don’t look like me ...” Wells Fargo was also named in the NAACP lawsuit against predatory loan offenders. Another hedge fund, the Multi-Distressed Asset Company, boasts on its website, “While the media reports declines in [home] value of 20-30 percent, we have sourced opportunities where the discount is much higher. In this environment of extreme distress, opportunistic investors can achieve robust returns through acquiring blocks (“Pools”) of residential properties directly from financial institutions who own property through foreclosure.” DEGC plays prime role The nonprofit Detroit Economic Growth Association (DEGA), parent to the Detroit Office for Foreclosure Prevention and Response, is actually a doppelganger of the Detroit Economic Growth Corporation (DEGC), also a private, nonprofit organization, according to its website. George Jackson, Jr., a DTE executive for 27 years, is president of both organizations as well as Detroit’s Chief Development Officer under Bing. DEGA’s 2008 tax filings, published by the Internal Revenue Service on Guidestar.com, state that DEGA and the DEGC have the same officers and directors. According to state records, they also have the same purpose, “to promote economic development within the city of Detroit, create employment opportunities, and help generate tax revenue.” The Michigan Economic Development Corporation’s website says, “The DEGC also serves as the professional and administrative staff for the [pseudo-public] Downtown Development Authority (DDA), the Economic Development Corporation of the City of Detroit (EDC), Tax Increment Finance Authority, and Detroit Brownfield Redevelopment Authority (DBRA).” The DEGC’s Secretary is Attorney David Baker Lewis of Lewis & Munday, which receives city contracts. Developer and builder Michael Tyson is its Treasurer. Directors include William Brooks, a retired GM Vice-President, Denise Starr, Compuware’s Chief Administrative Officer, and Roderick Gillum, a GM Vice-President and chairman of the GM Foundation. A complete listing of directors in the organization’s tax filings is a who’s who of metro Detroit corporate leaders. Bob Rossback, spokesperson for the DEGC, said the DEGA and the DEGC are separate legal entities, with the separation allowing the DEGA to administer grant funds from organizations like the Kresge, Kellogg and Skillman foundations. DEGC is funded by the city. Regarding Bing’s plans to remove Detroiters and cut services off to poor sections of the city, he said, “The DEGC itself is not really commenting on these issues and questions. The study itself is in a sense neutral, with the data turned over to Mayor Bing, whose cabinet George Jackson serves on, but it is also available to lots of community organizations for them to be able to inform public policy.” DEGC directors stand to gain from “Trail of Tears” Rossback would not comment directly about the interests that many DEGC directors may have in developing land vacated under Bing’s plans. “The DEGC and its board operates to high ethical standards, and uses open and transparent methods to make decisions on contracts,” he said. “The DEGC is also very careful to make sure that all development projects meet the terms of the law in protecting the interests of neighborhoods and the people, and the long-term interests of the city.” He said that while negotiations regarding contracts are not public, any decisions on the contracts are made at meetings open to the public. A schedule of those meetings is at the DEGC offices at 550 Woodward and can currently be accessed by calling the office. Rossback send the DEGC will soon include a calendar of such meetings on its website. The DEGC under former Mayor Dennis Archer’s sister-in-law C. Beth Duncombe was responsible for the razing of working-class homes on the city’s far east side in the 1990’s by the Graimark Corporation. In a series of ground-breaking articles, Michigan Citizen writer Ron Seigel exposed the fact that Archer’s son Dennis Jr. worked for Graimark among other conflicts. Other study partners also funded by Wall Street Data-Driven Detroit (D3) is headed by Kurt Metzger, previously a professor at Wayne State University’s now-defunct Center for Urban Studies. A demographer who grew up in Cincinnati, he was appointed head of D3’s predecessor by the Kresge and Kellogg Foundations. He also serves on the boards of Create Detroit, the Greening of Detroit, and the International Institute of Metropolitan Detroit. According to its website, Community Legal Resources “leads a collaborative initiative called the Detroit Vacant Property Campaign (DVPC) that empowers communities and organizations to turn vacant properties into assets through community engagement and technical assistance. DVPC involves community groups, neighborhood associations, city residents, faith-based organizations, Detroit Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC), the University of Michigan Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning, Community Development Advocates of Detroit, and the City of Detroit.” LISC is a community development organization that assembles public and private money for “locally-defined priorities.” The Detroit Data Collaborative’s report can be accessed at www.detroitparcelsurvey.org. Trail of Tears The Trail of Tears was the forced relocation of Native Americans, including many members of the Cherokee, Creek, Seminole, and Choctaw nations among others, from their homelands to Indian Territory in the Western United States. The phrase originated from a description of the removal of the Choctaw Nation in 1831. In 1838 and 1839, as part of Andrew Jackson’s Indian removal policy, the Cherokee nation was forced to give up its lands east of the Mississippi River and to migrate to an area in present-day Oklahoma. The Cherokee people called this journey the "Trail of Tears," because of its devastating effects. The migrants faced hunger, disease, and exhaustion on the forced march. Over 4,000 out of 15,000 of the Cherokees died. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
