Motown's Message

The car companies brought their headquarters back into the city. The Tigers kept their stadium in downtown and the Lions moved back. You would see some PR about new tech start-ups and strip of restaurant and entertainment venues in the heart of the city. But the population continued to hollow out and vast swaths of empty areas literally were turned back to nature or in other words abandoned. City services stopped in many near empty neighborhoods and the police force is able to solve only a small fraction of reported crimes.

Detroit represents the extreme downside of what can happen to a once dominant American industrial city. Over five decades precipitated in part by 1960s race riots, hundreds of thousands of blue-collar jobs left this high-pay/high benefit union bastion in cold weather country for warm weather right to work states, and they have no incentive to return. And now the Motor City crashes into biggest municipal bankruptcy in U.S. history… What real estate investor would venture into these parts?