Why Detroit Became America’s Biggest Ghost Town

Detroit is infamous for its abandoned houses, decaying factories, and rapidly shrinking population.

But the collapse of Detroit is worse than you think.

Here’s how Motor City become America’s biggest ghost town.

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[tk-zbbr]

Corruption and stupidity will always be a city killer.

[moriahgamesdev]

Hiroshima? Don't think that's a good example for how Americans might fix a city. Unless you are saying nuke it and ask the Japanese to fix what you ruined.

[nimarus]

A guy in California tried to build an apartment building in California. Residents paid the fee (I think $300) to put the permit on hold and have a meeting with the owner. The locals, almost exclusively Latino, had some demands. The biggest of which was for the owner to agree to give available housing to Latino applicants first. Putting the construction of much needed housing on hold, and possibly never being built, unless the guy agreed to ignore the Fair Housing Act. That's right, they demanded he give preferencial treatment to one ethnic group above all others. Why? They claim the neighborhood is traditionally Latino and they wanted to keep it that way. Then there was all the red tape, fees, and palms that had to be greased to get the construction done. I'm not sure it ever got built.

[Soundsofthewood]

Well its more then just that.

High levels of crime made it unsafe to live and invest into.

Corruption is something I experienced in New Orleans and thats something that drove me away.
Hard to be honest when you get taxed to death and problems don't get solved.
You find out that the taxes are only high because the politicians and their lackies want more money.

The automotive industry was out the door when NAFTA got introduced.
They could build stuff far cheaper in other countries without having to worry about employees and benefits.
This is something that has helped destroy America in general.

At the end of a few decades.
Their was no jobs worth living there.
The crime made it too dangerous to live in.
The corruption turned all the honest people way.

Now the city is pretty much tearing down everything and starting over. Probably the best move tbh.

[gmoney]

One word can describe the demise and the decay of Detroit. Can anyone think of that word? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller? Bueller?

[IgorStankovic-euru]

America is FALLING APART day after day.

[brianfernandez]

I don't know why Republicans don't talk about this more. This should be taught in schools.

[whatsup]

Does private colleges provide better quality due to competition? Does free market economic works in education system? What about developing countries why is there private colleges underperforming ?

[mstone]

New York is heading straight for Detroit

[zackgravity]

Us govt works for the business class, not the citizens.

[pacfab]

I used to think when they called Detroit a ghost town that just mean it was because nobody was there but I mean ghosts you can feel Spirits walking up behind you as you walk up the street all types certain blocks you don't see nobody but you feel them very weird place to be

[BrandonSmith-rbbf]

Nice try. It was the outsourcing of the manufacturing jobs overseas, and the fact that land owners were sitting on vacant buildings for decades, instead of using/selling those buildings to create new businesses... where do you think the crime came from in the first place??

[christaverduren]

Look at all the large cities (outside of NYC) in New York State! The crime in Rochester alone is off the charts, not to mention arson, and all the rest Nick mentioned. Buffalo, Syracuse, Binghamton, even some of the smaller cities with high drug problems have crime that's off the charts. and yet taxes are higher, and regulations stricter. People are feeling like rats off a sinking ship, the ones that can at any rate.

[leonardoflorentin]

Funny how robocop movie blames it on the exact opposite of what this guy is saying, blames it on ravenous capitalism. I'm gonna go with my experience and say that RoboCop got it better than this guy.

[hansvonmeinstien]

Japanese are different and Americans are different, u cant compare them, Japanese are honest and hard working, they dont have different races mixing up each other

[meziembamara]

😮 Wow.
And I thought Lagos was getting bad.

[Tom-jbsc]

"1.5 million people used to lived in this city"

"Now its a ghost town !"

[BackFirePerformance]

When you get the population wrong even, I genuinely question a lot of what you have to say. Detroit at its largest wasn’t even 2 Million, it simply came close at nearly 1.9 million. Never has it been over 2 million residents.

[fongluu]

dont compare to SF...SF is the next Detroit too!

[kirkmarusak]

Nick Freitas is not an expert on Detroit. As a Virginia delegate, he gets most of his campaign contributions from Big Business and Industry. He never lets them down with his votes on legislation in the Virginia General Assembly and with his statements and positions on issues. Freitas never bites the hands that feed his campaigns!

My ancestors started arriving in Detroit in 1882, and I was born in the Detroit area. Most of my relatives still live there. There are a variety of reasons for Detroit's decline. A big reason for Detroit's population lose was the entire area became dependent upon one industry rather than diversifying. When Americans stopped buying U.S. automobiles that were poorly made, they switched to higher quality Japanese cars.

Americans automobile makers did not leave Detroit solely because of high city taxes. They set up plants in the American South and in places like Mexico where workers can be paid a lot less. They are places where no labor unions exist. The Japanese car companies began setting up plants in the U.S. to maunfacturer parts for their vehicles if they needed parts.

This practice of seaching out locations where wages are very low has been done by companies since our country was founded. For example, the textile industry left New England to set up plants in the U.S. South. Then, the textile industry moved out of the U.S. to set up plants in China, India, and Bangladesh. Making larger profits is their only motive. Cities and towns that rely almost entirely on one industry often lose population or become ghosts towns when their industries close down and exit. That is what happened to Detroit.

A second factor in Detroit's decline is race. The federal government once only gave mortgages to white people and denied them to black residents. In addition, banks and lending institutions once only gave loans to whites. Thus, black families could not afford to fix up their homes unlike whites. Whites were able to move to the suburbs and buy a new house with a mortgage. It did not help when Republican Detroit Mayor Albert Coho, an real estate realtor and openly hostile racist elected in 1949, pushed to build more highways in Detroit to make it easier for workers to leave Detroit's business district to the Detroit suburbs. Black people were afraid to move to the Detroit suburbs for fear they would be harassed by white residents who did not want them living in their communities.