While doing research behind the reason why Detroit filed bankruptcy in 2013, I learned about the numerous black businesses and homes that were destroyed by the federal government to make room for new highways. What stood out to me the most was the destruction of Black Bottom Neighborhood on Hastings street. I decided to include …
Week Two Blog – Hi everyone! The community organization I am working with this summer is CDAD (Community Development Advocates of Detroit). CDAD is known for its public policy work for nonprofits, community organizations, and overall advocating for improving the city of Detroit. As of now, CDAD specializes in the right to counsel and affordable …
Week Two & Three: Getting Started + How To Kill A City Read More »
I found the excerpts from How to Kill a City incredibly compelling. The book did a good job of contextualizing the current economic moment that Detroit is experiencing. It was especially relevant considering that I currently live in the 7.2 bubble that the book described. I take the Q-line to an office in the center …
We read the book How To Kill a City this week. The book was really eye-opening and I learned many things I had not known before. I thought the author did a good job reiterating that gentrification is caused by high-level government/business decisions rather than individual people and businesses. While reading about the gentrification of …
One of the largest factors and causes of the housing crisis in Detroit is the impact that overassessments on properties and those that call these properties home have had. Overassessments by the city of Detroit have cost Detroit taxpayers to pay over hundreds of millions of dollars in property taxes since a recession that saw …
Now that we’ve read the Detroit Section of How to Kill a City, I want to talk about how it has influenced my understanding of some of the work that my site does. The story that How to Kill a City describes, of purposeful gentrification of a small portion of the city while the rest …
One of the things about this reading that struck me is how intentional all the steps of the gentrification have been. Including Mayor Albert Cobo’s racist rhetoric and subsequent policy decisions and redlining, and also the more covert racism of government institutions that still were a form of violence against Black people who were priced …
“Katrina without water” This line from the book “How to Kill a City” is painful to read. I’ve seen how the devastation of Katrina continues to affect New Orleans, my home, to this day. There are striking similarities between neighborhoods here in Detroit and those that have never recovered from Katrina in terms of development …
While reading How to Kill a City what stood out to me was that Detroit’s public government invests a large amount of its money to incentivize private companies to invest in the city. This has resulted in large portions of Detroit being left without basic public services and government programs. As I learned more about …
Hi Everyone! It’s funny that part of this week’s prompt is about COVID, because it has definitely impacted my week. This Wednesday, SWDCJC hosted an Expungement Fair for members of the community to come learn about the process of getting their records expunged of low level and nonviolent misdemeanors. The event was supposed to be …
