Flint Photos: What's Left Behind

I've been through a lot of abandoned Flint homes in the past two years. It's always worse when there's some remnant left behind, some reminder of happier times.

Flint Photos: Humboldt Ave. at W. Rankin St. in Civic Park

How fast does an abandoned house deteriorate in Flint? I posted the photo below this June. I took the two photos above three days ago.

The Housing Crisis: Mark Guerette and the Realities of Home Ownership

The New York Times continues to examine the nuances of the housing meltdown with a story on Mark Guerette, a Floridian who is claiming blighted, abandoned homes, fixing them up, and renting them to needy families at low rates.

Catharine Skipp and Damien Cave report:

In a sign of the odd ingenuity that has grown from the real estate collapse, he is banking on an 1869 Florida statute that says the bundle of properties he has seized will be his if the owners do not claim them within seven years.

A version of the same law was used in the 1850s to claim possession of runaway slaves, though Mr. Guerette, 47, a clean-cut mortgage broker, sees his efforts as heroic. “There are all these properties out there that could be used for good,” he said.

Given Flint's abandoned housing problem, the story certainly resonated with me. The only problem? Guerette could end up in jail, and his tenants could end up on the street.

Read the full article here.

Flint, Meet Inner Mongolia

When it comes to abandonment, Flint has plenty of kindred spirits, including Ordos in Inner Mongolia. David Barboza of The New York Times reports:

Ordos proper has 1.5 million residents. But the tomorrowland version of Ordos — built from scratch on a huge plot of empty land 15 miles south of the old city — is all but deserted.

Broad boulevards are unimpeded by traffic in the new district, called Kangbashi New Area. Office buildings stand vacant. Pedestrians are in short supply. And weeds are beginning to sprout up in luxury villa developments that are devoid of residents.

“It’s pretty lonely here,” says a woman named Li Li, the marketing manager of an elegant restaurant in Kangbashi’s mostly vacant Lido Hotel. “Most of the people who come to our restaurant are government officials and their guests. There aren’t any common residents around here.”

City leaders, cheered on by aggressive developers, had hoped to turn Ordos into a Chinese version of Dubai — transforming vast plots of the arid, Mongolian steppe into a thriving metropolis. They even invested over $1 billion in their visionary project.

But four years after the city government was transplanted to Kangbashi, and with tens of thousands of houses and dozens of office buildings now completed, the 12-square-mile area has been derided in the state-run newspaper China Daily as a “ghost town” monument to excess and misplaced optimism.

Dan Kildee: Addenda, Extras and Outtakes

There's never enough space to use all the material you gather on a story, and my profile of Dan Kildee in Slate was no different. If you enjoyed reading about the pied piper of the shrinking city movement, here is some additional info about Kildee, Jane Avenue, H.U.D., and unofficial White House tours, along with some of the photos I took along the way.

Addendum: Jane Avenue Memories

"I have a lot of memories of Jane Avenue," Kildee writes in an email. "That street, to me, was my grandmother. She lived there for 60 years, from 1934 until she died in 1994. Even then, many of the families on the street had been there for decades. That neighborhood in my early years seemed like a collection of families more than a typical neighborhood. The family names were familiar across generations — the Kildees, the Wests, the Lotts, the Beauchamps, the Griffins. Jane Avenue and the whole 'old east side' was a neighborhood in the way we don't see anymore. It reached across generations.

"Going to my grandmother's house was like going to the family museum — it actually felt like we were going back in time. Of course, inside her house was this treasure of family pictures and other reminders of our family history — like her furniture which never changed throughout my whole life. But even the neighborhood was a reminder of past decades. The neighbors knew me even though I didn't know them — I guess the grandmothers kept one another informed. When I started running for office and would campaign in that area — even though I moved to the west side at age four — I had to plan for long conversations on the porches of east-siders, and they told me stories of my family. Of course many of those stories were the ones I never heard at home or at Grandma's house. I learned a lot about my grandfather, who died before I was born.

"For me the saddest part of being there now is not so much that the houses have deteriorated or are gone. I miss that connection to my own past."

Addendum: Federal Influence

Kildee has found a receptive audience at the federal level as well. After he helped draft a transition memo for Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan, Kildee was offered a H.U.D. job shortly after he got Community Progress up and running. He turned it down. As a politician who won a school board seat when he was 18 and had been in public office ever since, he welcomed his new-found freedom.

“It was pretty clear to me that I’d quickly gotten used to being able to speak my own mind and follow my own policy instincts at Community Progress,” he says. “It would have been hard for me to do that in a relatively senior position at H.U.D.”

You don’t have to spend much time with Kildee for him to illustrate this point. He calls a local state senator who opposes his views a “moron” and describes Van Jones’ speech at the Michigan Summit as “sort of interesting but kind of like something you’d hear in eighth grade.” Despite the unenthusiastic review, Kildee still found time to snap a photo of Jones with his smartphone and post it on his Facebook page.

Not that Kildee’s outspokenness is hurting his access. He mentions that Derek Douglas, the special assistant to the president for urban affairs, summoned him to the White House in May to talk shop for a couple hours.

“That’s like going to Carnegie Hall for me,” Kildee says. “I lived my whole life basically doing recitals, and now I have a chance to be in a place where really important policy is being made.”

After the session, Kildee realized he wasn’t going to be escorted out of the building. He had a security badge, so he decided to go on a random 20-minute self-guided tour. “I’m just this kid from Flint but here I am at the White House,” he says. “I just walked around like I knew where I was going.”


Addendum: Working with Other States

Local and state governments are embracing Kildee’s approach. He assisted the Ohio legislature on a land bank bill that recently passed with bi-partisan support. Similar legislation is expected to be approved in New York with Kildee’s help. Pennsylvania State Rep. John Taylor, a Philadelphia Republican, is currently sheparding a land bank bill through the state legislature after working closely with Community Progress.

“You can’t understand land banks without talking to Kildee,” says Christine Goldbeck, executive director of the Pennsylvania House Urban Affairs Committee. “He paved the way for Pennsylvania and other states to implement these laws.”

Addendum: A Certain Irony

There’s a certain irony in the notion that a former high school hockey player from Flint — a factory town that practically invented the concept of planned obsolescence and grew prosperous on General Motors’ rapacious lust for an ever-expanding market share — might successfully export the notion that cities can save themselves by repurposing land and accepting negative growth.


Addendum: Feuding with Rush Limbaugh

Rush Limbaugh even took notice, lambasting the shrinking city concept for several minutes of air time last summer. “I'm seeing things happen in this country that I thought I would never, ever see,” Limbaugh declared. “These are the kind of things that happen in totalitarian regimes.” Kildee was delighted.

“Rush went crazy for a few days, but it was the best thing to every happen to me because a couple million people heard it,” says Kildee, who admits he soon grew weary of the mocking calls to his home and office from Limbaugh’s “dittoheads.”

Dan Kildee and the Incredible Shrinking City

Slate covers Flint's latest export:

Dan Kildee is driving with his knees and talking with his hands as his rental car pushes 80 mph on a stretch of Interstate 69 near East Lansing, Mich. But that's not what scares me. What really gets me nervous is how he insists on eye contact as he discusses his plan for saving the rest of America from the sorry fate suffered by our shared hometown of Flint. "It really comes down to getting people to stop assuming that expansion is always desirable," Kildee says. "The important thing is how people feel about their city when they stand on their front porch in the morning, not how many people actually live in the city. It's just irrational to simply pursue growth."

Read the rest of the Slate profile of Dan Kildee here.

Flint Photos: Boston Avenue Near Becker Street

The Numbers Game

Some numbers simply can't be nuanced. The Genesee County Land Bank newsletter The New View has these sobering statistics in an article about a series of community forums being held to address Flint's housing and population issues.

"Flint's population is about forty five percent smaller than it was in 1960. Thirty two percent of residential properties are abandoned. With a surplus of abandoned properties, sale values continue to decline. This year, the average sale value of a single family home in Flint is $16,400."

You can go here to sign up for the newsletter.

100 Views

Photographer Kevin Bauman has created a hauntingly beautiful photo essay that captures 100 abandoned houses in Detroit.

He writes: "I have developed an interest in the interaction between man and environment. Whether the urban decay associated with Detroit, or the mountains of the western United States, my focus has been and continues to be on the landscape. My landscapes, however, do not always reflect the idyllic scene most often portrayed by the traditional landscape photograph or painting, but ranges from serene Lake Superior sunsets to chaotic post-industrial landscapes of urban Detroit."

The collection reminds me of Andō Hiroshige's One Hundred Famous Views of Edo, a series of woodcuts depicting Tokyo as an economic and cultural power in the 18th century. Bauman is depicting a once-great city as it desperately tries to survive. Despite the wildly different circumstances, both artists capture a sense of pride that permeates each place.

(Photos courtesy of www.hiroshige.org.uk and www.kevinbauman.com)

House Beautiful

Flint's well-documented abandoned housing problem makes it easy to forget what an amazing housing stock the city still possesses. One way to remind yourself that Flint isn't just a collection of tear downs missing their copper plumbing is to check out the Flickr page of sarrazak6881, where you'll find an impressive array of great Flint houses. Here are just a few:

Land grab

Is this house at 3902 Keyes a good investment? At $899 a naive investor in Tucson might think so.

If you examine the Flint real estate market, you might be surprised by what you find. As of today, there are more than 1,200 homes for sale in Flint, along with dozens of commercial properties. With the well-documented socio-economic problems of the Vehicle City, the question is who would ever buy one of them?

Apparently, many will be snapped up by out-of-town investors.

“In five years, the number of residential and commercial properties owned by out-of-towners has increased by about 17,000 parcels — out of only about 60,000 parcels in the entire city,” writes Joe Lawlor of The Flint Journal in an excellent story on Flint’s real estate situation. “Some properties have become rentals; many have been abandoned, foreclosed and turned over to banks; and others have been sold to out-of-towners or amassed by the government.”

That’s right, out-of-town investors are buying Flint real estate. I know what you might be thinking. Who are these lunatics? We have to find them and get them the help they need, right?

But after interviewing two local real estate agents, who asked not to be named, I’ve discovered it’s not as crazy an idea as it might seem. Okay, it is crazy, but with a lot of luck and a taste for adventure, it’s possible to make money at it. Or at least that’s what the out-of-towners think.

Obviously, the rock-bottom price of property in Flint gets the attention of investors. But another surprising factor makes it irresistible to many of them — rental prices in Flint are reasonably high. Take a look at Craigslist and you’ll find two-bedroom rentals going from $300 to $700 a month. And with the spate of foreclosures, the demand for rentals is climbing, which might bump up prices even more, despite the city’s steadily declining population,” according to one real estate agent.

Let’s use an extremely optimistic hypothetical example to illustrate how this might work.

An investor buys a house in Flint for $2,000 and puts $3,000 into fixing it up for rental. He rents it for $500 a month. That’s $6,000 in pre-tax revenue after one year, enough to cover the purchase and repair cost. At the end of the second year, he’s made $6,000 in pre-tax profit.

Now imagine if the investor owned 20 houses. Suddenly, he’s the Donald Trump of Flint — hopefully with better hair — pulling down $120,000 in rental income each year.

And don’t forget he gets to depreciate the value of the houses each year, which cuts down on taxes.

Now how would this scenario be even rosier for the investor? Well, if he was willing to be a slumlord and make almost no improvements to the property, he wouldn’t have to worry about repair costs too much. In fact, he could let the house “depreciate” over the years to the point that it’s uninhabitable and needs to be torn down. (This also eliminates the possibility of capital gains taxes if the property ever appreciated in value and he sold it.) He milks the house for all it’s worth and he’s left paying taxes on a vacant lot. And that’s often less than $20/year.

The problem is that even scrupulous, well-intentioned investors often don’t realize what it means to own property in Flint. Many times they’ve never even been to the city or seen the property. They’re not aware that renters might have drug problems. Or guns. Or both. Or, they may be struggling to survive and simply can’t pay rent sometimes. The investor just sees the cost of the house and the typical rents and gets excited. Plus, if the deal goes bad, a well-off investor doesn’t really care if he loses $10,000 on a house or two. It’s a write-off.

That’s why, according to a local realtor, investors sometimes buy several houses at once, or even entire blocks, sight unseen.

And what happens when the investment doesn’t pan out the way the investor in Phoenix or Chicago or Fenton, or Los Angeles planned? You guessed it. Many times the properties are left to rot, and the city, along with the neighbors, are left to deal with the fallout:

“David Hurley, a lifelong east Flint resident, mows his own lawn and the lawns of about a dozen properties he doesn't own in his neighborhood,” Lawlor writes.

“He mows lawns and plants gardens on property owned by banks, out-of-state owners and the Genesee County Land Bank.

“Nobody pays him to do it.

“He does it because he said if he didn't the neighborhood would be overtaken by weeds.

“He looks around his neighborhood and sees increasing numbers of rental homes, weed-strewn empty lots and shells of houses with doors broken off, the copper stripped and the siding stolen.

“The neighborhood is being hollowed out, house by house.

"’People from out-of-state are buying properties for $5,000, $7,000, for investment reasons. They've never even seen them,’ said Hurley, while driving through the east side.

“’These people moved away and left their house. There's rats in that garage. The Land Bank owns that one. These houses burned. That one exploded,’ Hurley said, pointing to each property from his van. "It's disgusting.’”

Click here for audio of Joe Lawlor interviewing David Hurley about his neighborhood.

Shuffle off to Buffalo

Anyone who has friends in New York knows of their peculiar habit of complaining about everything in the city, before declaring that, of course, they could never live anywhere else. It's usually implied that they are somehow better than you simply by virtue of the fact they suffer through life in New York and you don't.

Adam Sternberg captures this character trait in a New York Magazine piece about New Yorkers who decide to swallow their pride and move to Buffalo. It offers some lessons on the psychology involved in drawing people to struggling Midwestern locales like Detroit, Youngstown, Cleveland and Flint. And let's face facts and admit that Flint may be the toughest sell of all the cities just mentioned.

Of course, you can't blame New Yorkers for their angst and condescending attitude. Unless you're incredibly young, amazingly rich, or still believe your acting/writing/painting/singing/fashion design career is finally about to take off, New York is a pretty crappy place to live. If you're going to stick it out there, you need to shield yourself from any self doubt. You need to rationalize why you stay when so many people have such better lives elsewhere.

"Living in New York may be more expensive than ever, but let’s face it, it’s always been hard," Sternberg writes. "That, oddly, is part of its appeal. You test yourself against the stresses of the city. If it’s not the expense, it’s the overcrowding. If not the overcrowding, then the crime. If not the crime, then the tension, or the roaches, or the smells, or the guy screaming obscenities at you for no reason on the stifling subway platform while you wait for a train that’s jam-packed and twenty minutes late."

So when New Yorkers are finally ready to throw in the towel, it's not as easy as moving from Lansing to Grand Rapids. Like everything else in New York, the decision must be a monumental struggle.

"...the problem is, you can’t simply leave New York—you have to quit New York. You have to admit to yourself and the world that you’re packing it in, calling it a day, turning out the lights. You have to walk away from, as Joan Didion put it, “the sense, so peculiar to New York, that something extraordinary would happen any minute, any day, any month.” (It should be noted she wrote that in an essay about her decision to leave New York.)"

I've listened to numerous friends as they talked through this very decision. For me, the outsider, the answer was always obvious: yes, you should give up your horrible job, your tiny $2,400/month apartment, and your miserable New York existence and move.

Ultimately, Sternberg makes the point that places like Buffalo should not keep trying to prove they are mini versions of bigger, more prosperous cities. They should position themselves as uniquely modern versions of the Wild West, places to live when you long to start life anew.

"...New York, for all its mythology, is no longer a frontier. Buffalo is a frontier. And when you think of the actual frontier, you’ll recall that no one ever packed up and moved West to a gold-rush town because they heard it had really good local theater. They moved looking for opportunities. They moved for the chance to build a new life for themselves.

"This, ironically, has always been the siren song of New York City: the chance to turn yourself into someone new, to live the life you’ve always imagined. But what a city like Buffalo offers is a very different promise of what could be. It offers the chance to live on the cheap and start a nonprofit organization, or rent an abandoned church for $1,000 a month, or finish your album without having to hold down two temp jobs at the same time, or simply have more space and a better view and enough money left over each month to buy yourself a painting once in awhile. A city like Buffalo reminds you that, beyond New York, there are still frontiers."

Hidden Park Revisited

Flint Expatriate Sarah Swart recently returned to The Vehicle City and paid a visit to the elusive Hidden Park. Here are the pictures to prove it:

The well-disguised entrance on Chevrolet Avenue.

An abandoned house next to the Chevrolet Avenue entrance. Sara estimates the abandoned houses outnumber the inhabited ones on that block.

The southern end of the park, complete with piles of abandoned magazines.

A look north from from the Chevrolet Avenue entrance, including a little stray garbage.

Deconstruction

This is one way to rebuild Flint...simply reverse the video of two local homes getting demolished. My apologies for the bad music.

Flint Photos: Lay Me

Salays Meats, like many Flint residents, still retains a sense of humor and, apparently, a healthy sexual appetite despite being broke and abandoned. (Photo by Jar With Most.)

New Housing in Flint

Amid the doom and gloom about the Michigan economy, there are definitely signs of hope in Flint.

"Stone Street — located in Flint's historic Carriage Town neighborhood — once was part of a bustling city neighborhood. Although it stands empty now, victim to disinvestment and neglect, the old street is poised to recapture its residential vibrancy, thanks to the Genesee County Land Bank Authority. Plans call for construction of several new, historically sensitive homes that will increase the housing stock available in one of the city's oldest neighborhoods.

"An additional five units of housing -- donated by the Carriage Town Historic Neighborhood Association and the Atwood Authority -- also will be redeveloped by the Flint Neighborhood Improvement and Preservation Program. Altogether, this will account for $2.8 million in investment, 13 new homeownership opportunities, nine affordable housing units and two completely restored city blocks of housing in the Flint River District area, according to Amy Hovey, interim director of the Genesee County Land Bank."

Fire Defense

Flint firefighters change their tactics as they deal with blazes in abandoned structures.

Country Livin' in Flint

The Genesee County Land Bank is emerging as the darling of the national media, and with good reason. It's a positive step for dealing with the abandoned and ramshackle houses that afflict Flint as the city downsizes, to use an unfortunate term. Now National Public Radio has jumped on the bandwagon and done something we didn't think was possible — link Buick Town with rural America:

"As Flint shrinks, it's taking on an oddly rural quality. Most streets are rundown, but there are also ambitious vegetable gardens springing up under the tender care of the new owners of double lots.

Mary Lymon sits at her patio table, overlooking her new yard that boasts a cheerful flower garden, a trellis and a swing. It's a big change from the days she worried about drug dealers coming and going at the abandoned house that once stood there, she said. Once the house was gone and the land was hers.

"I just really enjoyed coming out with my coffee — felt like I was in the country," said Lymon."

The Genesse Institute

If you're just dying to know what land banking is and how it can help Flint, the Genesee Institute is the place to start. The Reports and Publications link on the site has some fascinating, albeit very unsexy, material.