Motor City’s Woes Extend Beyond Ailing Auto Industry

DETROIT (AP) — One measure of how tough times are in the Motor City: Some of the offenders in jail don’t want to be released; some who do get out promptly re-offend to head back where there’s heat, health care and three meals a day.

For now, better times seem distant. Even with no hurricane or other natural disaster to blame, Detroit has - by many measures - replaced New Orleans as America’s most beleaguered city.

The jobless rate has climbed past 21 percent, the embattled school district just fired its superintendent, tens of thousands of homes and stores are derelict and abandoned, the ex-mayor is in jail for a text-messaging sex scandal. Even the pro football team is a pathetic joke, within two losses of an unprecedented 0-16 season.

And overarching these and many other woes is the near-collapse of the U.S. auto industry, Detroit’s vital source of jobs and status for more than a century.

The roots of Detroit’s current plight go back decades. Court-ordered school busing and the 12th Street riots of 1967 accelerated an exodus of whites to the suburbs, and many middle-class blacks followed, shrinking the city’s population from a peak of 1.8 million in the 1950s to half that now.

Detroit’s crime, poverty, unemployment and school dropout rates are among the worst of any major U.S. city. The bus system is widely panned; car and home insurance rates are high. Chain grocery stores are absent, forcing many Detroiters to rely on high-priced corner stores.

Detroit’s downtown abounds with symbols of past dreams - the still-gleaming round towers of the Renaissance Center of the ’70s, Super Bowl XL venue Ford Field, the three hotel-casino resorts with their gaudy exterior lights and cavernous gaming rooms.

Yet less than two miles from downtown stands the decaying, 18-story Michigan Central railroad station, built in 1913 and unoccupied for 20 years while developers shied way from the cost of restoring its Beaux-Arts grandeur.

Along Grand River Avenue, a six-lane thoroughfare leading from downtown to the northwest, liquor stores and check-cashing outlets alternate with scores of abandoned commercial buildings, some boarded up, others just gutted shells.

“Detroit is a very giving community, but it’s hard to reach out beyond your capacity,” said Jones, who recently retired as chief operating officer of Chrysler Financial and will become head of Focus:HOPE on Jan. 1

“I hope the region is prepared to band together, because we’re all in this together,” he said. “We won’t get through the tough times if we don’t have a dream of what’s ahead.”