Slums of Detroit: A Look At The Heart of America’s 2nd Most Deserted City

[ArmaGoof]

I agree with Ches - it's too easy to keep taking handouts.  Americans who are able should be kicked off the public dole - just as one might do a child at the age of 18 or whenever.  At some point, you have to say no more handouts.  Kick them out of the nest - then they fly or die.  As long as there is a safety nest, not many will take the leap; certainly not enough to make such a project viable or noteworthy.

People should not be enabled, via cash, charity or loans.  Solutions exist - they should be made to discover them.  So, maybe give them the land, but they have to figure out how to use it and how to get it to a useful circumstance.  But we know they wouldn't or couldn't care enough to do that. Not as long as there's another way to get food.

[pamela]

kick them off and into what?
with a 50% unemployment rate, without jobs the only other way to make money might be to turn to crime.


wanted to add.

It's not that I don't understand where you're coming from, but, if more and more people can't find the help they need just to eat and put a roof over their heads, and they turn then to crime, the crime rate rises and you will pay taxes for more police, more jails, and more care including health care for these same people if and when they enter the justice system.
I believe in the long run, it is cheaper and better to avoid that.
Also, we have got to find a way to help people come up out of that cycle of poverty if they can.

[Chesyre]

that's part of the problem Ches, getting the soil rebuilt.
what about just planting trees?
maybe let them go "wild" sort of.

alrighty then , whats the shelf life of some of that crap ?  gotta be decades ir not centuries in some instances.  i never said kick them off i said they would have a hard time adapting , sort of darwinian but there it is.   the amishy type sects are about the only ones already fully community wise adapted and maybe not all the way even then in america.   their rumspringa should be real interesting post crash , go sit on a flat rock until you run out of food and thats about it 

[atomicat]

I recently tried to help a lady who was very needy and in search of work.  She was like the face of the next great depression and looking for a job in one of the suburbs of Detroit.

I thought she was 65 and a retired secretary.  Turned out she was in her early 50s. 

I thought it would make a great story, to help someone in deperate need of a job and searching and willing to do almost anything to get a job.  She was down to her last 62 or 82 dollars?  She was without a car.  It was like a strange disaster movie looking at her life and recent accounts.  I thought at first I could help her find a job and get a job in the job gauntlet.  I even thought I could do this and perhaps end up with a short audio piece that I could narrate or write that might end up on NPR or something.  Something like a 10 minute piece about a person helping another person find a job. 

What I ended up with was something much different, and not that she was a typical person in Detroit looking for a job, because there are a lot of others who are more qualified and still in a lot of need.  My journeys in "helping her" took me to extra-ordinary lengths of going the extra mile.  But what I ended up with is dealing with a person who was profoundly unable to socialize in a normal manner and had many problems which I cannot even begin to go into.  What started out as an effort to actually help someone in a job guantlet turned into something more like a journey into a maze of mirrors and confusion where there were so many real and imagined problems that I didn't know what was real/ what was imagined in her mind/ and what was a scam.  This journey led me to two ER rooms, many job sites where she applied and a number of strange journeys and things that became to distressing to mentally endure and end with a good ending and good story.

What I found was an almost Medusa like creature, someone who had a number of personality like problems, perhaps a personality disorder (look up BPD in google to understand).  It wasn't like the goal was to solve a problem and find a job, but rather create problems and never find a solution.  So all that effort and helping this virtual homeless person was for naught. 

Now I know there are a lot of other people who are normal and struggling and just need help.  The answer is clear.  Americans and nice folks here, need to tighten their belts and help others.  Prep, but don't let those preps become an excuse to fully disengage and not try to help others.  After all if you don't start being a solution and helping others, who else will?

Also this year I found a local church who was in need of help because of a robbery.  The perfect way to get rid of many of my preps and recycle some of my pantry that was aging.  I wasn't cycling through it and using it as quickly as I needed to be.  So I donated about 3 carloads of food to a local soup kitchen.  It's not just about preping if things are still going well but helping others.  I still think some of the more dire predictions don't take into account the American spriit that survived the Great Depression and can survive the next (and possibly last) Great Depression.

I prep but I have hope as well.

[seanx]

We talked about a lot of this last year around here. Those of us from the Detroit area planned a photo "safari", but I was unable to go. There are lots of photos from their trip.
Turning Detroit to urban farming won't work. It just won't. The city is mostly deserted, but the land left is not good. Too many "brown fields". Contaminated from more than a century of industry. SO contaminated no one even know what it is there. Also, you have a population that is mostly illiterate. Half the city is unemployed. Many people don't even cook there. It doesn't help that there are very few grocery stores. Fast food is what many eat. The first time a truck doesn't deliver to McDonalds, that city is going to burn.

[Dystopia]

I know of a 40 year old who started a business in Detroit last year....
he just knows he's going to get his business big enough so that some big Corp will come in and buy it......................
I just smile and tell him he's doing a good job.

[The Black Knight]

You bet, seanx!

Here's a little reminder....









here we go, want to learn? read it and reap... I mean weap...

http://yooperstrails.blogspot.com/2009/01/50-years-of-catabolic-collapse.html

[forager]

Most of Detroit's former industrial capacity was located in Southwest Detroit. Much of Detroit was residential, in fact, most of it. Any lead in the ground from lead paint is a nationwide problem in older neighborhoods. There is plenty of good soil there to do some good urban farming.

When the aquifers of the Southwest dry up; the arable land, water infrastructure, and rainfall of Detroit will factor into the equation. It's gonna be comedy gold watching the former middle class of the desert belt living side by side with Detroiters.

[rbrgs]

Some people need more structure than our society provides.  Can you say "plantation".....

[TheDoctor]

I live in the country 30 minutes South of Ann Arbor.  There is a boys home maybe 4 mile away where a lot of inner-city troubled Detroit teens stay for a spell.  It's minimal security and some occasionally wander off.  Back in the 90's some broke into our house (thank God while we were at work in Dearborn) while trying to escape back to Detroit.  They didn't know how to drive the manual car in our garage - they broke the key off in the ignition socket.  They finally gave up and stole my beer and a spare change and a super-sized squirt gun.  The cops caught them walking staggering along the country roadside heading back to the boys home.  They just gave up after wandering miles along the seemingly (to them) endless farm fields and woods.

I suspect these kids may have never been outside the Detroit city limits before.  They have a terrible formal education (many are illiterate and cannot do the most basic math - don't even think to ask them to find Europe on a global map), and they have no comprehension of where food actually comes from or how to survive in the wild or be self-sufficient off the land.  I mean forget lacking such skills - they can't even comprehend what that would mean.  It's like they exist in a totally separate universe.  Very sad actually.

I'm not worried about the Detroit hungry hoards making it all the way out to me (about 60 miles from the city center) when TSHTF - my turf is to foreign to them.  They will fight amongst themselves in the city or perhaps attack the nearest wealthy suburbs, but few will venture out into the countryside with miles of open corn fields - too foreign a landscape for them to handle....  fear of the unknown (and country rednecks with lots of deer rifles and scopes and lots of ammo.....)

[Dystopia]

Could be true forager. I worked at DRC and Hazel Park back in the late 70's we had fox, deer and pheasants around everywhere. Also there are thousands of acres of state land around which used to be farmlands.
Mid state development really made me crazy when I lived down there. Watching thousands of acres of truly prime farmland turned into cheezy suburbs and parking lots. Guess only time will tell...

[forager]

I live in the country 30 minutes South of Ann Arbor.  There is a boys home maybe 4 mile away where a lot of inner-city troubled Detroit teens stay for a spell.  It's minimal security and some occasionally wander off.  Back in the 90's some broke into our house (thank God while we were at work in Dearborn) while trying to escape back to Detroit.  They didn't know how to drive the manual car in our garage - they broke the key off in the ignition socket.  They finally gave up and stole my beer and a spare change and a super-sized squirt gun.  The cops caught them walking staggering along the country roadside heading back to the boys home.  They just gave up after wandering miles along the seemingly (to them) endless farm fields and woods.

I suspect these kids may have never been outside the Detroit city limits before.  They have a terrible formal education (many are illiterate and cannot do the most basic math - don't even think to ask them to find Europe on a global map), and they have no comprehension of where food actually comes from or how to survive in the wild or be self-sufficient off the land.  I mean forget lacking such skills - they can't even comprehend what that would mean.  It's like they exist in a totally separate universe.  Very sad actually.

I'm not worried about the Detroit hungry hoards making it all the way out to me (about 60 miles from the city center) when TSHTF - my turf is to foreign to them.  They will fight amongst themselves in the city or perhaps attack the nearest wealthy suburbs, but few will venture out into the countryside with miles of open corn fields - too foreign a landscape for them to handle....  fear of the unknown (and country rednecks with lots of deer rifles and scopes and lots of ammo.....)

99% of Detroiters are terrified of the "country." Wolves, bears, snakes, hillbillies, the Klan... and cops that never seen a negro before and can spot you a mile away... Don't worry Doc. The meth heads MZB's aren't so afraid of your neck of the woods.

[The Black Knight]

... too foreign a landscape for them to handle....  fear of the unknown....

Enough said Doc, and I'll just bet 50% on this site would qualify... Very sad, indeed...

[Grower]

http://afsic.nal.usda.gov/nal_display/index.php?info_center=2&tax_level=2&tax_subject=301&topic_id=1444

This tells you quite a bit about what you need to know for urban farming.

This link is specifically about soil:

http://soils.usda.gov/use/urban/

Here's your basics, wth pdf format links:

http://soils.usda.gov/use/urban/primer.html

We have a juvenile center in the middle of a state forest in north central Ohio. They never really worry about kids leaving. The kids are terrified of being alone in the woods and the fields. Only rarely do any wander away, and they usually show up at somebody's house asking them to get someone to come for them and take them back.

[Biminim]

I bet you they'd grow the biggest cash crop around!  Deeetroit Gold, available in quarter-ounce, half-ounce, full-ounce and pound packages wherever fine marijuana is sold.