Mike Duggan is the latest Detroit mayor to measure success by tearing down homes. Two scholars debate whether the strategy works.
Joel Kurth
As Executive Editor of Impact, Joel oversees newsgathering, investigations, partnerships and coverage strategy at Bridge Michigan. He joined Bridge in 2017 after 17 years as an investigative reporter and editor at The Detroit News. Over his career, he has led or produced investigations that led to numerous reforms in government and health care, including policy changes about water shutoffs and surgical instrument sterilization, as well as criminal charges of government officials. In addition to authoring Bridge’s popular weekly News Quiz, he and his teams have won more than 60 state and national awards. During his 30-year career in Michigan, he also has worked at newspapers in the Upper Peninsula and Saginaw. He lives in West Bloomfield with his wife and two children. You can reach him at jkurth@bridgemi.com
Posted inUrban Affairs
Detroit is razing thousands of homes. It won’t fix much.
An urban planning professor argues that Detroit has knocked down more homes than any other city in past 50 years – and has little to show for it.
Posted inUrban Affairs
Bulldoze away: Some Detroit neighborhoods need thinning out
An urban policy expert says the city needs to ask difficult questions about which areas can be saved in era of diminishing revenues.
Posted inUrban Affairs
Sorry we foreclosed your home. But thanks for fixing our budget.
Counties across Michigan profit from selling foreclosed homes and charging fees on back taxes to down-and-out residents. No place does it more than Wayne County.
Posted inUrban Affairs
How to cash in on a crappy home. Step one: Find a sucker to sign a land contract.
Left for dead in the 1970s, lending through (often predatory) land contracts is back with a vengeance in Michigan and Rust Belt cities after the mortgage meltdown.
Posted inUrban Affairs
Detroit cites progress, but water shutoffs actually rose last year
Residential shutoffs spiked 18 percent in 2016 – countering city officials’ expectations. A staggering 83,000 homes have lost water service at some point since the city launched a crackdown on delinquent accounts in 2014.
Posted inUrban Affairs
Interactive Map: Detroit water shutoffs by neighborhood
Go block by block to scan the more than 27,000 homes that had water cut off in 2016.
Posted inUrban Affairs
Are Detroit water shutoffs and illnesses related?
“A significant difference in diagnoses” of skin or gastrointestinal infection was found in residents who lived on blocks with water shutoffs. But researchers acknowledge there’s not yet enough data to prove a link.
Posted inUrban Affairs
That Detroit rarity: a home mortgage
Can you call it a comeback if mortgages are only written in a few communities? Several years into a downtown recovery, neighborhood mortgage lending remains “pathetic.”