A popular rewards program is set to vanish at year’s end. Homeowners, firefighters and insurers could feel the effects statewide.
Joel Kurth
As executive editor of impact, Joel Kurth oversees newsgathering, investigations, and coverage strategy at Bridge Michigan. He joined Bridge in 2017 after 17 years as an investigative reporter and editor at The Detroit News, where he led investigations that drove policy changes on water shutoffs and surgical instrument sterilization and resulted in criminal charges against government officials. He and his teams have won more than 60 state and national awards across a 30-year career in Michigan that has also included stints at newspapers in the Upper Peninsula and Saginaw. Joel also authors Bridge's popular weekly News Quiz.
Joel lives in West Bloomfield with his wife and two children.
Posted inUrban Affairs
Botched elections. Missing ballots. Is this any way to run a democracy?
Michigan’s failed presidential recount last year wasn’t an aberration. It’s part of a pattern that has some concerned about the integrity of elections.
Posted inUrban Affairs
He became famous defending ‘Algiers Motel’ cops. Deal with it.
With the release of “Detroit,” director Kathryn Bigelow’s film about the killings of three black teens during the 1967 unrest, the lawyer who successfully defended several infamous white Detroit officers looks back with indifference toward his critics.
Posted inUrban Affairs
Can Detroit find salvation through demolition?
Mike Duggan is the latest Detroit mayor to measure success by tearing down homes. Two scholars debate whether the strategy works.
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.