Detroit Real Estate Game Creates Chaos In Neighborhoods.

[muntrv]

ALLIE GROSS | DETROIT FREE PRESS | 6:00 am EDT August 17, 2018


Felicia Anderson shook her head as she looked at an outdated photo of 17529 Kentfield.


The gray, ranch-style bungalow was visible from the 60-year-old’s bedroom window. She saw it every day. But it had been years since she glimpsed at it as it once was: well-kept and thoughtfully trimmed. A home.

“Eli took care of it. Inside and out,” Anderson said as she looked at the Google Street View image from 2013, back when Eli Brown, her sister’s ex, lived in the northwest Detroit house. “He kept it up.”

To a casual observer, the downfall of 17529 Kentfield was a slow unraveling — difficult to diagnose. Brown left in 2014. New people moved in. Then they moved out. At some point, the grass stopped being mowed. Trash and discarded personal belongings started to stack up out front. Pipes, the garage door andwrought iron gate were scrapped. By May 2018, when the Free Press first spoke with Anderson, 17529 Kentfield had transitioned from a home into a property. It was another blighted fixture on a once-vibrant block.

It's easy to write off such conditions as a thing of Detroit's past. A so-called pre-renaissance problem. The aftermath of Detroit’s economic downturn. A byproduct of middle-class flight from the city, disinvestment and the subprime mortgage crisis.
SEE MORE AT LINK BELOW
https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/detroit/2018/08/17/detroit-home-values-real-estate/921453002/

[Cal Carpenter]

1. Excellent article K & R

Actual journalism.