How Banks Are the Driving the Depopulation of Detroit

[Mr_Jefferson_24]

by By Laura Gottesdeiner / TomDispatch.com

....“It’s the last day to pay,” one woman heading toward the rotating glass chamber yelled to a pedestrian who had slowed to watch the commotion. Inside, a Wayne County Sheriff’s Department officer-turned-traffic-controller boomed instructions to a snaking line of people. “When you get to the eighth floor, you will get a number. Keep that number! Then go to the fifth floor.’”

The eighth floor, however, turned out to be little more than another human traffic jam, a holding space for thousands of anxious homeowners who faced hours of waiting before reaching the desk of some overworked city representative down on five. Yet, as a post office delivery worker gaping at the fiasco told me, this was less hectic than it had been a only few days earlier, when the treasurer’s office had rented out the Second Baptist Church across the street. There, people waited for the opportunity to enter the revolving doors to take the elevator to the eighth floor before heading for the fifth floor to... you get the gist.

In fact, the whole week had been a god-awful mess. A day earlier, rumors had it, a woman had passed out in the elevator between the eighth and fifth floors en route to “making arrangements,” the euphemism for getting on a payment plan that might save your home.

“What happens if you can’t pay?” a slender man asked me as we dodged a new wave of people surging through the glass cylinder.

“Then they sell your house at auction,” I replied....

http://www.alternet.org/how-banks-are-driving-depopulation-detroit

[daleanime]

1. We allow this to continue.....

while spenting millions to kill people over seas that only dream of hurting us because we spend millions killing them.

[Mr_Jefferson_24]

2. So true. And this greed driven property foreclosure scam...

...targeting the poor is sure to spread to other large metro areas in the US (likely already has)-- Detroit is a sign of things to come in the US.

[daleanime]

3. So tired of posts about poverty and the environment.....

dropping like rocks.

[Sparhawk60]

4. For the Cost of One Hellfire Missile

A lot of the foreclosed houses in the article are for back taxes to the tune of a few thousand dollars. For the cost of one hellfire missile (used in drone strikes) we could buy up 20-25 homes and return them to their owners free and clear.

Let's stop blowing up people on the other side of the world and start helping people right here. I know, I know, talk of less hate, more love can get a guy crucified.

[daleanime]

5. But it's the kind of talk.....

we need.

[Mr_Jefferson_24]

6. I'll second that.