Deconstruction: Flint

Page history last edited by Wes Janz 3 years, 8 months ago

Flint is.

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Flint, Michigan is where General Motors was founded in 1908. As recently as forty years ago, it was home to 190,000 people, including 80,000 GM employees. According to Robert Beckley,

“While jobs were plentiful [following WWI], housing was not and . . . people were sleeping in tents and cardboard shacks. In response, small poorly-constructed housing was quickly erected on narrow lots, close to the factories that provided employment. This building cycle was repeated after WWII when the demand for automobiles and the means to pay for them soared.”

Flint is shrinking. Between then and now, 70,000 people moved out of Flint and General Motors cut over 60,000 local jobs.

Flint is fading. The economic picture for the state of Michigan is weakening; this will have a negative impact on the quality of life of Flint’s residents, meaning less governmental support for the schools, public transportation, the University of Michigan-Flint campus, family assistance programs, and more, evermore.

Flint is disappearing. The Genesee County Land Bank--which works to prevent tax foreclosure on area homes and encourages reinvestment in the more than 5000 residential, commercial, and industrial properties it has acquired through the tax foreclosure process since its inception in 2002--has demolished blighted structures throughout the city. These commercial buildings and houses were abandoned in the past year or years, maybe one to five to ten to twenty years ago. “Emergency“ status is given to properties in danger of imminent collapse or which were recently set on fire. An “emergency“ house demolition takes one day, costs $6,000, and creates an average of 200 cubic yards of waste. With the exception of the basement foundation and slab—which are ground up for use in road construction—house remains are taken to nearby landfill sites. In the morning, a house exists. By late afternoon, the hole where it once settled is replaced by backfill, topsoil, and grass seed.

Flint is efficient. Scavengers, scrappers, and squatters watch for opportunity. Aluminum siding is stripped and resold into the formal recycling economy. New aluminum windows, hot water heaters, and furnaces (some supplied to renters by the Lank Bank itself) are taken, sometimes in daylight, no problem. Copper pipes too, and new electrical wiring (which is burned to remove the plastic casing and reveal the wires, which can be sold).

Flint is not alone. In 2003, Indianapolis had nearly 8,000 abandoned houses. Other industrial cities report large numbers of abandoned structures, including Baltimore (15,000), Detroit (10,000), and Kansas City (5,000).

Flint is trying. The Land Bank mowed 2219 lots and removed 380 tons of debris in 2004, mowed 4082 lots and removed 270 tons of debris in 2005, sold 280 “side-lots“ to next-door neighbors of Land Bank properties for $1 each, completed 21 single-family re-habs, managed 57 rental properties, and granted a postponement of the foreclosure process to over 1350 homeowners allowing them to keep their homes.

Flint is.

And that’s important to remember.

Internal Links

Boarded Up Houses: Flint

Flint Expatriates

House Demolition: Flint

House: Detroit

Sense of Community: Flint

Soul of a Black Cop: Flint

Squatter Village: Flint

External Links

"America's Fastest-Dying Cities"