Efforts Are Intensified To Save Flint From Foreclosure Menace

Efforts are being intensified to save Flint from the foreclosure menace. Till now there have been many suggestions but so far nothing has paid dividends. But that has not deterred new ideas from coming up.

The latest proposal is that without wasting time and allowing the house to become vacant and then pull it down, the local heads are discussing demolition of entire blocks and neighbourhoods.

The population would then be concentrated in few areas together with shopping and service centres. Flint had come into existence with the development of the car industry. Now a big chunk of the land is going to be returned to the forests.

Dan Kildee the treasurer of Genessee County and chief spokesperson for the movement linked with the shrinking of Flint said, “Decline in Flint is like gravity, a fact of life. We need to control it instead of letting it control us.”

Flint is being affected badly like many other car manufacturing cities. The situation is not improving – rather it is worsening. Many firefighters and police personnel are losing their jobs. The city is struggling with a deficit budget of $15 million. Many of the public schools are soon going to be shut down.

Jim Ananich of Flint City Council said, “A lot of people remember the past, when we were a successful city that others looked to as a model, and they hope. But you can’t base government policy on hope. We have to do something drastic.”

Flint’s acceptance of the inevitable has made it the role model of a new age. Few years there had been talk about shrinking Massachusetts in a planned way. The state altered its laws regarding reo homes for not paying taxes. During the foreclosure period the property remained in a state of limbo causing blight on the locality. Today county land banks take over the disputed land. This gives the communities a powerful weapon for bringing about change.

Land banks have been set up in Indianapolis and Little Rock and other cities are about to follow. Karina Pallagst of Shrinking Cities in a Global Perspective Program said, “Shrinkage is moving from an idea to a fact.”For many years the debate about shrinkage has been going on in Flint. In March this year it suddenly gained importance when the Mayor of Flint Michael Brown made a harsh and true comment. He spoke about “shutting down quadrants of the city.”

Search Reo Homes

• Detroit Reo Homes
• Lansing Reo Homes
• Warren Reo Homes
• Pontiac Reo Homes
• Saginaw Reo Homes