Building Permits and Things to Ponder

Click above or click the link below and you can study Detroit's building/demolition permit statistics from the years 1969 to the present and compare them with cities that in some cases are five percent of its size. All statistics come from SEMCOG- whose purpose is up in the air. However, you can browse by community, year, and month for just about any city or township in the region.

Detroit: A net loss of 290 units so far in 2005 despite what you hear on tv and in the papers

With so much city owned property that could be sold to honest developers and with so much potential, there is plenty of room for growth. However, EXTREME taxes, red tape, and our so called "drug war" has pushed too many good folks from our city causing a vicious cycle that has lasted for fifty years and no one other than a few seem to want to change and diversify strategies. Count the parcels the city owns and can't afford. Count the needles in the alleys behind Honest?Johns

The trash beside a beautiful house on Second. Count the corruption. Count the payoffs. Count the kids getting caught up in crossfires over drug territory that doesn't need to happen if this stupid "war on drugs" were treated as a medical problem rather than a Law Enforcement problem. Think about what the police and firefighters could accomplish if the burden of illegal drugs disappeared for good- that's right, no gangs, no "hotshots" for credit customers, no need for retaliation because of a buy gone wrong, pure product that isn't laced with poison, and actual help for those who become addicted- remember there will always be a percentage of people willing to get high- always so why not use logic and approach this scourge rationally? It would free police up for other important things and there would be no need for layoffs. Until these problems are tackled in a real way, not much will be accomplished on a large scale. The casualties are mounting. That said DetroitBazaar continues to work in the communities to clean and solidify. The pressure must come from the people who demand nothing less than honesty and who seek solutions, not the same old wasteful corruption, and I'm not even speaking of Kwame. The problems are systemic and to a certain extent federal. Ask people in the suburbs and apart from a few well intended preservationists, the attitude is "screw it", it's a gone city. What will you do to change that? Meanwhile there are 900,000 people who reside in the city that deserve better. All of us must articulate and communicate the issues that truly plague the city. If you look at it, it's not about race, it's not about state or federal funding, it's about us.

Related- How just one illegal-drug corrupted cop reinforced and proved what the "war on drugs" does by stealing cocaine from the evidence room, replacing it with flour, and selling the real stuff to local dealers. Since no one can go to the cops, people are willing to kill to keep their slice of the money pie. Wonder how many people got killed or were caught up crossfires and shaken down because of this nonsense. Just one of thousands of examples of what making drugs illegal does to communities like Detroit. It would indeed be interesting to ask old Al Capone about his alchol business back in the day when Congress made it illegal. Think about it Detroit.


Peace to Detroit, Peace to you all from DetroitBazaar