Too little, too timid

Detroit today has too few people spread too thinly across too many square miles, and not enough money to take care of their needs.

Nobody disputes that much. The question is what can be done about it? There are now perhaps no more than 700,000 mainly poor, mainly poorly educated Detroiters rattling around in a city that once housed at least 1.9 million of them. City government is in tough shape. The long-term deficit, which had been declining, was $155 million at the start of this year, but is now likely to increase.

Thanks, that is, to state government's revenue-slashing policies. So how can the city possibly meet Detroiters' minimal needs?

There's no way they can get more money out of the residents, who already pay some of the highest tax rates in the state. Tax rates could (and should) be raised in the suburbs, if the politicians had the political will to do so. Detroiters don't have it to give.

To say they are poor is also beyond dispute. More importantly, they don't have any real prospect of being otherwise. Mayor Dave Bing's estimate of the real unemployment rate is somewhere around 45 percent. That's when you count the so-called "discouraged" workers, who have dropped out of the labor force because they don't see any point in looking for jobs that aren't there.

Many of these folks are also, in all likelihood, unemployable. Recent reliable estimates are that 47 percent of Detroit adults essentially cannot read. What can they possibly do to make a legal living, one in which they pay taxes in today's economy?

More than a year ago, officials in Mayor Bing's administration began talking about "shrinking" or "repurposing" the city, that is, trying to get the people who remain to move to fewer neighborhoods, under the theory that a smaller area would be easier to service.

That made some sense, though the idea also left me uneasy; it reminded me of a government invaded by the Nazis desperately trying to withdraw to a smaller, and more easily defensible perimeter.

What nobody ever talked about was what would happen to the essentially abandoned areas. Would they be fenced off and left to feral swine? Would they be taken over by roving armed gangs?

What would the city do about the one stubborn old lady on an abandoned block who refused to move? Legally, Detroit would have no power to move her, unless they used eminent domain to seize the land for a civic project. The answer, I was eventually told, was this:

The city wouldn't try to make anybody move. Instead, they would pour extra resources into a selection of better, more viable neighborhoods. This would be an added incentive for people to live there. Eventually, it was hoped this would have a snowball effect.

> Email Jack Lessenberry