“One
in seven Detroit residents is threatened with eviction due to tax
foreclosure in 2015, according to data compiled by Loveland
Technologies. Last fall, Michigan’s Wayne County, which includes
the city of Detroit, served foreclosure notices on a record 75,000
homes, which will take effect later this year. Sixty-two thousand of
the homes are in Detroit, and nearly 36,000 are confirmed occupied by
an estimated 100,000 residents.”
“The
mass foreclosures come in the wake of Detroit’s precedent-setting
municipal bankruptcy proceedings—the largest in US history—in
which city worker pensions were looted and the city’s assets hived
off to private entities. They are part of the effort to squeeze every
penny possible from the working class to ensure the continued flow of
profits to the wealthy landowners, speculators, and creditors who
control Detroit.”
“Last
year, the city’s water department, under the direction of Detroit’s
unelected emergency manager, shut off water service to tens of
thousands of city residents behind on their water bills. During the
bankruptcy hearing it was revealed that this brutal policy was
carried out in coordination with several Wall Street credit rating
agencies to clear up 'delinquent' accounts, improve the city’s
borrowing rates and make the water department a more attractive
target for privatization.”
“Poor
residents who were as little as $150 behind on their water bills were
shut off immediately, while major corporate customers owing tens or
even hundreds of thousands of dollars, including GM and Chrysler,
were not shut off. Both the water shutoffs and foreclosures are part
of a long-standing plan to 'downsize' Detroit by shutting off
essential public services to entire neighborhoods deemed to
under-populated or poor for commercial investment.”
“The
figure of 100,000 potential foreclosures victims is likely an
underestimation. Detroit is home to an unknown but large number of
squatters living in homes that are supposedly unoccupied. In an
interview with the Detroit Free Press, John Adamo Jr., CEO of
Detroit-based demolition company Adamo Group, estimated that
squatters lived in five to ten percent of the 80,000 structures
targeted by the Detroit Blight Removal Task Force (DBRTF) for
destruction.”
“Although
the city is no longer under the control of an emergency manager, all
economic decisions are overseen by a financial oversight committee,
which consists of the mayor and city council president and several
figures appointed by the governor. For all intents and purposes it is
a continuation of the financial dictatorship of the banks, with
unilateral power to tear up labor agreements and other contracts and
divert what little money is earmarked for the repair of the city’s
decayed infrastructure to debt servicing.”
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