It seems like with the announcement that Detroit is bankrupt (and yet still building a $400 million stadium for the Red Wings), the news is lousy with slideshows of what a modern ghost town it is. For example, the Weather Channel has this one that was posted on Fark today: http://www.weather.com/travel/modern-ruins-abandoned-detroit-photos-20130715
My question is, why has no one gone through these structures and salvaged the reusable materials? Is it fear of asbestos/collapse? Or are these structures where the photographer was the first one in and the they have since been gutted? Several of the pictures show abandoned pianos (and even dentistry equipment) for example, which I find very odd, since I’m sure they were perfectly usable (even if out of tune at the time) when they were abandoned. I can’t beieve whoever was locking up those building at the time and abandoning them didn’t think “Hey, I think I’ll get my buddy with a truck to come by tonight and take this piano so we can sell it on Craigslist for a few hundred dollars”. Likewise there are hotels with furniture, which I’m sure were in decent shape and sellable at the time of the abandonment. Likewise, I would expect someone to rip out the copper pipe and wiring from these old properties, or at least tear them down as an ‘attractive nuisance’ for fear a homeless person would move in, hurt themselves, and sue over it. So what’s with all these abandoned properties and why aren’t they completely gutted and/or destroyed?
Detroit has no money to do much tearing down. Most of the abandoned buildings have long ago been stripped of saleable materials. What is left is useless-it is contaminated with lead, asbestos, and must be buried in a special capped landfill.
Plus many of the buildings are so deteriorated that they cannot be restored and used-they have become structurally unsound.
Even the houses are worthless-the Detroit FD lets them burn down, when a fire is called in.
There are salvage companies that remove light fixtures, woodwork, staircases and other items from condemned properties. Salvage Dawgs is on the DIY Channel.
I’ve seen Nicole on Rehab Addict visit stores that sell salvaged items. Usually its a big warehouse with just about anything imaginable. She goes there to find replacement parts for houses she renovates.
Some of those Detroit neighborhoods are too dangerous for a salvage crew. A staircase isn’t worth getting mugged for.
It’s my understanding that the Detroit FD is badly undermanned, and the equipment is antiquated. Also, there are so many fires set in abandoned homes, they can’t get to them all. Response time to 911 calls is an hour in some instances.
the equipment isn’t antiquated. it’s just that DFD doesn’t have the money to maintain their equipment. They are badly undermanned, and underequipped. ralph124c is talking out of his ass when he says “Even the houses are worthless-the Detroit FD lets them burn down, when a fire is called in.”
Born and raised in Detroit proper, currently living in a suburb.
My initial reaction to your inquiry is “Are you kidding me?”
“Scrapping” is a major industry in the city, albeit mostly illegal scrap-metal theft. A fully livable house could be vacant between renters, say a week or so, and the hyenas will descend and gut the place of copper in a day. Oh, the house has a chain link fence? Gone in sixty seconds. Aluminum siding? Gone. Iron plumbing? Gone just like that.
The thing is that they don’t bother to turn the water off before they start ripping pipes out, so not only is the plumbing gone, but the house gets flooded from open pipes, essentially destroying whatever value the house had.
There’s some folks who are reclaiming the lumber from the skeletons, lots of old-growth pine, oak and mahogany, but that’s touchy in that they’re trying to do it legally, and most of the time either the owner can’t be located or the city/county owns it. Red tape a’ gogo.
That said, those pics are at least three years old and make most Detroiters yawn. Lots of positive changes since then, although anyone with a camera could replace them with fresh batch of pictoral destruction and negligence.
To add, if you’d like an incredible photo tour of Detroit’s tragic beauty instead of the usual crap, may I suggest detroitfunk.com. A major archive of Detroit’s streets and buildings, both good and bad.
Mods, I have absolutely no relationship to the site I mentioned. I only suggest it to illuminate the conversation.
Two of the pictures are of The Jane Cooper Elementary School circa 2008 and 2009. Presumably someone reclaimed all that seating that disappeared between the two photos.
One very real possibility would be to literally jack up the house and move it somewhere else. My grandparents had that done.
HGTV had a show about house movers. It was amazing how big of a house they could move. In some cases they sawed it in half and reconnected after the move. I even saw them move two story houses.
I can recall ads in the paper for free house that must be moved. It might cost 15 grand to move and another 10 grand for the new block foundation. But you got a house ready to renovate and live in.
They should just offer the houses still in decent shape “free to anyone that will move it”. That’s cheaper for the city than tearing it down and filling up the landfill.
Here’s a short example. Victorian house on a flatbed truck.
Unless it’s historic you’re not "moving"a house in Detroit. Assuming you could get the thing on a trailer, the logistics of moving a house through the city streets is mind-boggling. Remember, this is a city where drivers think a red light or stop sign is just a suggestion.
I’d imagine these drivers would stop for a building in the intersection.
Bridges, power lines and trees would be a major hassle in moving a house here in Chicago. I’m not familiar with Detroit to say if it would be a similar problem there, though, but I’d think so.
Whether they’re high, or yapping on their phone while their 24" subwoofer is rattling the lug nuts off the wheels, or running from the cops, there are myriad cases of one car T-Boning another at an intersection. A house getting nailed by a typical ghetto rat would get a one paragraph blurb on the local news reports.
15 years ago I learned that a green light in Detroit means “slow down, look both ways and be prepared to jack the brakes”
I’m not trying to rip on the city, it just is what it is.
Have the Detroit officials offered any ideas to use the empty land after the houses are gone?
Park land seems like a easy choice, but it’s expensive to keep it mowed. Planting trees would be another option. But, that would be a great place for drug dealing, homeless people and crime. Trying to police a forested area inside a city would be nearly impossible.
City garden plots would use some of the land. But not all of it.
Every other month (for at least my adult life) some Detroit official of one stripe or another has suggested a silver bullet idea for the vacant areas; most imagine a perfectly cleared lot w/ unfettered titles going back 310 years. It is to laugh.
People have been using empty lots to dump such nasty stuff that you’d need to ameliorate the soil by carting away and burning; there used to be a tire plant on Jefferson across from Belle Isle whose acres SHOULD be worth millions and covered in riverfront condos. Too bad they’d need to dig a pit the size of Ford Field to removed the KNOWN amounts of dangerous waste. What lies beneath? Do you want to eat beans harvested from that field, much less live in a condo on top of it?
And that’s a place w/ a clearer title than most. It hasn’t been sold every other generation on average since before WW1 when Greenfield was green fields. It takes quite a lot of work to have legal backing in order to plow under someone else’s vacant lot or cut its 20 foot tall staghorn sumac down and chase out the raccoons and other feral creatures living under what remains of a 900 square foot bungalow’s porch. Who pays for that legal work? How much can one expect volunteers to give and give on behalf of their city and its citizenry?
Difficult is not the word. Please research on your own for several hours/days on what my hometown’s been through and revisit this thread.
I love Nicole Curtis and her show, but that’s TV; there’s no taking a house up the Lodge Freeway to go live in the suburbs like all its prior tenants.
True, it’s almost always cheaper to build a new house than move an old one. I noticed most of the people on Haulin’ House actually got the house for free or some nominal prince (like a $1) from a developer who was only interested in the land. In case anyone’s wonder why developer would to this it saves them the expense of demolishing the house.
Right, I used the wrong word. LeDuff mentioned that the protective fire suits are coated with carbon, which makes them flammable, the boots are worn through, trucks don’t run or have serious maintenance issues, etc. Cripes, what a position to be in.