[Content Note: Classism; racism.]
"I just wish city officials would go after racism with the same manic intensity as they are going after blight."—Peter Hammer, professor of law and director of the Damon J Keith Center for Civil Rights at Wayne State University, on Detroit's $1 billion blight removal project, which is demolishing abandoned buildings "at a speed of at least 200 houses a week."
Hammer's not suggesting that there is not a need for policy that includes blight removal, but that blight removal alone is not the comprehensive solution the city needs: "Racism is what got us into this mess, yet there is nothing in this blight removal report that deals with issues of race, or segregation, or discrimination, or white flight, which is the absolute root cause of why we have the issues of abandoned buildings and blight in Detroit in the first place."
I highly recommend reading the entire piece. It's really worth your time.
[H/T to my pals Ellen and Kathryn.]
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