$50 million needed to demolish abandoned homes alone
FLINT -- Experts say it will take upwards of $80 million dollars to completely eradicate 'urban blight' in Flint.
During debates leading up to last Tuesday's Flint mayoral election, Mayor Dayne Walling indicated that the city has more than $30 million set aside to help clean-up and eventually redevelop sites of General Motors factories that have been demolished or partially torn down.
Those funds will eventually help with industrial clean-up, but what about the thousands of homes abandoned by people who packed up and left Flint?
"To take care of all the demolitions that ought to be done in Flint would take 50 million dollars. We have probably five to six thousand additional homes that are deteriorated, that should come down," says Doug Weiland, executive director of the Genesee County Land Bank.
Several hundred homes have been razed during the last 12 months, thanks in large part to grant money from the federally funded Neighborhood Stabilization Program.
The program is scheduled to run through February 2013.
According to Weiland, President Obama's jobs plan would extend the program.
"UofM did a study that shows that if we improve and take care of our neighborhoods and get rid of the blight, property values rise, crime goes down," says Genesee County Treasurer Deb Cherry.
As for cleaning up after GM, the process is much more complicated.
"Its not likely to be a factory site with 30,000 people working there like it was when I was a kid. But its not likely to be a playground either," says former Genesee County Treasurer Dan Kildee, who helped create the Genesee County Land Bank in 2002.
Kildee left his post in 2009 to open the Center for Community Progress, a property revitalization group that tackles urban blight on a national level.
Kildee says the demolished GM factory sites are heavily polluted, with soil that soaked up chemicals for upwards of 90 years at some locations.
Albert Stafford moved to the east side of Flint five years ago. His house sits less than a block away from where the AC Spark Plug factory used to be.
"Help us out General Motors, right here in Flint. They made a saying, 'the last one here cut out the lights', somebody got to click some lights on, make something happen here," says Stafford, who continues to watch his neighborhood crumble around him.
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