Shrinking cities across the pond

WASHINGTON — For a while now at The Washington Independent, sister site to Michigan Messenger, we’ve been keeping an eye on developments in the shrinking cities movement. It’s a new idea for urban development, aimed at saving cities by making them smaller: Cordoning off the sections that are abandoned and marred by blight, urging the [...]

Reich: GM bailout a cover for not doing enough to help workers

WASHINGTON — Robert Reich, economist and former Clinton administration labor secretary, doesn’t think much of General Motors expected bankruptcy filing today, as the nation’s largest automaker prepares for a de facto government rescue and takeover. If the United States really wanted to help GM, Reich wrote in an op/ed for the Financial Times, it would [...]

More shrinking cities: Desperate towns move to ‘disincorporate’

In Flint, Mich., and some other troubled communities fighting against an onslaught of abandoned and vacant properties, the latest survival tactic is to “shrink” the city. As The Washington Independent noted recently, the shrinking cities movement involves cutting off desolate areas from city services, urging anyone who still lives there to leave, and letting the [...]

Risky mortgage programs resurface in Congress

WASHINGTON — A housing program blamed in part for high default rates on government-backed loans, derided as a “scam” by the Internal Revenue Service and targeted for years for elimination by the agency that ran it looked like it finally had reached its end this fall, after Congress finally banned it. But now, in a sign that some lessons of the housing crisis have yet to be learned, a movement is afoot to bring it back.

Flint and the incredible shrinking American city

The New York Times gives high-profile treatment today to efforts in Flint to deal with a deluge of abandoned and vacant properties by literally shrinking the city — demolishing the houses, urging people to leave, cordoning off the decay and leaving it to nature. The Times focuses on Genesee County Treasurer and Land Bank Chairman [...]

Fannie, Freddie quietly lift moratorium on foreclosures

WASHINGTON — A ban on foreclosure sales and evictions from houses owned by mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which began as a high-profile effort just before the holidays to keep people in their homes as the government tried to come up with homeowner rescue plans, is over. Spokesmen for Fannie Mae and Freddie [...]

Credit union collapse signals depth of financial crisis

Geithner’s toxic asset plan not specifically designed for credit unions

Amid distressed homes, communities struggle to keep up

Abandoned and vacant homes rapidly piling up in communities like Detroit are symbols of the secondary damage caused by the foreclosure crisis — a catastrophe felt on the ground but still unseen by Washington.

Bank-owned homes surge, communities stung

Though they have accepted billions in federal bailout funds, banks are not required to ensure foreclosures don’t drag down surrounding communities.

Quiet Countrywide bailout serves as warning for Congress

Consequences continue from the failed effort to prop up the mortgage giant