Comments by "Sar Jim" (@sarjim4381) on "Newly Built Homes Abandoned and Vandalized in Detroit." video.

  1. Almost all the newer looking abandoned houses were part of North Pointe Village, a project in Highland Park started in 2005 that was going to revitalize the city. There were going to be 153 factory built homes built with government and (supposedly) private money from various agencies and financiers. The project was plagued from the start with corruption, mismanagement, and no one seeming to understand the housing market in HIghland park or Detroit. The houses were poorly built and assembled, were all around 1100 square feet, and were supposed to sell for between $135,000 and $155,000. No houses of that size were going to sell for those prices in Highland Park. The project was financed by a guy named (((Aryeh Schottenstein))). He was on parole for mortgage fraud from federal prison while he was supposed to be financing these new homes. He is a liar and a thief. He was helped along by Fred Durhal, a state representative and feeder at the public trough who has managed to avoid prison while being elected to the state house in 2014 to succeed his father, who had served three terms before him. He received 94.8% of the votes, and this was long after his role in North Pointe was made public. Voters who live in a district and can't recognize mismanagement and thievery are pretty much doomed from the start. The houses were so poorly constructed that many didn't have back doors, and those that did had the door open onto a three food drop with no stairs. Basements regularly flooded, and the sump pumps were installed in such a way that they pumped the water back into the basement. Windows fell out of the houses, and the substandard aluminum wiring regularly caught on fire. As we can see from your video, not only did they not have garages, they didn't even have driveways that extended beyond the front porch. Art Blackwell, the emergency manager for Highland Park at the time, and since convicted of fraud and mismanagement of city funds, was also part of this criminal conspiracy. Loans were made with no money down to people who couldn't afford the mortgage payments. Despite promises by Blackwell to provide security to the vacant houses waiting to sell, scrappers were breaking into the homes within the first week and stealing everything from the appliances to the plumbing. Those homes rapidly became unsaleable and were boarded up. People who thought they were moving into a nice neighborhood found themselves in area with no streetlights, vacant homes, and an increasing amount of arson fires. Almost everyone who bought a home left within the first year, mostly because the home was going to be foreclosed anyway. It was a disaster almost all the way around, and, except for the few occupied homes, they are all being demolished. Its the same old Detroit story - corrupt Democratic politicians, financial managers that were thieves and couldn't manage their way out of a paper bag, and fraud by criminals way smarter than the those from the state and city who supposed to oversee the project. Detroit and Highland Park will never come back if we can't do better than this.
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