Poor housing market, crime turn off black Detroit residents

DETROIT - Frustrated by plummeting property values and high crime, many diehard Detroit dwellers have hit their breaking point and are taking up residence elsewhere...

TheGrio Staff

Jun 9, 2010

From The Wall Street Journal:

DETROIT—This shrinking city needs to hang on to people like Johnette Barham: taxpaying, middle-class professionals who invest in local real estate, work and play downtown, and make their home here.

Ms. Barham just left. And she’s not coming back.

In seven years as a homeowner in Detroit, she endured more than 10 burglaries and break-ins at her house and a nearby rental property she owned. Still, she defied friends’ pleas to leave as she fortified her home with locks, bars, alarms and a dog.

Then, a week before Christmas, someone torched the house and destroyed almost everything she owned.

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