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TIME: Almanac 1990
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1990 Time Magazine Compact Almanac, The (1991)(Time).iso
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time
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082189
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08218900.029
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1990-09-19
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NATION, Page 27American NotesDETROITAnybody Home?
The only thing booming in Detroit these days is the number of
houses being abandoned. With a population of 1,086,220, the city
has lost 800,000 people since the 1950s, and is scarred by 12,000
or more empty buildings. Every year about 2,000 additional
structures are abandoned to rats, crack dealers, vagrants and
vandals. In July three angry residents of Grayfield Street in
northwest Detroit, fed up with the eyesores on their block, took
matters into their own hands. With sledgehammers and axes they
hacked down two abandoned, vermin-infested buildings.
City officials, who have been managing to tear down only about
250 derelict structures a month, initially cast a blind eye on the
copycat barn razings that followed. Events took on the atmosphere
of a block party in some neighborhoods. But then a scuffle broke
out on Chatham Street, after house busters blocked the road with
debris from the makeshift crack house and brothel they tore down.
The Motor City demolition derby has now resulted in five arrests
for wrecking without a permit -- and a healthy increase in the
number of houses the city is clearing away.