Dear Bay City Council

June 1st, 2008

I'm sure you have probably noticed the increasing amount of empty houses on the south side. Last summer there were quite a few as well, but it seems like there are many more this year than last. Maybe I'm noticing the empty homes more because it is springtime. They are easier to pick out because of their shabby looking grass.

For sale signs are all over the place. Some of them are empty and aren't even for sale (don't blame them, the market sucks). On my block alone there are two homes that are empty. The home next door, and a home on the corner. Across the street there is an empty home for sale. For the most part, there's pretty much at least one or two empty homes on every block.

Something that kind of disturbs me a bit is last weekend my ex-next door neighbor's mom and dad knocked on my door. I think they're more or less keeping an eye on the house until it sells (good luck, it's been for sale for 2 years and they're asking WAY too much for it imho). So they're over there mowing the lawn every other weekend or so in the summertime. Which kind of sucks, because with the empty house on the corner most of our block looks shabby and overgrown about 75% of the time.

Anyways, they knocked on the door and asked if I had seen anything afoot next door lately. No, I hadn't seen anything weird; just the occasional real estate agent showing the house to prospective buyers about once every two months (no one bites I guess). During the wintertime they had absolutely NO showings of the house...I can tell because the walk never got shoveled and the snow stayed pristine the entire time it was there.

So they elaborated, I guess they went into the basement for some reason and found the basement window under the porch had been pried open. They investigated further, and in one of the 2nd floor upstairs rooms they found a mattress made out of cardboard boxes and a sleeping bag.

Now this house still has all the utilities turned on; heat, electric, water. Apparently someone thought it was a good idea to help themselves to some shelter. I can really understand, in a strange way, the lure of a warm place to sleep. Especially here in Michigan. I'm sure it was probably just some harmless person, but at the same time it really gave me the creeps.

This is the same home that last summer I called the cops on some teenagers hanging out in the detached garage. Someone had left it unlocked and they thought it would make a nice party spot. Apparently they also thought it was a good idea to spray paint crappy graffiti on the inside of it as well ("P <3's E" and stuff like that). They didn't get caught btw...I made the mistake of telling them to get the hell out before I thought to call the cops. By the time the police showed up a few minutes later they were long gone. This actually wasn't the first time that had happened either, and I'm assuming there were probably other times they hung out there that no one noticed. A few months later someone spraypainted a gang sign on the back of the same garage from out in the alley.

This is a back alley with broken streetlights that I've called Bay City Electric + Water about 5 times in the past 3 years and they've never fixed it. As a matter of fact one of them has been broken for so long that there is a massive hornet nest inside. Over the past five years I've probably been stung about 5 or 6 times just walking in my backyard (yes the light has been out for five years).

I was trying to think of a good description for all the abandoned homes in the area around here. "Blight" really about sums it up. Is this the new "post-American dream" landscape for Bay City? It's already happened in Detroit. There is an extreme example of a rundown neighborhood here http://www.detroitblog.org/?p=405
I'm not saying that is what is happening to Bay City, but it very easily could be what this place turns into in 50-80 years. Don't get me wrong, it's really not that bad here. I'm not trying to sound doom and gloom, but I want to get my thoughts out about the whole thing.

If people keep leaving in droves, who is going to be left? People stuck here? More destitute people? Smashing windows, looking for a place to sleep? Teens with no good prospects, brought up in poverty and with a poor sense of self worth, no outlets, committing violent acts and vandalism just for the sake of it?

The southside already looks like crap, and now that winter is over it isn't getting any better. The city is taxing the crap out of everyone (I'm looking at moving to a place in suburban atlanta to a twice as expensive home, and the taxes are the exact same). On that note, where are the jobs?