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Comment by addicted | Hacker News Reader

The places that have cheap housing stock are usually places that are undesirable to live in because of crime, an undeserved reputation for crime, and generally pathetic government services.

Metro Detroit has low housing expenses because the government provides no services. Even if we assume low crime, if a middle class family were to move to urban Detroit, because Detroit has been deliberately designed so all the rich people live in the suburbs, that family will have no decent schools to send their kids to. So they will basically be trading their child’s education and future for a cheaper rent.

That’s almost always a terrible decision. And that’s before we consider the fact that the governor of Michigan probably doesn’t give shit about Detroit or Flint or the fact that those families are drinking lead in their water. L

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>Metro Detroit has low housing expenses because the government provides no services.

The parent claimed that prices in Metro Detroit have gone up and become unaffordable.

Detroit was designed for rich people. Unlike almost any large city, it consists of large, single family homes, each on a relatively large parcel of land. It was a city, before "the riots," that was one of the richest in the world. Everyone had cars. There was so much entertainment that new music genres came from Detroit.

Flint's water has been fixed for years.

I'm finding conflicting reports about this. Some say it's been fixed for all houses in Flint, others say there's 2000 houses where it still hasn't been fixed.

But there's apparently a lot of people who simply don't trust it because they're been lied to for too long.

> The places that have cheap housing stock are usually places that are undesirable to live in because of

The leading cause for people not wanting to live somewhere is almost certainly the ability to find work (relatively) nearby. Large amounts of crime are only really a problem in sufficiently large cities (obviously with exception) and particularly poor ones, both of which stem from a lack of sustainable income:CoL ratio.

I don't think you've lived somewhere that has failing city services. One of the last places I rented for a while, the city was the only trash service. Optimistically my trash would get collected 3 times a month at best. Sometimes I was lucky to get trash picked up 2 times a month. We frequently had a "queue" of trash bags that had to be loaded after each trash day. I remember moving out and leaving a backlog of trash in the garage, simply because I had no way to dispose of it all.

And when the trash isn't collected on my day? Better bring the can in immediately, otherwise I'll get fined by the city for having my can out too long.

In the same place, the government mandated regulated power simply decided that they were not going to read my meter because of a "dog behind the gate" (there was no gate). Their solution was to have me pay an "estimated" charge that was several times my monthly income.

It's absolutely unlivable long term to be some place like that.

It's a perverse incentive providing poorer service enables more fines. Of course the cost benefit of this approach is rarely considered by the government involved.

It's separate parts of the city, at least where I was talking about. The police issue the citation and collect the revenue, not the garbage collection part of the city.

Fundamentally it's just the same thing as any other city service: they have no actual obligation to provide any service. Your recourse is to move to another jurisdiction, which I did.

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