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| FILE - Vehicles drive through downtown Flint, Mich., on Jan. 21, 2016. From its founding, Flint's fortunes essentially were entwined with a single industry. First it was the fur trade, which shifted to lumber, which gave way to the horse carriages that led to it being called Vehicle City. It was a fitting moniker for its next, most important role, as a powerhouse of auto manufacturing and the original home of General Motors. |
FLINT, Mich.
(AP) -- In a city long stereotyped for despair, some began seeing
reasons for hope: A smattering of just-opened restaurants, students
filling new college classrooms, fields of green growing where abandoned
houses had stood.
The red-brick streets of
downtown Flint became lined with once-unlikely businesses like a crepe
shop and wine bar, and nearby, hundreds did the previously unthinkable,
moving into new apartments at the city's core.
A
sprawling new farmers market began drawing hundreds of thousands for
everything from mango ginger stilton at a cheese shop to thick,
fresh-cut pork loins at a butcher. New programs lured students from
around the globe to the city's campuses, an ice-skating rink opened, the
planetarium got a state-of-the-art upgrade and performances such as
"Blue Man Group" put Flint on their schedule.
Even some signs of blight were beginning to fall, with hundreds of abandoned homes cleared away.
"It
felt different," said Kimberly Roberson, a Flint native who directs
grant-making in the city for the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, "until
we hit lead."
A water crisis that has flooded
homes with fear and poisonous toxins has taken a tandem swipe at the
city's psyche, returning it to the negative headlines it was working
hard to escape, drawing a new spotlight to poverty and other wounds it
never was able to fix, and bringing a renewed sense of insecurity about
what the future holds for a place that's been through so much.
From its founding, Flint's fortunes essentially were entwined with a single industry.
First
it was the fur trade, which shifted to lumber, which gave way to the
horse carriages, leading to its being called Vehicle City. It was a
fitting moniker for its next, most important role, as a powerhouse of
auto manufacturing and the original home of General Motors.
Chevrolets
and Buicks and lesser-known cars rolled off Flint's production lines,
making the city a magnet for workers and ancillary businesses. At its
peak in the early 1970s, GM employed 80,000 people in Flint who cashed
paychecks strengthened by the United Auto Workers union born in the
city. Some 200,000 people lived within the city limits, alongside
sprawling factories, booming commerce, model schools and thriving arts.
"This
was the most beautiful place on earth," said Pamela Copeland, 72, who
was a teenager when she arrived in Flint in its heyday.
No
one says that anymore. The oil crisis of the 1970s and corporate
cost-cutting in the 1980s and beyond led to the decimation of
manufacturing jobs in the city. Its population plummeted; crime soared
along with unemployment. The stately Tudors and colonials that were
symbols of middle-class prosperity became run-down emblems of urban
decline.
By the time filmmaker Michael Moore
released his 1989 film "Roger & Me," excoriating GM's managers for
the pain they caused their workers and the city, Flint's transition from
boomtown to a drab, dangerous shell of its former self was sealed in
the public consciousness. Moore was born in Flint and grew up in
neighboring Davison, and his father worked at GM. What he didn't know
while shooting the hard times in his hometown was it was just the start
of the decline - tens of thousands more jobs would be lost, the exodus
from the city would be exacerbated, and whole neighborhoods would be
left virtually deserted.
"You look at that film now," Moore said in an interview, "it makes Flint look like paradise."
Staggering
numbers of houses around Flint are burned out, boarded up or altogether
razed. Holdout residents remain on blocks full of desertion and blight.
Few neighborhoods are untouched by the devastation.
The population,
continuing its decades-long decline, has fallen below 100,000. Many
schools have shuttered, and groceries are no easy find. But small liquor
stores abound, advertising bottles of Olde English 800 for $1 and less.
Jeffery
Carney, 48, had read of what was happening in his hometown, but didn't
get his first glimpse until last February, when he was released from
prison after 23 years for dealing drugs. On the ride to the downtown
parole office for his formal release, he thought he was looking at a
third-world country.
"I feel like I was in a
nuclear holocaust," he said after picking up a case of water at a local
firehouse recently.
"Is it any hope anywhere?"
The
water crisis, slow to gain widespread awareness outside the area, has
brought a renewed, national look at the conditions in the city.
Under
Michigan law, debt-plagued cities like Flint are put under the control
of state-appointed emergency financial managers, who have immense
latitude in decision-making. In efforts to get the city's finances in
line, its water source was changed in April 2014, from a supply treated
in Detroit and piped to Flint, to Flint River
water treated and
disseminated locally.
It wasn't long before
residents began complaining of yellow and brown water from their taps,
along with an unpleasant taste and smell. People began seeing rashes on
their skin and hair falling from their heads.
Workers at a remaining GM
plant found their parts were corroding.
The City Council voted last March to reconnect to the Detroit water supply. The state's emergency manager refused.
"If
we had access to democracy, we wouldn't be in this whole boat that
we're in right now," said Nayyirah Shariff of the Flint Democracy
Defense League.
And so the problems worsened
even as officials insisted the water was safe. The water being used by
families daily for everything from showers to preparing baby formula,
had corroded the city's pipes, leaching lead, copper and other dangerous
substances and carrying them through the taps. More people got sick.
Many are suspicious a deadly outbreak of Legionnaires' disease is due to
Flint's water, though the state has not yet announced such a link.
Long
before the pipes leached, though, frustration with Flint's stagnation
was bubbling. Though abandoned houses have been cleared in neighborhoods
dotted around the city, many of the most noticeable signs of progress
have all been focused on a tight cluster of downtown streets. Blacks, 57
percent of the population, frequently note the positive developments
seem mostly to benefit whites.
Some 42 percent
of residents live in poverty, according to census data, and across the
city, the average per capita income is just $14,527.
Alfreda
Harris, a 60-year-old substitute teacher, came to Flint as a high
schooler, her parents drawn by the abundant opportunities. Even as she
recognizes some progress in Flint in recent years, she says not all have
enjoyed its fruits.
"The hope is there for
one segment of society, but it's not for the other," she said. "On the
one hand, I can see there is hope. But the reinvention for real people,
for everyday people, is not happening."
Sisters
Sharhonda Lay, 30, and Shiquise Triplett, 31, echoed those sentiments.
What use are new businesses downtown, they wondered, when they don't
even have the money to patronize them?
"We're
already in poverty, people don't have jobs, they're barely making it,"
Lay said. "You can't afford to go out and do nothing."
The
city is a study in contrasts: The renewal of downtown not far from
beaten-down neighborhoods, and a sense of helplessness expressed by
residents who in the same breath voice a stubborn optimism.
Melissa
Mays, 37, a marketing consultant who started a community group, Water
You Fighting For?, to call attention to the water problems, fell in love
with Flint after moving to the city in 2001. She observed the toughness
of locals, and looked with pride at what she believed was the city's
upswing. But after she and her three sons began suffering a bevy of
medical problems they believe are linked to the water, she is ready to
bid Flint goodbye, if only anyone would want to buy her home.
"Trapped is a pretty decent word," she said.
Daily
life has become a trial for many. Megan Crane, a 33-year-old who left
work as a line cook to return to school at Mott Community College,
hollers at her sons, ages 7 and 8, to be sure to put down the toilet
seat before flushing, fearful something toxic from the water could make
it into the air. Food is prepared with bottled water. On good weeks,
when money isn't so short, the family bathes using bottled water. On bad
weeks, they close their eyes and mouths and hope for the best.
She
lost 60 pounds as she began feeling nauseated by food and crippled by
migraines. Her fiance was hospitalized with pneumonia. Snatches of her
cat's hair fell out. It was a painful turnaround for a city she saw
making progress.
"It's been setback after
setback after setback. And it looks like things are starting to come
back," she said. "Things were finally starting to look up for us,
instead of being on everybody's top-10 worst list, and then this
happens."
