Detroit’s Underground Economy: Where Capitalism Fails, Alternatives Take Root

‘You might have heard about the Detroit comeback. It’s a popular narrative in media silos these days, a tale of investment and revitalization. Young people look romantically to the city as a “blank canvas”—property is cheap, they gush, and the city is coming back.
The problem is this comeback is a myth. The poverty rate is nearly 40 percent, and despite the influx of young whites lured by promises of a Detroit Renaissance, the population continues to decline, from a peak of 1.8 million in 1950 to 670,000 today. Approximately 70,000 households have had their water turned off for lack of payment since 2014, and about 17,000 occupied homes are at risk of foreclosure this year.
The city’s so-called renaissance has reached only small portions of its 139 square miles, leaving much of the population—which is more than 80 percent African-American—behind.’
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