Shrink to Survive? Rust Belt City Downsizes

Oct. 28, 2009— -- Three homes, 824 Stockdale Street, 4034 Trumbull Avenue and 1538 Garland Street are all located in Flint, Mich., and all share the same fate.

In an act of residential triage, Genesee County, which includes Flint, has been knocking down the city's vacant homes at an astounding rate -- often up to four a day.

"We'll collapse this [house] down onto the ground in about 15 minutes, 20 minutes," said Kevin Muma, a foreman on the wrecking team. "It doesn't take long at all."

Flint, a blue-collar city in the Rust Belt, was once home to several thriving General Motors plants that helped build a strong work force here. But as the automaker declined and cut tens of thousands of jobs, Flint residents started leaving too; the city's population has fallen to 115,000 from its peak of nearly 200,000 in the 1960s.

While many left the city in search of jobs, Dan Kildee, 51, a Flint native and now Genesee County treasurer, stayed put. He spoke to "Nightline" from Jane Avenue on the city's north side.

"I walked up and down this street from the time I was a year old until my grandmother died," he said.

Out of the 25 houses that stood on this street in Kildee's youth, only one looks occupied. There are about 10,000 vacant homes in Flint -- some of which were built more than 80 years ago.

To push his hometown out of a housing glut, Kildee proposed a radical idea: demolishing 6,000 abandoned homes in Flint. "We've lost 84,000 people. They didn't take their houses with them," he said.

Kildee thinks the cure to Flint's survival is shrinking it: "Get rid of these houses, get them out of competition," he said.

Not all neighborhoods in Flint are flailing. But Kildee says home values in the more stable neighborhoods have been undermined by the abundance of "Do Not Resuscitate" homes.

"...I can't avoid the reality that this house, despite its history is ruining other stories," he said. "Two blocks over, there's somebody trying to have a life and their condition is affected by this thing sitting here."

A local resident named James we also met on Jane Avenue agreed, saying if a bulldozer showed up and demolished every other house on his block, "he'd help."

"The truth of the matter is, his house would improve in value immediately, if all these houses got torn down," Kildee explained.