What's even more maddening is that the population of flint Michigan is majority Black. Hard to spin that race hasn't got anything to do with the lack of effort in fixing the issue.
To paint this as racism is either dishonesty or ignorance.
Many of the neighborhoods with this problem have been areas of severe deindustrialization. When a city like Flint shrinks because the main factory shuts down, they no longer have the tax revenue to support their own infrastructure, let alone build new infrastructure. They are stuck in a slow decay, and would need Federal assistance to get out.