Comment by rmason | Hacker News Reader

Comment by rmason | Hacker News Reader

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One small fact correction:

Plenty of Michigan cities have city income taxes

http://www.michigan.gov/taxes/0,4676,7-238-43715-153955--F,0...

One addition and this comes from a fifth generation Detroiter living outstate who visits often. There are lots of young urban homesteaders moving downtown especially in neighborhoods like Corktown and they've given the city a huge boost. However what happens when they marry and have children?

There better be another group of young people willing to buy their houses because no sane couple will put their children in the Detroit schools. If they fail to fix the schools the boomlet will crash.

But personally I am bullishly optimistic on the city. Detroit has big problems but it also has grand canyon sized opportunities that exist nowhere else.

Thanks for the correction. I was too lazy to look it up :).

Being from the suburban area and not much of a "Michigan tourist", we always hear of the income tax being the "big detractor" to investment in the city. There are so many other problems in the neighborhoods that pinning the issue of investment to income tax is to convenient.

As for the Detroit Schools issue, you're also dead on. It's a big deal. The folks that I know who have relocated (whether Boston Edison or Brightmoor) of Detroit have done so because they want to help the city for charitable reasons. The biggest problem was DPS.

The enabler for all but one of the families is two-fold: Michigan is a very homeschool friendly state. And even in the good neighborhoods of Detroit, all of the families were able to buy their homes without a mortgage (5,000 square feet in the Boston Edison neighborhood for $120,000, though requiring a lot of TLC). As you put it *no sane couple will put their children in the Detroit schools". Out of six families that I know of who have relocated, five homeschool, the sixth sends his two children to Detroit Country Day School (a good private school in Southfield).

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