Those houses in the pictures are probably perfectly good houses. We have the same situation in certain neighborhoods on the south and west sides of Chicago. Sturdy brick houses that will last forever but nobody wants to live in because crime in the neighborhood is too high.

It was not too tricky to dig the zip code out of the pictures on the blog. You can see the sort of crime that will make houses in your neighborhood basically worthless: http://www.trulia.com/real_estate/48204-Detroit/crime/