Gary, Indiana Is Deteriorating So Much That It May Cut Off Services To Nearly Half Of Its Land

[FarCenter]

NBC News recently profiled the depressed city near Chicago for its Poverty In America series, reporting that about 6,500 of the 7,000 properties the city owns are abandoned, and Gary officials are thinking about auctioning the buildings off for $1 because the city doesn't have the money to demolish them.

Things are getting so bad that Gary officials are thinking about cutting off city services to about 40 percent of the city's land and moving residents to more viable parts of Gary, NBC reports. This is a drastic move, but it may be necessary as the thousands of abandoned properties are attracting criminals.

Gary's deterioration is not a new story. The city's economy was decimated when the steel industry collapsed. Gary has lost 55% of its population since the city's peak in 1960. Back then, 178,320 lived in Gary. By 2010, the population had dropped to just 80,294. Gary might have lost even more people since then — U.S. Census estimates put the 2012 population at 79,170.

U.S. Steel used to be a big employer in Gary, providing jobs to 25,000 people. Now, just 5,000 work for the company, according to NBC. Competition overseas led to massive layoffs in the steel industry.

http://www.businessinsider.com/gary-indiana-is-deteriorating-badly-2013-6

When I drove through Gary in '67, visibility was maybe 100 yards.

It's clean now. Clean and empty.

[Buzz Clik]

1. My family roots are deep in Chicago. Lived south of Gary for 15 years.

This is sad.

[kas125]

8. Do you still? I live directly south of Gary, grew up there and moved

here when I was 15. I know people who are afraid to go into the city for any reason whatsoever, but I am not one of them. What's happened to my hometown is horrifying, it really is.

[longship]

2. Try Detroit. Lost a million during the same time.

And Detroit is fighting the same services crunch on a much larger scale.

Too bad for Gary, though. It can't be fun living through such times there.

[Initech]

3. This is the end result of four decades of no tax revenue.

Fuck Reagan.

[FarCenter]

4. Gary had tax revenues when it had industry

How does Reagan figure in?

[Initech]

5. Reagan and the BFEE killed industry and municipal government.

Pretty much all our woes can be traced back to the BFEE in some way, shape, or form.

[roamer65]

6. East St Louis

That town was one I'll never forget. Many years ago, driving through it on the freeway. Rows and rows of houses with very few lights if any at night. Creepy place.

[alcibiades_mystery]

7. Thanks, US Steel

"700 tons of metal a day, now, sir, you tell me the world's changed
Once I made you rich enough, rich enough to forget my name..."

- Bruce Springsteen, Youngstown

[Buzz Clik]

10. Not sure what you are saying.

US Steel is one of the last industries left in Gary.

[Fumesucker]

9. Heinlein introduced the concept of "Abandoned Areas" in one of his later novels

http://www.heinleinsociety.org/concordance/A_HC.htm

Abandoned Area
Urban neighborhoods in which poverty, crime, and physical deterioration were so great the authorities simply gave up on them.
(I Will Fear No Evil)

[FarCenter]

12. Those New England forests with rock walls running through them were once farms.

The New England farmers couldn't compete with farmers in the Ohio River valley. So they either went to the New England manufacturing cities or moved west. Their farms were abandoned.

More recently, the mechanization of farming has meant that many counties in the corn and wheat belts of the MidWest have populations substantially below what they had in the early Twentieth Century. The population has concentrated into the major towns and cities.

So abandonment of former areas of settlement is not limited to urban areas. It is a common occurance that when economic or social conditions change, people pick up and move to places with greater opportunities.

[mick063]

11. How can you boil this down to simplicity?

Union members create a viable tax base. Ship their jobs over seas, enact "right to work" laws, and entire cities die.

Meanwhile, our wonderful President is negotiating secret trade deals to do more of the same. No, I don't know the details of the deals, but if they are secret, if Elizabeth Warren has declared we would not like the details, if it is even being kept secret from the legislative branch, if only corporations are privy to the details, then I can say with reasonable confidence, that his secret trade deals are all fucked up. Hope this didn't come across as "racist".


Yes, we can let workers in China eat pollution while they work. They can die on the job. This is how shareholders cut operational costs. Avoid OSHA and EPA in America.

By the way....who are the shareholders? That would be the dumbshits that have bought in to the concept of 401k as a viable format. Congratulations, your retirement income completely aligns with the corporate vision that has killed our manufacturing infrastructure.

[SoCalDem]

13. We lived in Michigan City, IN from '70-'77

Gary was a mess back then, and like Detroit, has gone downhill since.

The whole steel-belt/rust belt was destroyed because of non-union/cheap labor and sweetheart deals offered by southern (to start with) states, and then Mexico & finally China.

When the EPA came along, the oldtime-y steel mills had to either clean up their messes they had been making forever, or move.. they moved & left the mess ,and LOTS of suddenly unemployed steelworkers/autoworkers stranded in dead cities.

The bustling river/lake cities from StLouis, all the way east into upper NY have been decimated and left to struggle with little or no help.

[Egalitarian Thug]

14. Another victory for the free traitors. n/t