Broke

Broke
Author: Jodie Adams Kirshner
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
Total Pages: 357
Release: 2019-11-19
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1250237122

"Essential...in showcasing people who are persistent, clever, flawed, loving, struggling and full of contradictions, Broke affirms why it’s worth solving the hardest problems in our most challenging cities in the first place. " —Anna Clark, The New York Times "Through in-depth reporting of structural inequality as it affects real people in Detroit, Jodie Adams Kirshner's Broke examines one side of the economic divide in America" —Salon "What Broke really tells us is how systems of government, law and finance can crush even the hardiest of boot-strap pullers." —Brian Alexander, author of Glass House A galvanizing, narrative account of a city’s bankruptcy and its aftermath told through the lives of seven valiantly struggling Detroiters Bankruptcy and the austerity it represents have become a common "solution" for struggling American cities. What do the spending cuts and limited resources do to the lives of city residents? In Broke, Jodie Adams Kirshner follows seven Detroiters as they navigate life during and after their city's bankruptcy. Reggie loses his savings trying to make a habitable home for his family. Cindy fights drug use, prostitution, and dumping on her block. Lola commutes two hours a day to her suburban job. For them, financial issues are mired within the larger ramifications of poor urban policies, restorative negligence on the state and federal level and—even before the decision to declare Detroit bankrupt in 2013—the root causes of a city’s fiscal demise. Like Matthew Desmond’s Evicted, Broke looks at what municipal distress means, not just on paper but in practical—and personal—terms. More than 40 percent of Detroit’s 700,000 residents fall below the poverty line. Post-bankruptcy, they struggle with a broken real estate market, school system, and job market—and their lives have not improved. Detroit is emblematic. Kirshner makes a powerful argument that cities—the economic engine of America—are never quite given the aid that they need by either the state or federal government for their residents to survive, not to mention flourish. Success for all America’s citizens depends on equity of opportunity.

Detroit and the Property Tax

Detroit and the Property Tax
Author: Gary Sands
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2015
Genre: Real property tax
ISBN: 9781558443419

This report outlines the problems underlying the erosion of Detroit's property tax base--a factor that contributed to the city's bankruptcy in 2013. It offers recommendations for reform at the local and state level, as well as insight and analysis to help policy makers across the country protect their communities from economic decline.

Detroit Resurrected: To Bankruptcy and Back

Detroit Resurrected: To Bankruptcy and Back
Author: Nathan Bomey
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Total Pages: 347
Release: 2016-04-25
Genre: History
ISBN: 0393248925

What happens when an iconic American city goes broke? At exactly 4:06 p.m. on July 18, 2013, the city of Detroit filed for bankruptcy. It was the largest municipal bankruptcy in American history—the Motor City had finally hit rock bottom. But what led to that fateful day, and how did the city survive the perilous months that followed? In Detroit Resurrected, Nathan Bomey delivers the inside story of the fight to save Detroit against impossible odds. Bomey, who covered the bankruptcy for the Detroit Free Press, provides a gripping account of the tremendous clash between lawyers, judges, bankers, union leaders, politicians, philanthropists, and the people of Detroit themselves. The battle to rescue this iconic city pulled together those who believed in its future—despite their differences. Help came in the form of Republican governor Rick Snyder, a technocrat who famously called himself “one tough nerd”; emergency manager Kevyn Orr, a sharp-shooting lawyer and “yellow-dog Democrat”; and judges Steven Rhodes and Gerald Rosen, the key architects of the grand bargain that would give the city a second chance at life. Detroit had a long way to go. Facing a legacy of broken promises, the city had to seek unprecedented sacrifices from retirees and union leaders, who fought for their pensions and benefits. It had to confront the consequences of years of municipal corruption while warding off Wall Street bond insurers who demanded their money back. And it had to consider liquidating the Detroit Institute of Arts, whose world-class collection became an object of desire for the city’s numerous creditors. In a tight, suspenseful narrative, Detroit Resurrected reveals the tricky path to rescuing the city from $18 billion in debt and giving new hope to its citizens. Based on hundreds of exclusive interviews, insider sources, and thousands of records, Detroit Resurrected gives a sweeping account of financial ruin, backroom intrigue, and political rebirth in the struggle to reinvent one of America’s iconic cities.

The City after Property

The City after Property
Author: Sara Safransky
Publisher: Duke University Press
Total Pages: 192
Release: 2023-06-30
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1478024615

In The City after Property, Sara Safransky examines how postindustrial decline generates new forms of urban land politics. In the 2010s, Detroit government officials classified a staggering 150,000 lots—more than a third of the city—as “vacant” or “abandoned.” Analyzing subsequent efforts to shrink the Motor City’s footprint and budget, Safransky presents a new way of conceptualizing urban abandonment. She challenges popular myths that cast Detroit as empty along with narratives that reduce its historical decline to capital and white flight. In connecting contemporary debates over neoliberal urbanism to Cold War histories and the lasting political legacies of global movements for decolonization and Black liberation, she foregrounds how the making of—and challenges to—modern property regimes have shaped urban policy and politics. Drawing on critical geographical theory and community-based ethnography, Safransky shows how private property functions as a racialized construct, an ideology, and a moral force that shapes selves and worlds. By thinking the city “after property,” Safransky illuminates alternative ways of imagining and organizing urban life.

Strong Towns

Strong Towns
Author: Charles L. Marohn, Jr.
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 262
Release: 2019-10-01
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1119564816

A new way forward for sustainable quality of life in cities of all sizes Strong Towns: A Bottom-Up Revolution to Build American Prosperity is a book of forward-thinking ideas that breaks with modern wisdom to present a new vision of urban development in the United States. Presenting the foundational ideas of the Strong Towns movement he co-founded, Charles Marohn explains why cities of all sizes continue to struggle to meet their basic needs, and reveals the new paradigm that can solve this longstanding problem. Inside, you’ll learn why inducing growth and development has been the conventional response to urban financial struggles—and why it just doesn’t work. New development and high-risk investing don’t generate enough wealth to support itself, and cities continue to struggle. Read this book to find out how cities large and small can focus on bottom-up investments to minimize risk and maximize their ability to strengthen the community financially and improve citizens’ quality of life. Develop in-depth knowledge of the underlying logic behind the “traditional” search for never-ending urban growth Learn practical solutions for ameliorating financial struggles through low-risk investment and a grassroots focus Gain insights and tools that can stop the vicious cycle of budget shortfalls and unexpected downturns Become a part of the Strong Towns revolution by shifting the focus away from top-down growth toward rebuilding American prosperity Strong Towns acknowledges that there is a problem with the American approach to growth and shows community leaders a new way forward. The Strong Towns response is a revolution in how we assemble the places we live.

The Financial Crisis Inquiry Report

The Financial Crisis Inquiry Report
Author: Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission
Publisher: Cosimo, Inc.
Total Pages: 692
Release: 2011-05-01
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1616405414

The Financial Crisis Inquiry Report, published by the U.S. Government and the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission in early 2011, is the official government report on the United States financial collapse and the review of major financial institutions that bankrupted and failed, or would have without help from the government. The commission and the report were implemented after Congress passed an act in 2009 to review and prevent fraudulent activity. The report details, among other things, the periods before, during, and after the crisis, what led up to it, and analyses of subprime mortgage lending, credit expansion and banking policies, the collapse of companies like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and the federal bailouts of Lehman and AIG. It also discusses the aftermath of the fallout and our current state. This report should be of interest to anyone concerned about the financial situation in the U.S. and around the world.THE FINANCIAL CRISIS INQUIRY COMMISSION is an independent, bi-partisan, government-appointed panel of 10 people that was created to "examine the causes, domestic and global, of the current financial and economic crisis in the United States." It was established as part of the Fraud Enforcement and Recovery Act of 2009. The commission consisted of private citizens with expertise in economics and finance, banking, housing, market regulation, and consumer protection. They examined and reported on "the collapse of major financial institutions that failed or would have failed if not for exceptional assistance from the government."News Dissector DANNY SCHECHTER is a journalist, blogger and filmmaker. He has been reporting on economic crises since the 1980's when he was with ABC News. His film In Debt We Trust warned of the economic meltdown in 2006. He has since written three books on the subject including Plunder: Investigating Our Economic Calamity (Cosimo Books, 2008), and The Crime Of Our Time: Why Wall Street Is Not Too Big to Jail (Disinfo Books, 2011), a companion to his latest film Plunder The Crime Of Our Time. He can be reached online at www.newsdissector.com.

Developing Alternative Frameworks for Explaining Tax Compliance

Developing Alternative Frameworks for Explaining Tax Compliance
Author: James Alm
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 469
Release: 2010-06-10
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1136970657

Over the last several decades, there has been a growing interest in theoretical, empirical, and experimental work on all aspects of tax compliance and tax evasion. The essays in this volume summarize the existing state of knowledge of tax compliance and tax evasion, present new thinking about this issue, and analyze the empirical relevance of these new perspectives. The original essays in this volume represent an attempt to provide a framework on compliance that moves beyond the economics-of-crime perspective, one that provides a more complete understanding of individual (and group) decisions, and one that is more consistent with empirical evidence. It is the insights of behavioural economics that provide much of the bases for these essays and the main theme running through this book is that the basic model of individual choice must be expanded, by introducing some aspects of behaviour or motivation considered explicitly by other social sciences.

A Good Tax

A Good Tax
Author: Joan Youngman
Publisher:
Total Pages: 260
Release: 2016
Genre: Local finance
ISBN: 9781558443426

In A Good Tax, tax expert Joan Youngman skillfully considers how to improve the operation of the property tax and supply the information that is often missing in public debate. She analyzes the legal, administrative, and political challenges to the property tax in the United States and offers recommendations for its improvement. The book is accessibly written for policy analysts and public officials who are dealing with specific property tax issues and for those concerned with property tax issues in general.

Evicted

Evicted
Author: Matthew Desmond
Publisher: Crown
Total Pages: 450
Release: 2017-02-28
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0553447459

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE • NAMED ONE OF TIME’S TEN BEST NONFICTION BOOKS OF THE DECADE • One of the most acclaimed books of our time, this modern classic “has set a new standard for reporting on poverty” (Barbara Ehrenreich, The New York Times Book Review). In Evicted, Princeton sociologist and MacArthur “Genius” Matthew Desmond follows eight families in Milwaukee as they each struggle to keep a roof over their heads. Hailed as “wrenching and revelatory” (The Nation), “vivid and unsettling” (New York Review of Books), Evicted transforms our understanding of poverty and economic exploitation while providing fresh ideas for solving one of twenty-first-century America’s most devastating problems. Its unforgettable scenes of hope and loss remind us of the centrality of home, without which nothing else is possible. NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY President Barack Obama • The New York Times Book Review • The Boston Globe • The Washington Post • NPR • Entertainment Weekly • The New Yorker • Bloomberg • Esquire • BuzzFeed • Fortune • San Francisco Chronicle • Milwaukee Journal Sentinel • St. Louis Post-Dispatch • Politico • The Week • Chicago Public Library • BookPage • Kirkus Reviews • Library Journal • Publishers Weekly • Booklist • Shelf Awareness WINNER OF: The National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction • The PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction • The Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction • The Hillman Prize for Book Journalism • The PEN/New England Award • The Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize FINALIST FOR THE LOS ANGELES TIMES BOOK PRIZE AND THE KIRKUS PRIZE “Evicted stands among the very best of the social justice books.”—Ann Patchett, author of Bel Canto and Commonwealth “Gripping and moving—tragic, too.”—Jesmyn Ward, author of Salvage the Bones “Evicted is that rare work that has something genuinely new to say about poverty.”—San Francisco Chronicle