Dear Governor of Michigan:
This is Marta from Flint Michigan. I decided to share in your Facebook what is happen in Flint with us the residences, so you could understand our challenges.
The real problems in Flint is not crime, nor job or education. All of them are symptoms of a system that is broken to its core.
Flint is a “No town” that is close to business, it repels people instead of attracting. Flint does not understand that for its survival, it needs people. We are the customers that pay the taxes; yet and the level of disinvestment in Flint is atrocious. Why?
The answer is a total disrespect for people, and very low expectations that taints all transactions. There is not good faith, or believe that things will get better. There is lack of problem solving mentality compounded by a lack of imagination to bring solutions. We keep trying the same old same that does not work anymore.
I want to improve the quality of my neighborhood (http://www.facebook.com/MottParkFlintMiAGreatPlaceToLive) and for that reason I have started buying homes and renting them, and renting to own. That is when my dealings with the City Hall has intensified.
1) To pay bills at City Hall, it has become a time consuming taks because it is not open 8 hours a day, five days a week. In any other business, “money is the King.” It is the engine that moves your business. As a homeschool mother, and a rental owner of seven houses, I am very busy. I do not have the luxury to play by their rules, and go only to the hours that they are open. Governor, I invite to come one day, to customer service at city hall and wait with us in the line. You will feel the frustration of everybody too.
2) If you want to connect the water in a property, an employee from the water department will come to your house to do it. It cost 50 dollars for the permit, but you have to wait in that particular house for 4 hours because they will not call you. Will you do business with me if I give you such a hard time? You should have been listening to a Baker students that was next to me in the line last Friday trying to put the water in the rental property in her name- “ I am so desperate to finish this degree and go back to Oakland County where I am from…
3) Since we are less and less in town, the leaders at the city of Flint are raising prices more and more, and so, the new prices for a tenant to change the water in his or her name has escalated to $450.00 for a deposit! Who of the working poor who live in Flint(and have less changes to leave Flint) can afford that?
This attitude of passing the blame of their lack of leadership to us has permeated Flint at all levels for years.. Schools do not teach to poor children, nor care about their future; police does not protect poor people, nor care about angry teenagers that kill each other every week. The city does not serve their customers, nor have any valuable of our time.
This attitude repels people to the suburbs, and other cities, for nobody want to live in a place that make you feel all the range of negative emotions.
What is left and what the city attract in there shady business which are booming, from liquor stores that sells to homeless, to drug dealing that hire teenagers that do not go to school, to uncaring rental owners that live out of town and are in the business of flipping houses.
I know we can do it. Treating people with dignity has been very good for my neighborhood and my business… So the leaders in Flint have to make a 360 change in the way they address the challenges in Flint. We ought to expect the best on every person in Flint because we do not anybody else to come and save us.
Sincerely,
Marta, from Flint, MI
FlintMichiganchangingneighborhoodspovertyandcrime 