Detroit Looks More Like a Third World Nation Every Day

     We have the city being taken over by a financial manager-Kevin Orr. 

     http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/28/detroit-emergency-manager_n_3515978.html

     http://www.freep.com/article/20140611/NEWS01/306110166/Financial-Advisory-Board-Detroit-Mike-Duggan-Kevyn-Orr

     Now the city has just seen thousands of residents threatened with shutoff notices from the Water Department for failure to pay their bills. 

      "With about 90,000 city residents and businesses behind on their water bills, the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department in March began more aggressively collecting debt."

     "In May, about 46,000 notices were delivered to non-paying customers and water was cut off to about 4,500 of them, said DWSD spokesman Gregory Eno."

     "With 24 hours of the shutoffs, 2,700 of them paid or made arrangements to make payments and had services restored, Eno said."

     "This is not an effort to shut peoples water off," he said. "The effort is to collect that debt and get folks to enter into payment arrangements... DWSD is basically trying to put a dent into the bad debt, i.e. delinquent bills."

     http://www.mlive.com/news/detroit/index.ssf/2014/06/detroit_water_department_to_be.html

    Yes, but from what I understand to avoid getting one's water shutoff, a resident must pay at least 30% of the outstanding bill-which is in many cases quite a large amount. In the last decade Detroit residents have gotten poorer as water prices have gotten more expensive. 

     "city residents have seen water rates more than double over the past decade at the same time that the city’s poverty rate rose to nearly 40 percent, putting the cost of basic running water beyond reach for tens of thousands of households. Earlier this week, city lawmakers voted to raise water rates by a further 8.7 percent."

    http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2014/06/20/3451488/detroit-water-shutoffs-complaint/

     Now there is apparently going to be some relief for residents, but this took an act of the U.N. 

     "An $800,000 program to help low-income Detroiters pay their water bills will be put in place in July after services were cut off from some residents in recent months and complaints were made to a United Nations representative, officials said Tuesday."

     "Last week, the Michigan Welfare Rights Organization, the Detroit People’s Water Board and the Canada-based Blue Planet Project sent a letter to Catarina de Albuquerque, special rapporteur on the right to safe drinking water and sanitation for the United Nations' Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights."

    "The letter expressed outrage over the water cutoffs and called the collection effort a "violation of the human right to water and sanitation in the City of Detroit."

    “Many poor people are forced to accept payment plans that they know they can’t afford just to keep their water on (or lights, gas, telephone) until the next shut-off notice," the groups wrote.

     "Eno said $800,000 raised from private donations and from a 50-cent charge on water bills will be used to help qualifying low-income residents pay their bills.

     "That's going to help out a lot of folks facing financial hardships," he said.

    "If you meet those guidelines, they could get as much $1,500 to help pay their water bill."

     http://www.mlive.com/news/detroit/index.ssf/2014/06/detroit_water_department_to_be.html

     This is the sort of thing that doesn't come up in Sumner's NGDPLT regime. This is why macro data alone can't always tell the story. Detroit is one of those poor cities that are basically Third World countries within a larger First World country. 

      P.S. Sumner no doubt would say that liberals are too nationalistic in worrying about poor people in America losing their water when there are even poorer people internationally who allegedly would benefit from Neoliberalism. Yet, the U.N. didn't see this as mere nationalism. 

      Maybe Morgan Warstler will think they're doing pretty good-who needs water if you have a smart phone?