Detroit Follow-Up

I posted about Detroit's Chapter 9 municipal bankruptcy many times. (Go here, here, here, and here for a sampling.) Drawing on Detroit, I even wrote an article about the place of municipal residents in a city's bankruptcy case (Who Bears the Burden? The Place of Municipal Residents in Chapter 9).

But for a human side of the story of Detroit's long slide into its financial black hole, read this piece in the Detroit Free Press: "The Last Days of Detroit's Chaldean Town."

I certainly didn't know that

Catholic Iraqis, known as Chaldeans, began coming to Detroit a century ago. In the 1960s, they began pouring in, some to join their families, some to escape the persecution that this Christian minority faced over the years in Iraq. Metro Detroit now is home to 121,000 Chaldeans, according to the Chaldean Community Foundation.

Nor that Saddam Hussein twice donated large sums to Sacred Heart Chaldean Church, for which he was awarded a key to the city of Detroit.

The disintegration of Chaldean Town followed the pattern of many other of Detroit's ethnic communities. Prosperity enabled suburban flight and increasing crime encouraged it.

One can only hope that Detroit's confirmed plan of adjustment will help reverse the city's descent and enable existing and new communities to grow and thrive.