A California city that filed for bankruptcy in 2001 after a developer secured a $10 million judgment against it, Desert Hot Springs was featured in the NYT for its fiscal troubles. The city, Desert Hot Springs, population 27,000, is slowly edging toward bankruptcy, largely because of police salaries and skyrocketing pension costs, but also because…
Category: Cities
What Washington Gives New York – Added Strain on the Social Safety Net – NYTimes.com
New York City’s commitment to preserving a social safety net is quietly heroic. When the federal government began slashing last March, officials with the Department of Housing Preservation and Development drained their reserves to keep building housing. They also preserved the rental vouchers that stand between tens of thousands of Lucy Delgados and homelessness. But…
Report Sets Values on Detroit Institute Artworks – NYTimes.com
The selloff begins… The overall estimate — which Christie’s said would total between $454 million and $867 million — covers about 2,800 pieces, or less than 5 percent of the institute’s entire collection because Detroit’s emergency manager, Kevyn D. Orr, asked Christie’s to focus only on pieces that had been bought with city funds. The…
More than one way for a city to die
There has been a lot of press lately, nationally and locally, about the skyrocketing cost of living and doing business in San Francisco. While all that money keeps the city in better fiscal shape than most places in the U.S., it doesn’t necessarily improve the quality of life for San Franciscans. In fact, it kills…
Possible Boeing Move Worries Washington State – NYTimes.com
Boeing is shopping for a location, threatening to leave Washington and take with it more than 80,000 jobs. Parallels are being drawn to Detroit, of course, and the “death spiral” that followed the automobile industry’s departure from that city. Alas, in both good times and bad companies are able to get localities to engage in…