I have a soft spot for Flint. I love the energy of the people, the resilient sense of hometown pride, the entrepreneurial spirit. For examples, check out the ongoing series The Flint Journal calls “We Are Flint.” So a reporting project running this week on MLive feels like a gut punch. Flint has a problem that highlights its layers of social problems, financial woes and political dysfunction that have beset the city in the decades since population began plummeting. Flint is burning. Hundreds of arsons in the past two years – mostly vacant homes and shuttered school buildings – have become accepted as a crude form of urban renewal, said Ron Fonger, a 30-year veteran reporter at The Journal who worked on the project. “People seem to have become resigned to arson and the poor condition of buildings around them that are candidates for burning,” he said. “They keep an eye on each other’s properties and some believe there's almost an unwritten code that most houses that are burned are somewhat isolated.” John Counts, the MLive investigative team editor who led the project, said it was difficult to report because numbers reported by government officials would have you believe there were relatively few arsons. That didn’t jibe with what residents are seeing in their neighborhoods. When we dug deeper, this wasn’t a story about statistical discrepancies. It’s about a blight problem so profound and a government so unable to respond that people are taking matters into their own hands. “The real story was that arsons were going up again in Flint,” Counts said. “And that officials think some of the fires are being lit by otherwise law-abiding residents tired of the blight and abandonment in their neighborhood.” As Fonger dug in, he found that vacant schools have especially become targets in recent years and that the city and school district are at odds about how to solve that problem. Lack of sufficient money is a big factor. So nothing is getting done and the fires continue. “The biggest takeaway I have isn't in the numbers,” Fonger said. “It's in the incredible drag on neighborhoods that vacant buildings – particularly big ones like schools – can put on entire neighborhoods. When a vacant school takes up an entire city block and it's constantly being broken into, dumped on and burned, that affects the quality of life of so many families.” This unfortunately feeds the narrative of Flint as an avatar for decline. The decline of the American auto industry in the latter part of the 20th century gutted its population. It’s consistently among the most violent cities in America. And Flint suffered one of the largest urban environmental disasters in U.S. history 10 years ago when the water crisis began, something that was explored deeply by The Flint Journal in another reporting series this spring. All of that fosters a sense that this problem won’t be solved, possibly can’t be solved. But that’s where MLive’s reporting on this project shines a light of hope. We traveled to Youngstown, Ohio, another faded Rust Belt city that faced a similar problem with blight and chronicled what they have done to greatly reduce arsons. MLive reporter Matthew Miller shows that the Youngstown approach was slow and systematic and has made a difference. Can that work in Flint? It will take more than a solid example set elsewhere – it will take political will, a cohesive renewal plan and collaboration. “I would like readers to imagine what it’s like to live in a neighborhood where there are abandoned houses and schools that might burst into flames at any moment,” Counts said. “And instead of trying to find real solutions, the leaders are pointing fingers, blaming each other.” That may be the real fire that Flint needs to put out. # # #
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