Flint in the Times!

A reader emailed me about an interesting story in the NY Times. It's about Flint! But it's also about renting. You can read the full article here.

Funny, but the State of Michigan is subsidizing people's rent so they will stay in one place. Well, people who have kids, anyway.

In some of Flint’s elementary schools, half or more of the students change in the course of a school year — in one school it reached 75 percent in 2003. The moves are usually linked to low, unstable incomes, inadequate housing and chaotic lives, and the recent rash of foreclosures on landlords is adding to the problem, forcing renters from their homes. The resulting classroom turmoil led the State Department of Human Services to start an unusual experiment, paying some parents $100 a month in rent subsidies to help them stay put — a rare effort to address the damaging turnover directly ...

The central attraction is the $100-a-month rent subsidy, which is paid directly to landlords, who in turn agree not to raise rents and to keep the houses up to code. The money comes from state agencies.

Who'd a thunk it? Michigan in general wasn't that big on education when I lived there!

But I do have to add, that this phenomenon (although not at 75%) occurred when I was in school in Clio, north of Flint. Classmates came, classmates left, classmates came back ... I think it was the nature of working in "the shop" (auto factory), or going there to work in the shop and not getting in.

It was wildly competitive because it paid so much more than almost anywhere else. In fact, you almost had to know someone on the inside in order to get in.

Hence the lack of focus on education - The goal of most everyone was to work in the shop. I think I've already mentioned how embarrassing it was for me, growing up, that my father didn't work for GM, like everybody else's father. And often, mother.

We didn't own boats, snow mobiles, or a cabin "up north." But all my friends' families did, so I reaped the benefits anyway. One "benefit" is that I now hate snow mobiles.