DETROIT may be one of the only cities in the rich world where it is possible for someone on a fairly modest income to buy a street. At the edges of Boston-Edison, a historic district of gorgeous old houses built as one of the city’s first wealthy suburbs between about 1900 and 1930, so low has the cost of housing fallen that fairly grand houses can be acquired simply for the cost of back property taxes. A local reporter who showed me around is in the middle of building his own empire—buying up abandoned homes and renovating them. Copying him was extremely tempting. But the cost of such attractive housing is so low because people don’t want it. And one of the things I simply had not appreciated about struggling cities like Detroit before visiting is that a lot of the reason why housing is so cheap is because in other respects, life is surprisingly expensive. Even for relatively well-off yuppies who are gradually gentrifying some parts of the city, cheap housing is only barely compensation for other costs. Together with more obvious problems such as poor schools and high crime, it is one of the reasons why despite all of the investment in downtown Detroit (which is thriving), gentrification is unlikely to repopulate much of the city soon.

Chief among the costs that are higher in Detroit is transport. One of the reasons people who live in Manhattan don’t mind paying so much for housing is that they don’t need a car to get to work. But in Detroit living without a car is all but impossible. The city is so big and spread out that getting to work on foot or even on a bike would be miserable even when the weather is good (which in January, I can assure you, it is not). Buses are infrequent and take odd routes. The story of James Robertson, a man who each day walks a round trip of 21 miles and takes two buses to get to work in Rochester Hills, a suburb, is actually not that unusual.

And yet owning a car in the city is actually surprisingly expensive too. Car insurance in the city can cost more than $10,000 annually according to one survey—vastly higher than anywhere else in America. This is partly because of a Michigan law which forces insurers to pay up regardless of who caused an accident. Mostly, though, it is because so many people drive uninsured bust-up old cars in Detroit, often without licences, pushing up the cost for everybody else. That is not even the only cost. Parking in Detroit is generally cheap—there is so little traffic you can leave your car on the street near enough anywhere. Parking in a place where your car is not likely to be taken away by a criminal tow-truck enterprise and stripped for scrap metal however can cost as much as $100 a month.

What applies to cars also applies to other things people in most cities take for granted. In the whole of the city there are just 38 grocery stores, almost all of them independently owned. As Lisa Johanan, a local activist, puts it, “Detroit is a food desert”. Most people rely on “party shops”—liquor stores which also sell crisps, popcorn, frozen pizzas and the like—or else petrol stations to get food, often paying with food stamps. This is partly because, as George Orwell wrote in The Road To Wigan Pier, “When you are unemployed, which is to say when you are underfed, harassed, bored, and miserable, you don't want to eat dull wholesome food. You want something a little bit 'tasty'.” But it is also because the sheer rate of theft in the city makes it difficult for any traditional grocer to survive.

And all this is just the financial cost. So hollowed out is Detroit that living in the city is, even for people with money, continual work. In most of the best remaining neighbourhoods, neighbourhood watches are key institutions—keeping direct watch on the streets against thieves and burglars. Neighbours get to know each other, not because people in Detroit are inherently more virtuous than anywhere else, but out of necessity: Facebook groups and text-message threads let people share information. When things go wrong, you cannot rely on the authorities to help, so people involve themselves in cleaning up, protecting empty houses, sharing rides and helping businesses. For the city’s few remaining affluent, life is a frontiersman’s dream. For most, it is a struggle, pursued only because other options are unattainable.

All of this is why the city’s shoots of recovery, real though they are, will take decades to turn into much. Every day, says Ms Johansen, the most stoic people in her neighbourhood threaten to move out to the suburbs. The trickle inwards of (mostly-white) young professionals does not come close to matching the ongoing torrent outward of the city’s established black middle-class. And unlike the black middle-class, there is not a lot of hope that the newcomers will stay once the novelty fades. Living like an urban pioneer becomes more draining when you have children. As long as jobs continue to jump from the edges of the city to the suburbs, so too will the people. But slowly recovery will come. After all, where else can you buy a block of Edwardian houses for back taxes?