Gordon Young is a senior lecturer in Communication at Santa Clara University and the author of Teardown: Memoir of a Vanishing City.

The national media, along with various activists and celebrities, are suddenly obsessed with my beleaguered hometown of Flint, Michigan, after it emerged that state officials ignored clear signs of lead poisoning in the city’s water supply. Rachel Maddow is outraged. Erin Brockovich is on the case. Jesse Jackson is there to offer spiritual guidance. Cher—yes, Cher—called Michigan’s Republican Gov. Rick Snyder a “murderer” on Twitter for his alleged crimes against the former factory town that Michael Moore put on the map with Roger & Me.

I don’t blame them and the rest of the country for being angry. I’m angry, too. Who wouldn’t be? But I have to ask: What took you so long?


While the water crisis may be the most-high profile catastrophe in the city where General Motors was born, prospered and then skipped town, it’s certainly not the first that should make your blood boil. And it won’t be the last unless the state and federal government, in concert with local leaders, take aggressive, long-term steps to stabilize the city.

It’s not just a local story: Flint has been the proverbial canary in the coal mine—during good times and bad—for more than a century. The city helped usher in the post-World War II economic boom, but it now serves as a frightening reminder that a big chunk of America was left behind by deindustrialization and free-trade policies. Its high-profile struggles epitomize the widespread problems that need fixing in cities across the country.

If the water crisis bothers you, consider that Flint has had one of the highest violent crime rates in the country for decades. It’s a place where people die all too regularly. When Charlie LeDuff, a writer who makes a living chronicling Detroit’s dysfunction, took a field trip to Flint in 2011 for the New York Times Magazine, the headline labeled Flint “Murdertown, USA.”

Then there are the thousands of abandoned houses—many of them once home to middle-class autoworkers—that sit empty, acting as ramshackle crime incubators. The city and county simply don’t have the money to tear them all down, even though that would be an obvious improvement. As a result, arson is commonplace. Crowds often gather to watch the houses and buildings burn. It’s cheap entertainment, provided your own home isn’t endangered because the overmatched fire department can’t contain the blaze.

Oh, by the way, if you include the folks who have given up even looking for a job, the real unemployment rate is in double digits. And Flint has one of the highest poverty rates in the nation—41.4 percent overall and 66.5 percent for children—so thousands of residents drinking poisoned water were already marginalized.

Unfortunately, I could go on, but I think you get the picture.

I welcome the outpouring of concern for the city where four generations of my family lived. I don’t mean to sound ungrateful, but I feel like people should have been reaching out to help about 30 years ago.

In the face of its staggering problems, Flint, as you might expect, has had trouble balancing its budget. The city has huge pension and health care obligations to retired city workers, the result of promises made during much rosier times when the factories were supplying America with shiny Buicks and the city had one of the nation’s highest per capita income levels and a prosperous middle class.

And what happens in Michigan when a city teetering on collapse encounters the inevitable budget shortfalls? The governor sends in an emergency manager to relieve elected officials of their duties and put things in order. But in a place like Flint, there are limited ways to balance the books. An economic revival is definitely above the pay grade of an unelected political appointee. And raising taxes on the populace—again, one of the poorest in the nation—is of limited utility, although emergency managers recently raised sewer rates and imposed a fee to pay for streetlights. Ultimately, draconian layoffs and budget cuts to city departments are seen as the only solution.

That’s right, cops are laid off in one of America’s most dangerous cities. So many got pink slips—the police force has been cut in half in the past decade—that there are times when not a single officer is actually patrolling the streets. (City officials dispute this claim, but several officers confirmed it to me during my years reporting in the city.) The police station is closed to the public on weekends. Over the years, numerous fire stations have been shuttered and firefighters sent home.

And, of course, decisions are made to save money by doing something like switching water sources from the Great Lakes to the Flint River, for decades an industrial sewer for local factories.

Flint has tried mightily, although not always wisely, to turn things around. The ill-fated AutoWorld theme park comes to mind. Now there’s a focus on higher education and medical services. The Genesee County Land Bank has pioneered innovative ways to deal with blight. The downtown has improved. But when a city of 200,000 loses 70,000 GM jobs and 100,000 residents, so-called “market forces” are not going to save it. Richard Florida-style efforts to lure the creative class are not going to work. Sorry, but art walks, however pleasant, will not offset all the abandoned and/or burning houses. Or the murders.

Again, don’t get me wrong. I welcome the attention. I may be delusional, but I’m hoping that some sliver of good can come out of the water crisis. But simply dealing with the latest calamity without having a national conversation about why these bad things happen to places like Flint—and coming up with systematic, long-term solutions—ensures that in five or 10 years we will be right back where we started. Flint’s problems may seem outsized, but they are not isolated and hold dire lessons for the rest of America. A growing number of places throughout the country look a lot like my hometown, defined by persistent poverty, crumbling infrastructure and a populace that feels betrayed and abandoned. If you think your community is immune from these problems, I’d ask you to reconsider. A familiar line I’ve heard more than once around town is a warning we should all heed, regardless of where we live: “Flint, coming to a city near you.”