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Beyond Bankruptcy

Second-generation Detroiter Yolanda Peoples with her children, Erin and Joshua,
and her mother, Gwendolyn.

By Zenobia Jeffries and Phreddy Wischusen

The Michigan Citizen

emocracy has been restored to the people in the city
of Detroit, according to U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Steven
Rhodes. Rhodes approved Emergency Manager Kevyn
Orr's plan that will keep the city under oversight for the next
13 years. Detroit's bankruptcy — the magnitude of finan-
cial distress and disinvestment, the dissolution of pension
obligations and conflicting views on how to deal with the
city's financial outlook — represents new legal and societal

D

implications.
The media has chosen a comeback narrative for the city
— news of investment, a burgeoning small business class,
and younger, mostly white people, relocating to downtown
and a few other neighborhoods.
For some, Detroit's future is encouraging; for others, the
economic outlook of the majority of the city's residents is
still bleak.
Yolanda Peoples, 47, is a second-generation Detroiter. Her
children, Erin, 18 and Joshua, 11 keep her invested in the
city. Her family's story is one that is not unique to Detroit.
Her parents, Levon, Sr. and Gwendolyn Peoples, a retired
autoworker and teacher, respectively, have weathered the
changing times in this embattled city.
They say they aren't buying the comeback narrative.
"No one wants to hear what I have to say," says Peoples.
"You can't burn the field and then say we're going to imme-
diately start planting and everything is going to be great. No.
You have to give that soil time to replace its nutrients, and
then replant."
Peoples isn't sure if she is part of the city's comeback and
her main concern for her family continues to be access to
(quality) public education, good jobs and good healthcare.
"I pay $3,000 every six months for car insurance. My
uncle who lives in Irish Hills (a town in southern Michigan)
has two cars, a boat and a pontoon. He pays less than me
for all of that. How do you explain this? If (someone) is mak-
ing $10 an hour, and their rent — because they can't afford
to own a home — is $600-$700 a month, (they) have kids
and have to eat, (they) have to put gas in the car to get back
and forth to work (because there's no rapid transit), (they)
don't have money for car insurance, not even at the LA
Insurance weekly rate," Peoples says.

4 -nuary 8 • 2015

(L to R): Yolanda, Erin, Joshua, Gwendolyn and Levon Peoples, Sr.

It is expensive to be a Detroiter, says Peoples.
"(Detroit) is not better for people like me — just average
working people who work regular jobs everyday. We are
worse off than we were before. I don't see the bankruptcy
making things better," she says. "(Many families) are down
to the bare minimum... What do I need in order to survive?"
Peoples, who works in human resources, says she is part
of the lower-middle class, which no longer exists. "I make
the same amount of money, but everything around me has
increased in price."
Economist and Wayne State Law Professor Peter Hammer
has been a critic of the bankruptcy because Orr's plan has
not dealt with what he perceives as the city and region's
most serious and ongoing concerns.
"(The plan) never addresses issues of race, racism,
regionalism, segregation or foreclosure. And poverty is only
mentioned once," said Hammer in an earlier report.
In the restructuring, Detroit's most significant assets —
Belle Isle, the Detroit Institute of Art, the Detroit Water and
Sewerage Department, among others — will be transferred
to the region, state or nonprofit entities. Other assets such
as the Detroit-Windsor Tunnel and select city parking struc-
tures will be transferred to creditors.
The transfer of assets to creditors did not reach Detroit's
largest group of creditors — city worker retirees. Tens of
thousands of current city workers and retirees will have
their pensions/benefits cut. They will no longer receive
cost of living increases. Police and fire retirees, who are
not eligible for social security, must now pay for increases
to healthcare premiums. Some retirees say they pay up to
$1000 a month for their healthcare. They are also reeling
after clawbacks to their annuities, which initially offered a
guaranteed interest rate.

50 KIDS IN A CLASS
Joshua, 11, is in the sixth grade at Spain Elementary/Middle
School. He attends Spain because the schools in his East
Jefferson neighborhood have been closed. The morning
commute is approximately 30 minutes. Joshua says there

are 50 kids in his classes.
In addition to the room being "too hot," and there not
being enough space to walk around with so many kids, the
youngest Peoples says it's hard to focus because it's really
loud.

"In sixth grade you're supposed to have separate classes
for every subject, but they laid off so many teachers that we
don't have enough teachers to have separate classes, so we
only have two different classes," he said.
Joshua says unlike when his older sister attended Spain,
students now have fewer choices.
Erin, a graduate of DPS' Detroit School of Arts, learned
how to swim when she attended Spain, which prepared her
for her job she has now as a lifeguard at Hamtramck High
School.
"The pool is not open, we don't have a band teacher
anymore and we don't have a computer teacher anymore.
So we have debate instead of band and computers," Joshua
says.
The Peoples family fights hard, however, to make sure
Erin and Joshua are not collateral damage in Detroit's pub-
lic education system — driving them to church programs,
museums, and the main library branch, because their local

library has severely restricted its hours of operation.
Gwendolyn Peoples says even with the challenges —
emergency management, bankruptcy, poor city services,
rising crime, etc. — because of her daughter and their fam-
ily's efforts to provide them with broad exposure, her grand-
children will have opportunities in life. "So it doesn't matter
where we are. If we're in a hole, we'll dig our way out, and
we'll find things to do and places to go."
So, there's an after after-the-bankruptcy for most of us,
she says.

About this series

Five minority media outlets with a combined estimated circulation of
120,000 weekly--Latino Press, The Michigan Citizen, The Jewish News,
The Michigan Korean Weekly, The Arab American News—are part of
New Michigan Media and are taking part in The Detroit Journalism
Cooperative (DJC). Funded by the John S. and James L. Knight
Foundation, Renaissance Journalism's Michigan Reporting Initiative and
the Ford Foundation, the DJC aims to report about and create com-
munity engagement opportunities pertaining to the Detroit bankruptcy
and recovery. Each article in the series appears in all the NMM member
newspapers. This article is from THE MICHIGAN CITIZEN. The DJC is a
unique collaboration between important media outlets of the region,
and includes The Center for Michigan's Bridge Magazine, Detroit Public
Television, Michigan Public Radio, WDET and New Michigan Media. The
Detroit Free Press is also participating in the DJC effort.