“Essential…in showcasing people who are persistent, clever, flawed, loving, struggling and full of contradictions, Broke affirms why it’s worth solving the hardest problems in our most challenging cities in the first place. ” –Anna Clark, The New York Times “Through in-depth reporting of structural inequality as it affects real people in Detroit, Jodie Adams Kirshner’s Broke examines one side … Kirshner’s Broke examines one side of the economic divide in America” —Salon
“What Broke really tells us is how systems of government, law and finance can crush even the hardiest of boot-strap pullers.” —Brian Alexander, author of Glass House
A galvanizing, narrative account of a city’s bankruptcy and its aftermath told through the lives of seven valiantly struggling Detroiters
Bankruptcy and the austerity it represents have become a common “solution” for struggling American cities. What do the spending cuts and limited resources do to the lives of city residents? In Broke, Jodie Adams Kirshner follows seven Detroiters as they navigate life during and after their city’s bankruptcy. Reggie loses his savings trying to make a habitable home for his family. Cindy fights drug use, prostitution, and dumping on her block. Lola commutes two hours a day to her suburban job. For them, financial issues are mired within the larger ramifications of poor urban policies, restorative negligence on the state and federal level and–even before the decision to declare Detroit bankrupt in 2013–the root causes of a city’s fiscal demise.
Like Matthew Desmond’s Evicted, Broke looks at what municipal distress means, not just on paper but in practical–and personal–terms. More than 40 percent of Detroit’s 700,000 residents fall below the poverty line. Post-bankruptcy, they struggle with a broken real estate market, school system, and job market–and their lives have not improved.
Detroit is emblematic. Kirshner makes a powerful argument that cities–the economic engine of America–are never quite given the aid that they need by either the state or federal government for their residents to survive, not to mention flourish. Success for all America’s citizens depends on equity of opportunity.
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After reading the poignant, heartbreaking, defiant pages of Broke, no one should question the need for moral referendum on how policy is created in and for urban America.
My family moved to Metro Detroit in 1963 for a better life. My folks did achieve their dreams–a blue-collar job, a home of their own, medical insurance, a decent income, and a pension to retire on. Dad loved his job at Chrysler.
Just a few years later my friends and I watched as planes with National Guard troops flew overhead and tanks lumbered along Woodward Ave., heading to Detroit. The city’s legacy of racist policies had birthed rebellion.
Over my lifetime the once-great city plummeted into bankruptcy and stretches of ‘urban prairie’.
Why do we remove people from homes, leaving the houses empty to scrappers and decay and the bulldozers? Isn’t it better for all to have the houses occupied, assist with their improvement, to have neighborhoods filled?
Jodie Adams Kirshner’s Broke relates the series of events and decisions that brought Detroit from vibrancy to bankruptcy. But Kirshner doesn’t just give a history of racist housing discrimination and government policy decisions. We experience Detroit through the stories of real people and their struggles to achieve their dreams.
Homeownership is the American Dream. Detroit’s homeownership rate was once one of the highest in the nation. Then, African American neighborhoods were razed for ‘urban renewal’ projects while redlining curtailed housing options.
Kirshner shows how governmental decisions on the federal, state and local level disenfranchised Detroit residents who valiantly endeavor to remain in their homes and neighborhoods.
Bankruptcy, we come to understand, is not just a fiscal issue but hugely impacts individuals’ lives.
These six people’s stories are moving and devastating. They dream of owning the home in which they live. They purchase houses, repair them, and discover back taxes and water bills follow the house, not the resident, and they can’t pay them. Investors purchase houses and let them stand empty while the family who had been living there are forced out.
They can’t afford the $6000 a year car insurance they need to work–and to get their kids to school as Detroit has no school buses.
Some are native Detroiters but others were drawn to Detroit’s atmosphere and sense of possibility. They are unable to obtain mortgages to purchase empty buildings for development.
They are never sure if rent payments are actually getting to the landlord, or if the discount car insurance they purchase is legit.
House damage remains unrepaired by distant landlords, jeopardizing the safety of a woman and her child.
Meanwhile, Midtown and Downtown development draws suburbanites at the price of huge tax breaks while neighborhood needs are ignored.
Kirshner is a journalist and bankruptcy lawyer and teaches at Columbia Law School. Broke offers deep insight through compelling narrative writing that illuminates and reaches our hearts.
I was granted access to a free egalley by the publisher through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased.
Broke
by Jodie Adams Kirshner
Pub Date: 19 Nov 2019
*REVIEW*
Broke is the type of book that everyone should read simply to be better informed. When you live in the South in the country, it’s hard to imagine a place like Detroit, especially the most poverty stricken areas, because I’ve never actually seen anything remotely close. I couldn’t explain the why or how of the housing crisis any more than I could fly to the moon. That’s why I chose to read this book. I want to be informed. Broke definitively educated me about subjects unknown prior. The Detroit situation is categorically worse than I could ever describe. I am glad a book chronicling the radically poor and the destitute through the lens of their personal experiences exist. How can any of us understand what we have not lived? We cannot, but this book gives an insider perspective that is startling. It is obvious the author meticulously researched and sifted through vast amounts of data and information. The result is a well written thoughtful intuitive look into hopelessly heartbreaking situations improbable to someone such as me. Try not to roll your eyes while I pontificate for a moment. In a society so advantageous and advanced, why does such despair exist? We all know the distribution of wealth(and housing, healthcare, childcare, education, electricity, food, etc.) is shamefully disproportionate. It is simple, really; if you are born with access and privilege, the likelihood of your succees is extremely high. Think about private schools-the basic structure ensures the elite stay elite. I have a hard time respecting the success of any person who did not earn it by working hard but rather, by advantage and access. Think about the retail industry-privilege owns a store, and privilege-amazingly taken for granted- keeps a store in business. Privilege watches a Friday night movie at the theater, thus ensuring the overpaid famous retain their status. And around and around this cycle goes……
I am not saying donate everything you have to the poor and live like a hermit. What I am saying is acknowledge and recognize how elitist attitudes, unfettered access and advantages allow a portion of society to quash other portions of society, thus ensuring the class system(that allegedly does not exist) remains intact. As a growing epidemic, not isolated in Detroit, the same sad scenarios-hunger, sickness, homelessness- play out every single day for the unfortunate and the poverty stricken in a cycle they are not capable of breaking. Read Broke and inform yourself about how circumstances mean everything.
*Thank you to NetGalley for an advanced copy. I voluntarily reviewed this book, and all opinions expressed are my own.
Jodie Adams Kirshner has given us a deep and detailed look at how an event most of us know as a few newspaper headlines ― the bankruptcy and vaunted resurgence of Detroit ― has reached into the lives of those who lived there. But what Broke really tells us is how systems of government, law, and finance can crush even the hardiest of boot-strap pullers.