As Homeowners Move On, Fire Moves In

"Everybody had kids on this street. It seemed like they lived here forever," Dan Kildee says, driving slowly down Jane.

Kildee, now the Genesee County treasurer, points to yards he used to play in and struggles to recall families now gone. He stops his car in front of a little yellow house — right next door to the charred carcass of 1430 — where his dad was raised and muses about long-ago walks to his grandmother's.

Then he looks at what's left of the neighborhood — blocks lined with bruised homes and broken windows. On three blocks of Jane, the city is targeting 14 homes for demolition. Four have already hosted fires.

"My Dad, he can't come down this street anymore. ... It's too hard to see," Kildee says.

Buick City is largely a cement prairie now, and General Motors, which once employed more than 80,000 in the city of its founding, is down to 6,000 workers. Flint's population, which peaked at 197,000, dwindled to 115,000 in 2007, and falling.

To stabilize the city, Kildee started the Genesee County Land Bank, which has taken title to 9,000 properties since 2002, tearing down 1,000 and selling or rehabbing others.