Seven Years After Bankruptcy, City of Detroit Faces a New Crisis
The economic fallout from the pandemic jeopardizes the city’s long-sought revival.
Greektown Casino, a major revenue source, is closed indefinitely.
Photographer: Ali Lapetina for Bloomberg Businessweek
The late Coleman Young, who was Detroit mayor from 1974 to 1994, said that when the nation gets a cold, Detroit gets pneumonia. That’s sadly held true during the coronavirus pandemic: The city had recorded 7,904 cases of Covid-19 and 716 deaths from the disease as of April 21, making it a national hot spot and putting Wayne County, Mich., among the U.S. counties with the most deaths from the virus so far.
A majority-black city of 670,000, Detroit is bracing for a recession as stay-at-home orders decimate businesses and the virus overwhelms medical and social resources. Casinos, which generate 17% of municipal revenue, are shuttered indefinitely. A quarter of all Michigan residents are already out of work. “While we have a health crisis, we have the biggest budget crisis this city has seen in seven years, and we have to solve it at the same time,” Mayor Mike Duggan said at an April 14 briefing.