The slide into poverty—an increasing likelihood for workers in Detroit’s suburbs

Homeless shelter director Monica Duncan termed a new phenomenon of the crisis “gray hair syndrome.” She told Jerome White, Socialist Equality Party candidate in Michigan’s 12th Congressional District, that the recent growth of poverty here has given rise to the shocking development of older workers who have worked their entire lives in the auto industry now losing their homes and being forced to apply for temporary charity from institutions like the one she heads.

These trends in the 12th Congressional District are indicative of the dramatic changing of the region’s demographics. Hardship and homelessness now reach broadly across the spectrums of age and ethnicity. The northern suburbs of Detroit, dominated for decades by the auto industries, are reeling under the impact of the mass layoffs of workers by Ford, GM and parts-maker Delphi. The area is being quietly pauperized. This is one of the reasons White chose to run in this district—to expose the brutal reality that the drive for profit is exacting on the working class in this region.

In Macomb County alone more than 27,000 factory jobs—or 22 percent of the manufacturing workforce—have been wiped out since 2000. The number of people officially living in poverty in the county jumped from 44,000 in 2000 to 71,000 in 2005. Overall, Michigan has the second highest unemployment rate in the country—second only to hurricane-devastated Mississippi.

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http://wsws.org/articles/2006/nov2006/mich-n06.shtml