this-wonderful-life

Detroit is a scary place. The literacy rate hovers at 50%. There are also over 500 arson every month, and over 70,000 vacant buildings. The unemployment rate is nearly 20%, and we're just behind New Orleans in the highest murder rate for our population size, at the rate of 54 people per 100,000 residents.

I grew up in Wayne County. The two worst stories I have involve dead bodies. One friends dad was Detroit police, and was searching for a possible suicide victim who had taken a dip in the Detroit River. He accidentally stepped through decomped skull that had been there much, much longer than the person they were looking for.

My brother also used to work at a warehouse off of Grand Blvd during the nightshift, and although the warehouse was in a compound, the surrounding streets were mostly burned out residential areas. He left work one day, taking a back street because of construction, and ran over a dead body. Someone had been executed in the middle of the street, and there were no street lights for him to tell, so he just ran the poor guy over.

DECADES of public school underfunding and neglect. Sheer apathy from the residents, too. I'd venture call it an institutional underclass. When you have a poor working Mom who isn't that literate herself, remove her from a child for its formative years to help with the child's education, place that child in a school that's using outdated or NO books (thousands of students last year went for months without textbooks) in an overflowing class size... that's what happens. Schools are generally funded via property taxes, school levees (both of which.. yeah, you're fucked), and other government assistance, much of which is dependent upon continued enrollment and the competitive scoring of student grades, the lack of which leads to lower funding. All of which leads to worse schools. TL;DR America and thus Detroit is a clusterfuck. Edit: Graemerz

Do you live within metro Detroit? What do you think about the residency laws for firefighters and police? A good family friend retired as a captain in the DFD, and this is one of the topics we kick around a lot. He used to have a straw apartment he kept on the books for show back in the day, so I'm not completely naive.

I do not see this at all with my patient load via hospice. Something is very, very wrong with whatever hospice services you are utilizing, since that type of information should be made VERY explicit upon admission. Then again, I work with a non-profit, so this may be a problem with hospital or other large healthcare organizations that have a tendency to shuffle patients around to different departments within a large healthcare network without clarifying services with a patient/caregiver. I've had more issues with clients being worried about what trouble they would be in if an outside source (ie. an extended family member or someone working within the home like a housekeeper, etc) called emergency services against their wishes, or family members who actively work against the clients wishes not to receive extraordinary measures to sustain life (ie. adult children who gain POA upon a clients loss of cognitive functioning then removing the family member from hospice services).