Love makes sure his children don’t drink from the tap now, but bathing everyone with bottled water just isn’t feasible. The pediatrician has told him the odds are that his children will be all right, but he worries whether lead they ingested before Flint residents realized their water was tainted may have damaged their brains in ways that show up only later.
Each week, Love stops by a church off Saginaw Street to load up on enough cases of water for a family of six. He operates a small fleet of ice cream trucks around the city to make ends meet.
He has considered taking the children somewhere else. But where? And how?
“Of course, I’d want to leave,” he says. “But even if I wanted to, I’ve got all these kids, and I don’t got a lot of money. A lot of people want to run from it. [But] where am I going to run?”
Flint has a population of about 100,000 people. Houses have dropped to $14,000. Many of them need to have pipes replaced at $3000 per home. Replacing all the pipes could cost $1.5B.
So, wouldn't it be more cost effective and better for the population to declare Flint a disaster zone and abandon it entirely, and just give the 100,000 people enough money to move, get a new home, and start a new life? It really comes down to the number of households, rent, etc. But at $15,000 per resident (if you spent the same 1.5B), a family of four could get $60,000 to move.
How far does civic pride take you, when your city is an embarrassment? Just put up a big old fence with a closed sign on it.
