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michiganchronicle.com
Volume 79 – Number 32
Michigan Chronicle turns 80
April 20-26, 2016
Summer jobs save lives, communities, futures
By Ken Coleman It was a bright lights, big city moment for a 24-year-old man born in subtle Shelbyville, Tennessee and raised in sleepy Savannah, Georgia. “Lucius (Harper) gave me the keys to the oneroom office at 1727 St. Antoine after introducing me to the other tenants of the building who, for the most part, were the most important and richest gamblers and numbers kings in Detroit,” a
Louis E. Martin wide-eyed Louis E. Martin recalled. “He left $17 in a cloth money sack, the entire cash capital of the business, and told me to be careful with the money.” A humble start something big.
to
The Detroit Chronicle, as it was known, first published on April 14, 1936. Martin was the paper’s first editor and publisher. A University of Michigan graduate and Chicago Defender reporter, he was sent to Detroit in June by Harper with only $135 and “a million dollars worth of nerve." The two-story building was located in Paradise Valley, the epicenter for
See CHRONICLE page A-6
WHAT’S INSIDE
No place like ‘Shondaland’ (Page D-1) Television producer-writer Shonda Rhimes has giving people what they want down to a science. Her vivid imagination has been the impetus for some of the most popular shows on television today, including “Scandal,” “How to Get Away With Murder” and “Greg’s Anatomy.”
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U.S. Deputy Secretary of Labor Chris Lu (left) and Mayor Mike Duggan– Andre Smith photos
By Keith A. Owens Senior Editor
On Tuesday morning, Mayor Mike Duggan was joined by U.S. Deputy Secretary of Labor Chris Lu at a gathering of local business leaders hosted by Michigan Chronicle Publisher Hiram Jackson at the Detroit NAACP office building, located at 8220 Second Ave., to strongly encourage their participation in an effort to hire 80,000 Detroit kids in Grow Detroit’s Young Talent, a summer youth employment program due to begin in July. The message was simple: Detroit kids need jobs, they want jobs, and it’s your job — as well as the job of any business leader who happens to be reading this story — to step up and help provide these jobs. Because an employed kid is a busy kid, and a busy kid is a kid who doesn’t have time to get into trouble. Which is a win for the kid and a win for the Mayor Duggan (left), Chris Lu and Hiram E. Jackson, publisher, the Michigan Chronicle, and CEO, community. But more important than simply keeping kids busy (and providing them with a paycheck), a summer job is a proven way of helping youngsters learn the essentials they
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will need to navigate the workaday world that will confront them once school days are behind them. Skills such as showing up on time, dressing
appropriately and correct workplace attitudes are skills that most working adults take for granted but too many young people know nothing about.
But once they are shown the way, studies have shown that supervised, supportive exposure to employment can make
See SUMMER
JOBS page A-6
Apartment construction on the rise in Detroit Michigan Chronicle Staff Reports
The Southeast Michigan region finished 2015 with a total of 8,625 new residential building permits issued — a seven percent increase over 2014 — according to a recently released report by SEMCOG, the Southeast Michigan Council of Governments. The report, “Residential Construction in Southeast Michigan,” 2015, notes that while single-family construction saw a four percent increase and condominium construction declined four percent in 2015, apartment construction increased 16 percent, continuing the trend, albeit at a slower pace, that began in 2014. Out of a total of 2,738 multi-family units permits, Detroit had the most at 882. Said SEMCOG Executive Director Kathleen Lomako: “Detroit’s numbers are a testament to the renewed interest in living in or close to downtowns, especially by
young professionals looking for an urban, walkable environment.” The demand for multi-family apartments continues to be fueled by low vacancy rates in existing apartments, gains in employment and households which creates a demand for rentals, and a preference among some groups such as recent college graduates as well as those downsizing households who prefer the flexibility of renting over homeownership. The slight increase in single-family home construction was due to several factors — low mortgage rates (2015 30-year conventional mortgage average rate was 3.85 percent), a low annual average unemployment rate of 5.9 percent in Southeast Michigan, increased home sales of just under five percent, modest increases in construction costs, and lower than expected gas and oil prices.
See CONSTRUCTION page A-6