Benton Harbor: Poster child for U.S. income inequality

New York Times photo

Last Sunday’s New York Times Magazine featured a lengthy piece on Benton Harbor, contrasting the downtrodden city’s poverty with its gleaming resort known as Harbor Shores.

More importantly, the Times’ Jonathan Mahler writes that the two faces of Benton Harbor may be a harbinger of things to come for much of America as income inequality grows and the middle class shrinks.

Here’s the opening of Mahler’s piece:

“On the northern edge of Benton Harbor, just beyond the grim grid of housing projects, shuttered storefronts, boarded-up homes and junk-laden yards that dominate much of the town, sits an emerald oasis known as Harbor Shores. As the name suggests, Harbor Shores is a resort development. At its heart is a pristine Jack Nicklaus-designed golf course that meanders along a river and creek; through woods and wetlands; and, most striking, across tall, white sand dunes overlooking Lake Michigan.”

Mahler goes on to take a closer look at Harbor Shores and the fact that the resort has not produced the housing and shops that it promised. And it certainly has not lifted up the poor black population of the town.

“Like all of the homes in Harbor Shores, the houses under construction here are being built in an architectural style known as Coastal Shingle. The development will have its own swimming pool, fire pit and clubhouse. A sign advertised lots priced from the $300,000s to the $600,000s. Robinson told me that 27 of the Hideaways’ 58 sites have already been purchased, with the completed homes selling for as much as half a million dollars.

“Watching carpenters hammer preweathered wood shingles onto homes that wouldn’t look out of place in East Hampton, Long Island, I felt almost as if I were at a resort in a third-world Caribbean country: beyond the boundaries of Harbor Shores is the poorest city in all of Michigan.
One of the key partners who made the development happen explained to Mahler that Harbor Shores is a “social engineering” project that will create a “mentality of inclusion” within the black population. Harbor Shores is intended to foster a multiculturalism that will make Benton Harbor “a place that turns out scholars, athletes and artists.”

The other major project that the Times writer viewed was the new $68 million campus/headquarters for Whirlpool, which was built with the help of some hefty tax breaks. He also writes about countless Michigan counties offering tax deals and other incentives in an effort to revive their post-manufacturing economies.

Mahler concludes: “The juxtaposition of Benton Harbor’s impoverished population and its two rising monuments to wealth — all wedged into a little more than four square miles — make it almost a caricature of economic disparity in America. But at the same time, it offers a window into one possible future for towns across the country, places that can no longer support their own economies or take care of their citizens and may ultimately have no choice but to turn their fate over to private industry and nonprofits. The way things are going, more and more states may start to look like Michigan, and more and more towns may start to look like Benton Harbor.”