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DETROIT. When the Lions played the Washington Redskins in the first round of the N.F.L. playoffs, Detroit sportscasters suggested throwing the football game. "Let's not rile Washington any more," cautioned one radio announcer. "We need a win in Congress more than we need a win for the Lions." The Motor City has got neither. With unemployment at 20% overall, and nearly 35% for blacks, Mayor Coleman Young last month declared a "hunger emergency." City agencies estimate that as many as one-third of the city's 1.2 million residents go to bed hungry every night. The Federal Government sent 17,000 lbs. of frozen turkeys, but Young wants money more than poultry. He warned that some cities and states face bankruptcy unless Washington loosens the purse strings. Said the mayor: "It seems as if Washington doesn't know what's going on. I don't understand what planet they are on."
Shrinking revenues from payroll taxes and corporate taxes, as well as cuts in state and federal aid, have created a $40 million budget deficit for Detroit. U.S. auto companies sold fewer cars in 1982 than at any time in the past two decades leaving 270,000 workers laid off indefinitely. Downtown Detroit is a battered shell. The mainstay of its retail establishment, J.L. Hudson, closed last week after 92 years. Renaissance Center, the Oz-like hotel and office showplace on Detroit's river front, which was to be the centerpiece of its urban renewal, defaulted two weeks ago and is still up for sale (asking price: $275 million, down from $500 million last spring). One bright spot in a dreary year: a revival in the inner city, with old office buildings being transformed into condominium apartments. Says Developer Max Fisher, who has invested in a $77 million apartment complex on the Detroit River: "To make downtown shopping viable, we need to have people living there."
FORT WAYNE. When the Maumee, St. Marys and St. Joseph rivers flooded last March, 60,000 residents of this flat, industrial city took to the riverbanks, stacking sandbags at a rate of 25,000 an hour to contain most of the overflow. Even Ronald Reagan joined the sandbag brigade for a while. The effort curtailed the severity of the flood and captured the imagination of the country. Fort Wayne (pop. 172,000) became known as "the city that saved itself."
Now this family-oriented blue-collar city faces a challenge that is hardly less dramatic: coping with an ebbing economic tide. Poor demand for products of the area's manufacturing-based economy has boosted the unemployment rate to 11.8%.