Detroit in the dark: How the city's streetlights went out and the plan to get them back on - Yahoo News: It’s a problem all over Detroit, where officials estimate at least half of the city’s 88,000 streetlights are broken. Aside from the abandoned buildings that dot the cityscape, the dark lights are the most visible evidence of the financial problems that sent Detroit into bankruptcy last summer seeking relief from an estimated $18 billion in debt. As the lights went out, the city couldn’t afford to turn them back on and keep them on.
The Detroit Public Lighting Department, the underfunded and understaffed entity in charge of fixing the streetlamps, has been in “constant triage” for years, officials say, trying to mend a lighting system that, in some areas, is so old it has to be manually switched on at night.
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This used to be confined to Privatopia when HOAs fell apart and stopped paying the light bills.
