Featured Apartment:
Detroit-Delray - Fully furnished large
upper 1 bedroom condo for lease. Close to Schools and downtown. Separate dining
room. Balcony overlooks gardens and lovely courtyard. Includes everything a
renter could need other than personal items.
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About Delray
Delray is a neighborhood located in the industrial southwest side of Detroit
in the U.S. state of Michigan. Delray is bordered by the River Rouge, historic
Fort Wayne, I-75, and Zug Island. It's a unique area within the city with its
own distinctive local culture and history.
The area known as Delray was first platted as "Belgrade" in 1836. It was
replatted as "Delray" in 1851. Augustus D. Burdeno, after returning from the
Mexican-American War convinced other residents to rename the town after a
Mexican village, probably associated with the Battle of Molino del Rey. It
incorporated as a village in 1897 and was annexed by the city of Detroit in
1906. The Delray post office became a station of the Detroit post office.
Traditionally Delray was a working class community that depended heavily on
industrial jobs provided by nearby factories. In the past the expanding local
industrial economy attracted migrants from the rural South, Hungary, Poland,
Ireland, Germany, and Mexico. Like many other communities in the Rust Belt,
Delray has been economically hit hard in recent decades by factory closings and
the decline in manufacturing. Unemployment and poverty are major challenges
confronting residents in Delray today.
In addition to these economic problems, Delray has been afflicted by the same
social breakdown found in other poor urban communities. Crime, substance abuse,
high school and labor force dropout, and illegitimacy are prevalent in the slums
of Delray. An investigate feature story about the white underclass in U.S. News
and World Report found that one part of the Delray area had one of the worst
slums in the United States. Local residents, churches, and citizens groups have
tried to address these problems.
A section of Delray was recently featured in the film The Island. During a chase
scene shots of the Rouge Bridge were cut with shots of a factory on the I-75
service drive in a particularly ugly part of DelRay, the area is said to be home
to Rap-Metal Band Insane Clown Posse (but not where they are actually from), and
is also home to notorious Midwest street gangs such as the Gangster Disciples,
Vice Lords, Satan Disciples, Latin Counts, Cash Flow Posse, Spanish Cobras,
Insane Deuces and Latin Kings.
Due to the long-time presence of large industrial complexes, the area is
considered to be one of the most polluted residential areas in Detroit.
Population: 1,891 Racial Breakdown White: (17.8%) Black: (21.2%) Native
American: (0.9%) Asian: (0.1%) Multiracial: (3.9%) Hispanic: (56.3%)