It's difficult, IMO, to entirely blame "the banks" for their behavior. We ought to be blaming the government in a lot of ways. If you're an employee at a bank, say a mid level guy in charge of enforcing foreclosures, you need to follow the law or risk getting fired or even prosecuted. What are you supposed to do in that case? What should have happened is that the government should have included some strict policies in TARP that defined when people, especially low income people, were eligible for mortgage relief or a foreclosure moratorium or whatever else they could have done to prevent disaster. Instead what we got was a blank check with no strings attached, and the borrowers still got fucked. Unfortunately, there's no do over here. These neighborhoods (which have been in decline for decades, the 2008 calamity just happened to be the last straw) are mainly uninhabited wastelands. The bright side is that there is a creative destruction that's happening in Detroit, and likely in other cities, that is helping to reshape the city for the better in the long run. Cherry-picked photos aside, building is booming in the city, and that is going to revitalize the tax base, which will hopefully trickle down to the underclass (which encompasses the vast majority of the residents here), particularly in terms of better schools and transport and more service jobs. Time will tell, but I think there is a silver lining to be had.