Amid Blight and Scavenging

Amid Blight and Scavenging, hundreds of General Motors workers make pistons and other engine parts at a factory on this city’s east side. By night, gangs of thieves have repeatedly looted empty G.M. plants on the same property, and have twice fired shots at security guards.
Related, The scene at Flint North, as the complex of mostly closed factories is known, is a vivid reminder that the automaker’s bankruptcy last year gave birth to two different G.M.’s — and that one of them is struggling in the shadow of the other.

When American taxpayers bailed out General Motors, the company was split, with the best assets going to the reorganized automaker of the same name. This new General Motors is selling cars, making money and preparing a public stock offering.


This company has filed a bankruptcy reorganization plan that lays out how it will clean up and sell off the dozens of unwanted pieces of what was once the world’s largest automaker.But the process is slow, and while plant closings have already cost jobs and tax revenue in many communities, the empty factories themselves are now becoming a burden.

“When General Motors closed shop in Flint, they just turned the lights off,” said Chris Swanson, a captain with the Genesee County Sheriff’s Department, which has made nearly two dozen arrests this year at the Flint North complex on charges of theft, assault with intent to murder and others.