"It's like therapy to me ... I like to see the vacant lots beautiful," says Howard King, Jr., in a Wall Street Journal piece by Alex P. Kellogg (7/6/10). Howard is one of a number of Detroit residents who is taking care of basic services that the city can no longer afford. He hires neighborhood teens to mow vacant lots, which not only makes the neighborhood look better, but also keeps the kids busy and out of trouble. Howard is not the only one.

Eddie Edwards chops weeds and cleans alleyways near his home. He also "routinely takes care of the street sweeping, using just a broom and dust pan ... In the winter, he also pays out of pocket for snow removal for most of his tiny block. Another neighbor has agreed to cover the rest of the block. That keeps residents from being snowed in at home, neighbors say." Eddie says his reward is that his neighbors "thank me all the time." Detroit's mayor, Dave Bing, is thanking him, too.

The city has "a budget deficit in the hundreds of millions of dollars," and the last thing he wants is to cut grass cutting and street cleaning "which tend to shape people's perceptions of neighborhood quality and safety." Right now, Detroit's ability to avoid closing some parks depends on volunteers pitching in "to shoulder much of the maintenance burden." And according to one city services official, that's not a problem. When requests come in, he says, "they're not saying send in 20 lawnmowers ... They're just simply saying we need some trash bags."