Detroit has a blight problem, and in many ways, it’s inhibiting the city’s future recovery. The east side has many quaint homes with families working to be part of a better, bright community. But every few homes, instead of a community garden, there’s a vacant structure — blight at work.

“We have just a few dark spots, like this house right here, and that house over there,” said one local, John Young. Although city leaders are hard at work trying to fix the ongoing problem, it’s more than a minor task.

Altogether, there are 115,000 vacant lots, and another 80,000 vacant structures. Beyond that, many piles of illegally dumped trash also take up space and bring down the value of local neighborhoods.

In order to fight this problem, tech savvy individuals have teemed up with organizations including Data Driven Detroit and Motor City Mapping in order to create a blight-related cell phone app. Right now, smartphone users spend 18% of their time on their phones surfing the web. The app allows users to share information about their neighborhood’s current conditions. This is known as “blexting.”

“We’ve used Motor City Mapping to understand exactly what is happening on the ground, understand which neighborhoods in the city are strongest, and be able to target those neighborhoods for our nuisance abatement program or for demo activities,” says Carrie Lewand-Monroe, who works with the Detroit Land Bank.

The Land Bank helps to stimulate the Detroit housing market through auctioning off abandoned property. They also sue landowners in order to get them to give up their abandoned land, so that it can be placed in the hands of someone who will care for it. The blight app “drives all of our decisions,” adds Lewand-Monroe.

A recent data analysis by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel shows that there is a rapidly declining number of hospitals in poor metropolitan areas in the United States.

The data also revealed that those hospitals and family doctors’ offices aren’t closing down — they’re just moving to more affluent areas.

Further research shows that people who live in poor neighborhoods are not only more likely to suffer from poor health but to experience a shortage of available physicians in their areas, too.

Yet those doctors are following the patients with private insurance rather than continuing to care for poorer populations.

As a result, the analysis showed that nearly two-thirds of about 230 hospitals that have opened since 2000 are in wealthier areas, typically those in the suburbs.

As newer suburban hospitals have opened, the urban ones have closed, especially small to mid-size community or public hospitals, leaving low-income residents without a nearby hospital. In 52 major U.S. cities, the number of urban hospitals has fallen from 781 in 1970 to 426 in 2010, a decrease of 46 percent in just 40 years.

In New York City, all five boroughs have lost more than 20 hospitals since 1990.

Detroit had dozens of hospitals in the 1960. Now there are only four to serve a population of about 700,000, perhaps the most dramatic loss for all large cities.

Figures from 2008 reported that at least one in four Detroit residents are without health insurance. That same year, the only hospital on the city’s troubled east side, Riverview Hospital, shut down for good.

The problem affects smaller, rural areas, too, where “medical deserts” are being created due to the lack of available healthcare to residents in these small town areas where many poor residents also live.

In the years between 1990 and 2010 only, over 200 hospitals closed. The number of non-profit hospitals closing their doors in the largest cities has been 148; for-profit hospitals have experienced 53 of those closures.

Five public hospitals have also closed.

Alan Sager, of Boston University, has tracked these hospital closures. He concludes that the ones being shut down were actually rated as more efficient than the ones that remain, something that he says wouldn’t happen in a true free market system.

These poorer communities experience a shortage of doctors, as well. Of the nation’s 5,800 federally designated “primary care shortage areas” in the largest 52 cities, 58 percent fall into the census tracts where the highest levels of poverty exist.

At least one in five people live in these shortage areas; those same areas have higher than average populations of people with disabilities.

These areas don’t only face the issue of fewer hospitals and doctors. Health problems are simply more likely to occur based on their surroundings.

For example, as many as half of people who work report having experienced back pain in the United States. Members of the working poor who can’t afford care, can’t take time off of work, or can’t afford to travel to a suburban hospital have to suffer through it, though.

This is only one of many problems that keep the urban poor isolated by poverty. Many are less likely to have jobs, vehicles and access to health food but more likely to face violence in and around their homes.

Living conditions can keep people both poor and sick, too: imagine a child with asthma who lives in a mold-filled apartment or a diabetic who can’t afford a refrigerator to store insulin. Those who are homeless fare no better, as living on the streets can easily open up the risk for infections and disease.

The Center for Disease Control found that early death is a much higher risk for those in low-income areas. In higher-income U.S. counties, the average deaths before the age of 75 was 345 per 100,000; in lower-income counties, the average was 480.

Those poor areas that experienced more premature death had lost far more hospitals and doctors.

No clear solution exists to the problem, however. Many experts point out that these issues have worsened in recent years due to the prevalence of private health insurance aimed mainly toward those who can afford it.

There are also more specialists in the United States than in other countries; roughly two-thirds of physicians have a higher-paid specialty such as oncology or anesthesiology. Those doctors that earn more are likely to work in larger hospitals with more affluent patients.

Meanwhile there are only half as many family doctors per thousand people in the U.S. as there are in other developed countries. The reason could be spurned by the massive amounts of education debt faced by medical students, which pushes them into these high paying specialties.

Michigan lawmakers are in the middle of their summer vacation, but debates over House rulings are still raging in the state. A recent proposal to replace the chairs of the Michigan House could use up $100,000 of maintenance funds, provided by taxpayers, which many argue should be going to road maintenance rather than chairs.

Those who regulate upkeep of the Capitol building state that the old chairs, which have now seen 24 years in the House, were not ergonomically designed, and have suffered too much wear and tear. Furthermore, the chairs have apparently been damaging desks in the building because they were not designed to be used with those particular desks. Only one member of the House voted against the update, while the rest of House members voted for the update, joining a unanimous vote from the Senate as well. Lawmakers against the update are stating that the maintenance funds should be spent on other projects which benefit the community, such as updating roads, rather than making House members more comfortable at their desks.

But House business manager Tim Bowlin states that these updates would have to take place at some point in the future, and that taxpayers will be saving money in the long run by making the updates now. The maintenance funding, Bowlin claims, was never meant to be used for roadwork, and has always been intended for Capitol building repairs and restoration. It should also be noted that maintenance funds are taken from tobacco taxes, meaning that Americans actually have the choice to not pay for updates such as these, by choosing not to use tobacco products.

The cost of 110 new chairs was determined after six different Michigan-based furniture companies submitted bids for the sale. Chairs ranged from $800 to $1,300 each, meaning that the House is planning on choosing chairs which are on the cheaper end of the spectrum — if the update continues as planned. It appears that the Michigan House has put a great deal of effort into considering the most affordable options, and are planning to conduct the transaction through a professional furniture company to make sure that the moving process goes as smoothly as possible. Furthermore, it should be noted that the House appears to be giving support specifically to Michigan-based companies, rather than looking at making a purchase through an out-of-state company. Although the update could cost about $100,000, it seems that the House is trying to keep as much of that money circulating in the Michigan economy.