DETROIT—One of the first things 84-year-old Mahalie Wilson sees when she steps out of her home on Detroit’s east side is the brick, steel and concrete skeleton of the long-vacant Packard plant that looms over the neighborhood.

Built in the early 1900s and still churning out high-end cars into the 1950s, the massive complex that was once one of the city’s industrial jewels is now one of the nation’s foremost examples of urban blight – an inescapable reminder of Detroit’s better days.

“I deal with it,” Wilson, who’s lived within shouting distance of the plant since 1969, said recently from behind her front security screen door. “I’ve got used to it. I don’t pay it any attention.”

Detroit has aggressively taken on its blight problem since emerging from the largest municipal bankruptcy in U.S. history eight years ago, and has razed more than 20,000 abandoned houses in that time. That work is ongoing, but it has been largely covered by federal funding and the city still must figure out how to pay for the much more expensive demolition or find developers to repurpose scores of abandoned or aging apartment buildings, factories and other massive eyesores.

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