A once-booming Midwestern city in the heart of Indiana has become a ghost town with more than one in three homes sitting empty.
Gary, Indiana – best known as the birthplace of Michael Jackson – is home to the highest abandoned home rate in the nation at 31.41 percent, according to analysis from 247WallSt.
The data found that the population has staggeringly dropped by 18.2 percent from 2010 to 2020, down to just 5,800 residents.
While Gary was formerly a hub of steel manufacturing that brought jobs to the region, the loss of the town’s steel mill triggered a dramatic decline that begun in the 1970s.
According to the analysis, based upon data from property company ATTOM, the nationwide vacant home rate stands at around 1.3 percent.
But in Gary, Indiana, the 30 times higher rate is evidence of the city’s struggles over the years, with its median home value also sitting at just $69,400.
And although Indiana ranks seventh in the nation for vacant homes, Gary sits in first place in America as it is filled with abandoned, derelict buildings.
The decaying town was not always a ghost town, however, and in the mid-20th century Gary was a booming steel town fueled by industrial demand.
Gary benefitted from a sharp rise in the number of steel factories across the nation, which were particularly centered around the Great Lakes for easy access to raw materials.
Mainly known as a hub of the United States Steel Corporation, the city thrived as over 16,000 steel workers flooded the area, making it home to the largest plant in the nation in the 1920s.
And while Chicago, just 30 miles away, is a world away from Gary’s current state, the Indiana hub was once known to rival the Windy City before its economy was severed.
The primary cause of Gary’s struggles stem from the loss of its steel mill in the 1970s, which had employed a significant percentage of the city’s residents.
Tens of thousands of workers lost their jobs in the subsequent decades, while others fled to nearby cities for any form of opportunity to stay afloat.
‘Gary just went down,’ longtime resident Alphonso Washington told ATI. ‘Used to be a beautiful place, once in a time, then it just wasn’t.’
The city’s issues then snowballed due to the rise in poverty, and it once owned the unenviable title of ‘America’s murder capital.’
Although Gary is best known as the birthplace of Michael Jackson, the link to the King of Pop is barely noticeable.
Jackson’s old home is found on an abandoned old street, with local outlet IndyStar noting that the ‘house is gated and in a residential neighborhood with many buildings that are boarded up.’
A sign of the lack of economic incentives in the area, there are no tours of Jackson’s home on offer despite his millions of fans.