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This is the richest city in America. And this is the poorest city in America. I'm nowhere near New York City or San Francisco. There are no tech billionaires here. This city is Flint, Michigan. Maybe you've heard about it. The birthplace of General Motors and is now a symbol of industrial decline. Thousands of children poisoned by the water in Flint. And the young are most vulnerable to lead exposure as their brains are still developing. Don't come to Flint, Michigan. This is Country Life Acres, Missouri. and it looks like a gay community, but it's an actual municipality with its own set of elected officials, its own set of rules. If I set foot on that publicly funded road, I'd actually be
trespassing. But the reason both of these cities exist is the same. A set of weird loopholes that allow the system to be managed by the wrong people. And that gave Country Life Acres the chance to set its own rules, to define its own taxes, to keep everybody else out. The dream for every billionaire out there. I'm Costa Rican. I grew up on this Hollywood image of the American dream that's very different from the reality of a lot of the United States. So I went on this 500 mile road trip to discover the loophole that allowed a city like Country Life Acres and a city like Flint to exist in today's world. So Flint has been in the news a lot over the past few years. levels of lead. One sip would have caused her blood lead of
her child to be lead poison. One sip of that water. Dogs and cats are dying. The tomatoes were turning black. Flint is the birthplace of GM, General Motors back in 1908. And for decades, Flint was this staple middle-ass American town where you either worked for GM or worked for someone who worked from GM. At some point in the 70s, over 200,000 people lived in Flint and almost half of the population worked for this company alone. But GM had its days counted. General Motors is inching closer to bankruptcy. GM stock is hovering at right around a dollar a share. The fourth largest bankruptcy in United States history.
I never thought General Motors would get to that point. In the 1970s, a combination of the oil crisis and Japanese cars meant that GM had to cut cars and plants and people. By the 2000s, less than 10,000 people worked for the company, and the city of Flint collapsed. The city was left in debt and in extreme poverty. Almost 40% of people here in Flint live under the poverty line. So, in 2011, the state of Michigan declared a financial emergency and appointed this emergency manager, an unelected emergency manager that could overrule what the city council or the mayor decided. In other words, someone elected by the state, not by the city, would make decisions to get the city out of the crisis. That's the first big
difference with country life acres, how the city is covered. In the 1900s, wealthy St. Louis families built out these estates in the outskirts of the city. And this is old money, brewing dynasties, chemical magnates, and of course, railroads and banking. In 1946, a handful of residents filed to become a village. Village/town/ city. These terms are really used interchangeably across different cities in the US. But Missouri is particularly lax about the minimum land size or the minimum population for a village to get registered. And that's what they took advantage of. In Missouri, there is no minimum population requirement to become a village. Whereas in most states, you need hundreds, maybe
thousands of people to be able to submit an application. All you really need is 2/3 of the residents to agree. That's the reason why this county has over 90 different municipalities, some with just 20 people. And once you become a village/town/ city, you get some perks. One, you get to draw a line around your area. Two, you elect a government, and that government is recognized by the state, and that government gets to decide stuff like your city's taxes or the city zoning laws, for example, only mansions allowed. And three, that local government runs your city services like your trash and your fire and your police department. As crazy as it sounds, because Country Life Acres is really just houses or really just mansions, they have to rent out public
services from neighboring towns. So that police station behind me, which is technically in the city of Town and Country, which is surrounds Country Life Acres, that's the police that would arrest me if I were to trespass on the public road in Country Life Acres. And they have to pay for that. They pay for that using their own tax money that they collect from the neighbors and that they also get from the state. But that is the point. They get to decide. Now, that brings me back to Flint because the reason Flint gets attention is precisely because of decisions that they made with their tax money. These state appointed officials in Flint would decide a city's fate decades into the future. Now, if
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Flint residents have never been off the front lines of the fight. We found the worst lead and water contamination that I have seen in 25 years. and permanent health problems like compromised immune systems as well as damaged kidneys and growth plates. For months, Flint's water supply was essentially poisoned with lead and bacteria and it took them years to course correct. By that time, tens of thousands of children had been exposed. You guys are understaffed. Is that what's going on? they have taken over our hospital and they don't want to honor our contract and our um things that we've had in place within the contract for 20 years.
Nurses at Henry Ford Genesis Hospital in the Flint Grant Blank area have been on a prolonged strike since Labor Day 2025, primarily over staffing ratios, patient safety, fair pay, and better working conditions. I live in Grant Blank now, but I lived in Flint during the water crisis. I was boiling water to bathe my kids, to cook my food, to rinse my vegetables, and everything else. I don't drink anybody's tap water. Obviously, there's no McDonald's in Country Life Acres. This is just the one that's closest, and I'm assuming it serves Country Life Acres's millionaires. It is much nicer than the Flint McDonald's, I do have to say. So, coming all the way out here, we knew we
were not going to be able to set a foot in Country Life Acres, but just driving around, I was pretty surprised by first how huge every house around the neighborhood is. These are some crazy houses. Every one of these roads is like a dead-end road. And they have a sign like a sign that's almost like a gate sometimes, and it kind of feels like you're not supposed to drive inside. This entire city is a millionaire city as well. They're not rich enough to get into country life acres. They're they have to live outside. Right now, we're in the city of Town and Country, which surrounds Country Life Acres, still with a solid median income of $237,000.
It also neighbors another one of these villages, Crystal Lake Park. Population 500, but nowhere near as rich. Okay, so I'm seeing maybe 30 houses or so. Most of them have pools. A couple of them have tennis courts which is rookie numbers if you ask me and at least one of them has like a horse range cow house where they live the cows I don't know what the name is okay so the population of country life acres is about 80 people median age is like 60 mostly a white population but there is one Native American/ Alaskan not sure what that means there is one mixed there's one Hawaiian oh and there is one Hispanic represent now there was a black person that lived there around the year 2000, but they left by 2010. And interesting mix of industries. You
have finance, you have real estate, healthcare. No tech though. Wait, does this house have a what? This house has like a back door. It's like a Yeah, it's like an entrance that goes out to the other road to the to a public road. So, in theory, we could see this Country Live Acres house from a public street. Also, why would you go through the trouble of buying land in Country Life Acres only to open a gate on the other side? Must be annoying to be opening and closing the front gate. Buying into Country Live Acres is how they keep this community closed. Around 30 houses that rarely go on sale, median house price at $1.6 million. One of the last houses sold was 23 Country Life acres sold for $3.8
million to James R. Redling Shaer. And then notable residents, there are a few uh one of them is Van Ike Mullenix who lived in Country Life Acres with his wife in 2013 until he was murdered. That would mean that in 2013, Country Life Acres probably was the city with the highest homicide rate in the entire world. The advantage of running a city is that you get to create your own zoning laws and you can be as strict as you want. Country Life Acres only allowed these large lots with single family homes. And in 1940s Missouri, that had another hidden advantage. So, a few miles from Country Life Acres in downtown Missouri, back in the 40s, this Mississippi family was trying to buy that house.
They were running away from racial violence in the South. So, in 1948, when they tried to buy this house, the owner refused to give them the title, citing this 1911 agreement that forbade selling the house to Negroes. Now the case went to the Missouri Supreme Court which withheld that decision actually and then up to the US Supreme Court which unanimously voted that they of course had the right to buy the house and this became a cornerstone case to end US segregation because you can't explicitly keep people out because of the color of their skin. But towns like Country Life Acres don't need that to keep people out. You have a gate and you have zoning laws that you control. If you have a community with a
gate where you have to buy and own land in order to live there, and that land is unaffordable to everybody, you've essentially done the same thing. Now, I'm not saying that today's motivation is racial, by the way. It clearly was back then. But today, it's just about keeping poor people out. My friend Noel from the Hustle visited another of these enclaves, Indian Creek Village in Miami, where once again, a loophole allowed these 100 or so residents to create this micro city. And there are other examples around the US like the village of Indian Hill in Ohio or some villages in Long Island, New York. On the opposite end, one of Flint's
biggest challenges is that this was a city designed for 200,000 people with the neighborhoods and the schools and the city infrastructure for 200,000 people. And now those buildings sit empty. But the last thing that Flint needed is for us to just dwindle in this past. And showing you yet more videos of Flint's crisis or abandoned houses is the last thing that the city needs. So I asked the Flint Red to point me to some legit local Flint activities. And they did not disappoint. I was at this wreath making workshop yesterday at the Queen's Provisions. This is the Flint Market where we're having breakfast today. We visited this brewery and this awesome 100-year-old bar called the Gold Leaf. So, it kind of feels like
people who live in Flint love it. They don't want to leave. They haven't been detracted by the job crisis or the water crisis. People were genuinely curious and delighted that we visited, eager to show us the best that Flint had to offer. And it's not easy to recover from years of this crisis, of extreme poverty, of news after news punching down on this town. The irony of all this is that while those rich communities want to keep people out, Flint is desperate for people to come back in. And there are some good news to highlight. GDP is recovering post 2020 after a surge in pandemic unemployment. The city is back in the single digits.
There's hope and there are new developments. And while it's impractical to move new stuff like EV manufacturing to a city like Flint, GM has committed $1 billion to renewing their Flint factories and to continue manufacturing their high-end trucks there. The stigma of Flynn's last 20 years is the gate that's keeping people out, but I'm very hopeful that they can tear it down soon. Now, there are hundreds of miles between these two very different stories, but a much more brutal close contrast happens in Nosara, Costa Rica, a town that was invaded by digital nomads. So, I travel there to discover that story. You should check that video out. Catch you on the next one.
