Things like this truly sadden me, I don't blame people for not claiming them. As is stated

""Some people really have to make a choice of putting food on the table or burying their loved ones."

What is really to blame is this crash/ recession which was engineered by the banks as it was in 1929. To think that they caused people to even have considered that decision is criminal.

Very sad. Too broke to bury loved-ones.....

What a tragedy. You don't think things like this could happen in the US.

tanyamm, seriously, if you really believe your last post, you really need to get out more. I see poor, destitute people everyday. The war on the poor has been going on for decades. I think if we just gave the rich more tax breaks, this wouldnt happen.

I know people are poorer and losing their homes. But I didn't realize they were abandoning their dead. Are big fancy expensive coffins and funerals really that necessary?

When someone dies, the funeral homes smell a dollar to made. Thousands of dollars actually, and why? When the family is hurting the most, the funeral director comes with a big bill. Ten percent of it is probably actual costs incurred. The rest is the gouge the heartless bastards force you to pay. Theres a long line of people with thier hand out. Ghoulish trash. I remember the last time I wrote a check out at a funeral home. Other 'family' members assumed I must be a drug dealer to have that kind of money. I won't be writing a check for them.

The average funeral now costs over $7,000. And don't forget the many laws that dictate just what can be done with a dead body. All costing a considerable amount of money.

Wayne County has been in a recession for over EIGHT YEARS.

There are NO "cheap" alternatives to thieving funeral homes.

What do people expect will happen as millions more are bankrupted and made homeless?

Detroit is a cesspool and nothing will change here, ever.

Funeral parlours really are a heartless breed when you boil it down, as no matter how caring and sympathetic they may seem, they are still profiting from death.

If I had a will, I would for the event of my death put in a provision to be pushed out to sea in a burning boat Viking style, or returned to the earth somehow, like being dropped into a bog or something. Or if it was required that I be buried a simple unlined pine box, possibly even of my own making, would suffice.

It is a strange thing to contemplate your own mortality, but anyone who has been involved in a car accident or other near death situation will know just how fragile our existences are.

Pine boxes, and unlined graves are illegal in Michigan. The casket/vault business must have been big here once.

It is also illegal to cremate without a coffin AND you can't dump the ashes without a permit - which they don't issue.

If cremated you MUST be put in a specific type of urn and if the urn is buried it MUST have a vault.

Then they wonder why people that don't have $10 to their name can't afford even the cheapest of funerals.