DETROIT – Shirley Jagoda and her husband, Gerald, have lived on Goulburn Street on the Detroit's northeast side since 1971.

Gerald is a retired Detroit police officer.

The couple paid off their $25,000 mortgage in 1994 and planned on staying, but the neighborhood has declined so much that they're packing up and leaving.

Jagoda said the streets are lined with trash, tires and broken glass.

"It's not safe. You can't open your windows. We were just broken into Jan.  5. They came and broke my window in the back bedroom and took the security latches off our thing and unlocked the windows and came in and stole our TV," she said.

Jagoda said the January incident was the second time the home had been broken into.

"We're never home. The first time we were broken into we were at church, at mass. The second time, daylight, it wasn't even night time, we were taking him to his lung doctor," she said. "We came back, it was gone."

Jagoda said no one is being held accountable for breaking the law.

"There's no police presence. You watch them, the vandals. They go in the middle of the day and steal whatever they can. Or, it's three or four in the morning," she said. "A garage behind me, I heard this creaking it and they were taking the aluminum off the garage at three or four in the morning. I'm not going out there to stop them."

Fed up, Jagoda wrote a letter to Detroit City Councilman Ken Cockrel.

"Please help bring Detroit back. You and the rest of the elected officials might want to work from the outside in for a change. Take care of Detroit as I leave with much sadness," the letter reads in part.

Detroit councilman responds:

Cockrel told Local 4 News he called Jagoda Friday afternoon and will send representatives to survey the damage to the neighborhood and come up with a demolition plant.