When Hurricane Katrina destroyed much of New Orleans two months ago, another impoverished, mostly black city stepped in to help. Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick pledged that his city would host 500 families displaced from the Gulf Coast . The offer came as Detroit found itself facing another crisis, the latest in a half-century of problems that mirror those of New Orleans : poverty, crime, poor schools, white flight. Most pressing now is the city\'s dire financial situation. The Motor City faces an accumulated $300 million budget deficit and could go broke in 2006, its auditor general warned recently. Since July 1, 500 city workers have been let go, including police and firefighters. More layoffs are possible. The bad news comes just three months before Detroit will be on the world stage when it hosts Super Bowl XL on Feb. 5. Detroit once was the heart of the USA \'s industrial might and a symbol of its blue-collar middle class, but the city has been in steep decline for decades. Detroit \'s population has shrunk 50% from 1.8 million in 1950 to just over 900,000 in 2004, bumping it off the list of the nation\'s 10 most populous cities. \"We\'re just as flooded as New Orleans , except we are not waving white flags from the roof,\" says Robin Boyle, professor of urban planning at Detroit \'s Wayne State University .