One evening last summer, Jean Vortkamp watched from her home in horror as a shooting victim's dead body remained in her front yard for five hours.

While Vortkamp and other neighbors called the police, she said it took hours for them to arrive and get the proper officials to come and remove the body.

Amid years of budget constraints, Detroit's police force has been cut by 40% in the last decade, with response times to police calls averaging close to an hour, according to the city's bankruptcy filing.

A former mayoral candidate, Vortkamp says that residents feel abandoned by the city government in the wake of its bankruptcy. "We have to take care of each other," she said.

Other services have also been slashed. While Vortkamp lives about 15 minutes from downtown Detroit, she now has to take two separate buses to get there. And she's worried that the city's proposal to exit bankruptcy, which include pension cuts for city workers and retirees, will only make things worse, not better.

"None of this will have a good happy ending for us," she said. "I don't understand how the federal government will allow this to continue."