The Section 8 controversy about the “changing complexion” of Dayton’s south suburbs got me to revisit something I was going to do a few months ago, a follow-up on the an overlay of certain factors to show the declining areas of Dayton, but to do that with Kettering, based on a homeless housing study available at the City of Dayton website.

 

 

Kettering didn’t have the same degree of information that Dayton did, but it did have things like income and sheriff sales, and I was able to map out some other markers of areas with lower incomes, such as fringe banking and thrift and discount stores.  There are also some general demographic, tax, and crime data for the suburb as a whole that seem to indicate a deteriorating situation.

 

First, taking a look at some basic economic data, long term employment trends in Kettering.  Though we thing of this as an upper-middle-class and better suburb, apparently Kettering people worked in manufacturing and retail as much or more than they did in white collar work.  There was a big drop in manufacturing employment, which has probably continued after 2000.  This is important as these manufacturing jobs were most likely unionized, with benefits (meaning health and retirement benefits), and paying a living wage.

 

Blue Collar Kettering at the peak year for the Dayton metro area population, and the last good year for blue collar work:

 

 

...and the downward slide...

 

 

(one wonders about that white-collar spike in 2000)

 

Taking a closer look by age group.  Kettering has been losing population, but it is interesting to see that it is losing the young adult-to-middle age workforce the most.  The only age cohort that has increased in Kettering from 1990 to 2000 is the very old aged.

 

 

Though we don’t have census data for the near term, we do have income tax returns.  The Brookings Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC ) site has a great database where you can track the number of returns, and the gross income, as well as EITC numbers.  One can see that based on the returns Kettering is not particularly affluent, and there has been a decline in the number of returns filed over the past few years.

 

 

 

The EITC is essential a subsidy to lower income workers, with ceilings based on family size and income.  Returns claiming EITC, as a % of all returns, has been steadily increasing after bottoming out in the 2000 tax year.  The EITC is indirectly pumping  millions back to Kettering taxpayers, but is also indicating a decline in income for Ketteringites as their incomes would have to drop in order to qualify (EITC can’t be claimed for pensions or investment income as one’s income has to be earned at work, in order to qualify)

 

 

 

A quick look at crime stats for Kettering, given the local’s complaints about rising crime.  It seems larceny is the biggest offense, but there are a lot of uncategorized police action, too.  It would be nice to be able to plot this information by location, or block group.

 

 

Income.  What’s interesting here is how Kettering isn’t that different from East Dayton and Belmont in terms of income, at least large parts of northeast Kettering, and the overall decreases in household income in a number of block groups since 1990., particularly the belt of block groups north of Strop and in east and south Kettering.  Could this indicate people retiring and going on pension?

 

 

 

The Housing Burden.  Rule of thumb is that housing costs should be less than 30% of income.  Here are the maps for renters and homeowners, showing what % of households pay 30% or over…

 

 

 

…and the rents.  Note that large expanses of East Kettering are equivalent to East Dayton in rental range.  If one had kids and wanted to avoid the Dayton school system, there is apparently no price barrier to keep one from renting in Kettering, which has good schools.   

 

 

From the homelessness study, here are the low and moderate income areas.  These might be conservative.

 

 

And sheriff sale activity (foreclosures), with concentrations or clusters circled.  It looks like Northeast Kettering has most of these clusters, with another over in Southern Heights.  The wealthy West of Far Hills area has nearly none.

 

 

Overlaying the sheriff sales and the low/mod income areas.  Greenmont has no sales as it is sort of a co-op, without true private ownership. 

 

 

A vacant house, maybe one of the distressed properties

 

 

Overlaying fringe banking, discount/dollar/thrift stores, and discount food places.  Fringe banking is used by middle income consumers, yet:

“…the vast majority of their customers are people stuck on the bottom third of economic ladder. John Caskey, a Swarthmore (Pa.) College economist who has studied pawn shops and check cashers, says many of their customers are the forgotten suburbanites -- working people who live above the official poverty level but still have a hard time getting by.”

source

…so a concentration of these establishments in an area might mean more working almost-poor households.

 

 

Now lets get down to what it looks like on the ground

 

 

Older shopping centers taken over by discounters and thrift stores.

 

 

 

Vacant businesses of various sorts.  This isn’t too much of a problem here yet. 

 

 

 

 

New construction here is mostly drug stores and fast food, but there is this new development anchored by hard discount Aldi (they always seem to locate in these kinds of areas) and a thrift store.

 

 

 

 

And some samples of fringe banking

 

 

 

 

 

Thought this is a declining area Kettering city government has been very aggressive in trying to redevelop problem spots.  In this case a large vacant shopping center from the 1950s was replaced with a smaller strip center and housing.

 

 

 

 

Across the street, and older low/mod income  apartment complex, from the early 1950s.

 

 

 

This was the hot shopping center of the early 1960s, the site of the first suburban location of the downtown Rikes Department Store.  It’s not called Rikes Kettering anymore, and the old Rikes (Lazarus) department store has been taken over by Elder Beerman.   Uses here are grab bag.  A dollar store, tanning salon, Hallmark store, etc. 

 

 

 

Across the street a vacant stand-alone retail of some sort.

 

 

Next door is Woodlane.  This is a good example of a declining strip center.  The ubiquitous fringe banking establishment and dollar store share vacant storefronts.  Other uses are Red Wing Shoes and a vacuum cleaner repair,  two mom & pop restaurants (one Mexican), etc.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The soon to be closed (that’s the rumor) Delphi plant, recently sold to Tenneco.  Not sure what auto part they made there.

 

 

 

And some of the low/mod income areas that are seeing clusters of foreclosures.  These places range in age from old 1920s plats to 1940s WWII and early postwar housing, to postwar subdivisions of small ranches, with little apartment clusters thrown in the mix.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Greenmont.  Though this looks very projectesque and it is a lower income area, this is a very stable neighborhood, where shares in the co-op are handed down within families and there is a waiting list to get in.

 

 

 

This area has been seeing a lot of sheriff sales.  It all dates from WWII

 

 

 

Postwar housing.  Some of the early 1950s plats are having issues with sheriff sales too

 

 

 

 

One thing that is noticeable is the retail/commercial issue.  Wilmington Pike isn’t nowhere nears as dead as Salem Avenue, but perhaps one can see there is the start of problems with vacancies.  All these pix are from south of Stroop, south of the area we just looked at.  One could do similar pix in the Whipp/Bigger cluster of strip centers, which is even further south.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Dayton region housing surplus is driving competition in the older apartment complex market

 

 

 

The product, mostly from the 1960s into the 1970s.  There might be some ‘80s apartments at the very south end of Kettering.

 

 

 

 

 

Doing some comparisons with the Census block group data from 1990 vs 2000 should be interesting, as the block groups correspond pretty well to subdivisions and plats.   The sources here are Kettering and MVRPC data, but it would be interesting to run the numbers for renter vs owner and occupation to see the changes.  2010 + 2000 + 1990 should really be interesting.

 

Well, THAT was a piece!

Not what comes to mind when one thinks of Kettering.

 

It is amazing how burgundy street signs make a place feel high end.

^

I am not sure what people's impression of Kettering really is. Middle class suburbia? Pretty generic?  Maybe not. 

 

This Wilmington/Woodman area was developed as more of a blue collar area, based on the housing sizes, but it would be nice to get old census data to verify that. 

 

What would also be interesting is to get access to the MLS database to run some house price comparisons between East Dayton and East Kettering, and also a time series run for Kettering to see if there is a stagnation or even decline in prices.  I know they did that for Dayton in that housing study.

 

BTW, here is that Forecasting Future Dayton Decline thread where I promised to do a look at Kettering, too.

 

 

 

 

Kettering is such a mixed bag. The Woodman Dr. area of it is so vastly different from the Ridgeway Rd. area. Woodman really isn't too bad though. I'm glad they're being so aggressive about redeveloping defunct shopping centers. I really want those 1st ring suburbs to hang on because if they can't Dayton doesn't have much of a chance!

Kettering along Wilmington and Woodman is the new East Dayton. 

You might recall that thread I did on east Fifth street, from Stivers to the railroad, doing a history of retail on that block, back around New Years?

 

Well, looking at whats happening in these Kettering areas isn't too different to what happened to East 5th, and probably other neighborhood retail strips.  Places become more vacant, the retail mix becomes more marginal, more thrift stores and repair shops and such, shoestring operations.  It seems like Kettering is maybe where East 5th was in the 40s, or early 50s.  Just at the edge of a downward slide.

 

I'd find some old census data on this area, showing % in "blue collar work" in 1970, the last good year for well-payed factory work in Dayton.  It was running between 30% to 50%  in some of these tracts.

 

So I suspect this area has been on a long downward slide.  If the people in this area have seen a long term reduction in their disposable income as real wages adjusted for inflation drop, one expect evidene of this in the retail landscape.

 

 

 

 

 

^

thanks CDwag.

 

I added a map of blue collar employment, based on one in the "Urban Atlas" that was published in the 1970s, based on 1970 census data.  You can see how these are the areas, a generation later, that are showing signs of decline.

 

 

More on growing suburban poverty in Dayton.  Kettering now has an 8% poverty rate:

 

 

Poverty is rising in affluent suburbs

Centerville's rate almost doubled from 1999; Kettering rate up 78%.

Dayton Daily News

By Ken McCall

Thursday, December 18, 2008

 

Even before the worst of the current economic earthquake hit the nation, poverty was growing at an alarming rate in Ohio communities, newly released U.S. Census data show.

 

Of the 83 large to midsize cities in Ohio, only four have escaped an increase in poverty this decade, according to American Community Survey data released last week. While increased poverty in the large cities has been well documented, the new data collected during a three-year period from 2005 through 2007 show poverty has increased even in more affluent suburbs.

 

Centerville and Kettering, for example, show large proportional increases in their poverty rates. Centerville's poverty rate almost doubled from 4.1 percent in 1999 to 7.8 percent in the three-year survey period. Kettering's poverty rate increased by 78 percent, from 4.6 percent to 8.3 percent during the period.

 

And up north in Troy, the poverty rate increased even more, up almost 92 percent from 8.2 percent to 15.8 percent during the three-year period from which the Census data was compiled.

 

The increases came as no surprise to officials and volunteers in the cities' school systems, who have seen similar increases in the number of students eligible for free and reduced lunch programs.

 

In response to the problem, volunteers have been pitching in. Weekend food programs for needy students have sprouted up in both Kettering and Centerville to make sure kids aren't going hungry.

 

Karen Parks helped create the Food2Go program this year at Living Hope Church in Centerville. The program started out taking donations from congregation members and packaging them for 36 students in two Centerville schools. The program is gaining momentum — including partners in two other churches — but Parks said it's been hard getting folks to recognize the problem.

 

"It was very difficult for people to believe in the community of Centerville and Washington Twp. that hunger exists among our children," she said.

^ Ugh!

 

Sad! To think that what used to be the jobs that everyone "with an education" looked down on as lowest common denominator - plain ol' blue collar jobs that pay decently - have become a hot, desirable and rare situation for a lucky few.

 

A couple of months ago I was perusing foreclosures in Kettering. I was able to find repos in some pockets - one of them off of Wilmington near "Beavertown", another a side street off of Bigger Road - with *appraised* values in the low $40s. When you look at CPIs and other statistics, that's almost third world low.

Yeah, downward mobility is  a bitch...for suburbs as well as individuals and familys.

It will likely be a common occurrence over the next decade.

The Dayton area has been at the forefront of deindustrialization for 30+ years. The bitch of it is, there are few other options for the people and plants that are surplussed. There's nowhere to go, no escape. To think of the entire country going through what Dayton has experienced for several decades... yeesh.

To some degree yes, starting with the NCR shutdown in the 1970-1973 time frame.

 

Yet there was always two lines of business that kept wages somewhat high, and Dayton as sort of a economic time-warp...GM/Delco-Delphi and the tool & die industry. That GM retooled Moraine from refrigerators to cars was one thing that kept this going for longer than one expected

 

Whats happened in the past 10-15 years or so is the GM-Delphi part of this has went away, leaving only the tool & die industry, which is starting to be culled by foreign (China and Taiwan) competition.  In some ways this weeks closure of Moraine Assmebly was the tombstone on Dayton as a place for blue collar work.

 

But yeah, imagine being born in 1970 and growing up in a place with no growth and ongoing economic decline.

 

The thread header was posted in 2007. Today the Dayton Daily News reports on the economic decline of east Kettering, specifically the Wilmington Pike corridor (but they truncate the look, missing a big empty strip center):

 

Wilmington Pike corridor vacancies reflect Kettering economy

 

KETTERING — The Wilmington Pike corridor, one of Kettering’s key commercial areas, has a vacancy rate about 1½ times higher than Dayton’s other south suburbs as a whole...Kettering city officials estimate the Wilmington corridor’s commercial vacancy rate at roughly 17 percent, but a Dayton Daily News review found that 28 of 131 properties or offices are vacant (more than 21 percent) in the two-mile stretch from Smithville Road south to Woodman Drive.

 

The comments are a hoot, particularly the Vandalia vs Kettering bashing going on...a good example of local zero sum thinking ("my suburb is OK and yours is dying"), plus the usual blaming of the poor and alleged subsidized housing in the area, and, of course, union members and their bad habits.

 

The reality is that this was at one time blue collar suburbia (as can be seen by the 1970 census info posted in the thread header), but as that work went away incomes declined (or remained somewhat fixed due to pensions/retiree population). 

 

Also, after 1987, retail development was sucked to the I-675 interchanges ringing Kettering (but in other suburbs) draining the vitality of the older retail strips "inside the loop". 

 

 

 

Gem Real Estate Group’s 2009 market study listed the overall retail vacancy rate for Dayton’s south suburbs at 12 percent.[/i]

 

 

How depressing. The comments, especially. Everyone makes a point to hate some other opposing group around here.

The fact of the matter is areas that are ticky-tacky, like much of East Kettering, require significant reinvestment if they are to have a chance at survival.  Without the watchful eye of influential and capable citizens, reinvestment usually comes far too late to turn around whichever mechanisms of collapse prey upon the area.  This is surely the case in Dayton at-large and I've found it replicated throughout the country.  Suburbia is a short-term solution but "short-term" usually lasts more than one generation and that's all that most people about anymore.