Akron    21.4

Canton   25.5

Cincinnati   27.8

Cleveland    27.0

Columbus    20.7

Dayton    28.8

Lorain    26

Toledo    22.7

Youngstown    30.5

 

These seemingly dry numbers represent a lot of despair, hopelessness, broken lives, drugs, violent crimes and even deaths. If these numbers were high in just one city, or even a just a few, then we might blame the city's leaders. Instead, these should be a source of shame to every elected state official in Ohio who served in office for the past 60 years. These numbers didn't just happen overnight. They are the culmination of anti-urban policies that have only been getting more anti-urban in recent decades. I hope our state's leaders are proud of their accomplishment.

Cincinnati still has some really affluent in-town areas, most of the farther east side and especially Grandin Road area, + Clifton.  There are no Ohio citys that have anything comparable to Grandin within the city limits.

 

 

Good post, KJP.

 

 

Anyway, the number of students who qualify for reduced-price lunches is 27% across the district, which matches what the Census says for percent poor.  Even the people who live in the school district were shocked to hear that stat. That's almost one in three!

 

Closer to one in four though.  :speech:

Both streams of this thread are right. The 'census sucks' folks are right on that these numbers don't jive well with the lived experience and they seem so easy to prove wrong. The 'Ohio shouldn't be this poor' crowd is right on as well. Clearly the state has been hit hard by deindustrialization and that already the southeastern third of the state has regressed a full century in economic development, but this seems to point toward the need for deep systematic change in how the state is run and how it seeks to provide for its citizens. Unfortunately, Ohio is a very segregated state and many other American cities have more substantial African-American working and middle classes than those around Ohio. Ohio also has its fair share of urban Appalachian migrants who have long been very good at being poor below the radar screen.

Akron    21.4

Canton  25.5

Cincinnati  27.8

Cleveland    27.0

Columbus    20.7

Dayton    28.8

Lorain    26

Toledo    22.7

Youngstown    30.5

 

These seemingly dry numbers represent a lot of despair, hopelessness, broken lives, drugs, violent crimes and even deaths. If these numbers were high in just one city, or even a just a few, then we might blame the city's leaders. Instead, these should be a source of shame to every elected state official in Ohio who served in office for the past 60 years. These numbers didn't just happen overnight. They are the culmination of anti-urban policies that have only been getting more anti-urban in recent decades. I hope our state's leaders are proud of their accomplishment.

 

That was the post of the year right there, folks!

Ohio cities facing poverty

 

Wednesday, August 29, 2007

 

Cleveland, Canton and Cincinnati.

 

Lorain, Youngstown and Akron.

 

Name an Ohio city. Chances are it's facing alarming poverty.

 

 

Nationally, 12 percent -- about 36 million people -- live in poverty.

 

Kids, minorities and single moms bear the brunt. Poverty ensnares 17 percent of America's children, 21 percent of Hispanics, 24 percent of African Americans, 28 percent of families headed by a single mother.

 

More below

http://blog.cleveland.com/plaindealer/2007/08/poverty_in_cleveland_special_r.html

Ohio cities attract the poor

 

Ohio cities are magnets for the disadvantaged

Wednesday, August 29, 2007

Barb Galbincea and Robert L. SmithPlain Dealer Reporters

 

As the nation emerges from recession, Ohio has been slow to catch the wave. In the Buckeye State, cities are drowning.

 

The U.S. Census Bureau on Tuesday released data detailing the state of poverty in America, income levels and the extent of health insurance coverage.

 

More below

To reach these Plain Dealer reporters:

 

[email protected], 216-999-4185

 

[email protected], 216-999-4024

 

 

http://www.cleveland.com/news/plaindealer/index.ssf?/base/news/1188376415105410.xml&coll=2&thispage=1

Cincinnati: Top 10 poorest

 

Poverty rate rises; Up to 27% in city

 

BY ALEXANDER COOLIDGE | [email protected]

E-mail    |    Print    |    digg us!    |    del.icio.us!

 

 

Jay Roberts, a 31-year-old disabled forklift operator, can't seem to catch a break.

 

Just when he got a lead on a place for his family to stay temporarily, his Lower Price Hill house got broken into while he was at St. Vincent de Paul in the West End. He's current on his rent, but his landlord is in foreclosure, and his water has been shut off.

 

more below

http://news.enquirer.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070829/NEWS01/708290405

Lorain sees big jump in poverty level

Staff and wire reports

08/29/2007

 

LORAIN -- The poverty level in Lorain has increased drastically and the by product can be seen in the increasing number of people coming to food pantries, soup kitchen programs and shelters in recent years, according to Julie Chase-Morefield, executive director of Second Harvest Foodbank of North Central Ohio

 

The percentage of people living under the poverty level in Lorain jumped from 17.6 percent in 2005 to 26 percent in 2006, the Associated Press reported yesterday, citing the U.S. Census Bureau.

 

Post edited 9-4-09 to comply with terms of use

 

American Community Survey: http://www.census.gov/acs/www/

 

©The Morning Journal 2007

 

http://www.morningjournal.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=18759576&BRD=1699&PAG=461&dept_id=46371&rfi=6

Here is some data from www.socialexplorer.com.  This information is based off of the 2000 Census 10 year count.  As you can see, Ohio is not alone in this mess.  We not only have poor state leadership to blame for this, but also mismanaged federal government as well.  The United States will continue down this road until we finally embrace true social programs that actually work to solve the underlying problems in society.  No more band-aid fixes.

 

If you would like you can go to the website and further break down this data for yourself (ie by % under 18yrs in poverty, % of white/hispanic/african american in poverty, etc...).  For the purposes of simplicity I just included the overall % of the population in poverty.

I met some representatives from the Cincinnati city government, including Mayor Mallory, in Las Vegas at ICSC this year.  I guess that they had just invested a lot into having a Social Compact Drilldown study completed for downtown and the neighborhoods, and the results were very favorable...so much that they had a jam-packed schedule with appointments with developers and retailers at the convention.  I'm wondering if the city busts that out to try to dispel its poverty ranking.

Poverty wouldn't have made those studies so favorable for the city of Cincinnati.

Poverty wouldn't have made those studies so favorable for the city of Cincinnati.

 

Social Compact conducts an independent analysis of urban neighborhoods that it claims is more accurate than the census.  That's what the Drilldown is about...the company "drills down" into cash economies and usually always finds that income exceeds what the census projects.

 

Of course, everyone has their own opinions about the accuracy of the methodology, especially when the organization finds that the census undermines Cleveland's population by 25%+.

Yeah, I'm saying that if the census were correct, it wouldn't favor those studies and show that we can support more, higher quality retail.

Yeah, I'm saying that if the census were correct, it wouldn't favor those studies and show that we can support more, higher quality retail.

 

The Social Compact study for Cinci made a compelling case for quality retail and conveyed that the outlook for the city is outstanding.  As I said, the City and a brokerage partner had meetings scheduled both during and outside of the convention to do development deals.  The problem is that the real estate industry doesn't embrace anything other than Claritas, etc. 

Do you think with the downturn in the real estate industry as of late, they might be more open to do things differently?

KJP-

These seemingly dry numbers represent a lot of despair, hopelessness, broken lives, drugs, violent crimes and even deaths. If these numbers were high in just one city, or even a just a few, then we might blame the city's leaders. Instead, these should be a source of shame to every elected state official in Ohio who served in office for the past 60 years. These numbers didn't just happen overnight. They are the culmination of anti-urban policies that have only been getting more anti-urban in recent decades. I hope our state's leaders are proud of their accomplishment.

 

WOW,  I mean,   WOW!!            Anyone able to forward this statement to as many people in Columbus as possible!!

here is the cincinnati social compact survey

 

http://www.cincinnati-oh.gov/noncms/mayor/shop52/CincinnatiFullReport.pdf

 

large file

 

Do you think with the downturn in the real estate industry as of late, they might be more open to do things differently?

 

No...at least not in the forseeable future.

Interestingly those social explorer maps would seem to make Ohio out to be one of the lower poverty states.  Of course, a map that is weighted and stretched to show relative population would give the most accurate picture.

Do you think with the downturn in the real estate industry as of late, they might be more open to do things differently?

 

It isn't the whole real estate industry that's in the tubes.  Commercial is still pretty stable here in the states, though virtually everything is being impacted in some way by the residential market. 

 

In retail real estate, trends (from prevailing designs to preferred markets to use of new data sources) don't catch on quickly.  I'm not an expert, but my observation is that things take quite a while to evolve.  That's why there aren't a whole lot of green shopping centers and why stores are still built with huge parking lots in front.

 

The Cleveland Drilldown (http://www.nhlink.net/socialcompact/) painted the city in a positive light back in 2004.  But I don't really know anyone who's had a lot of success in attracting retail/commercial with it.         

that drilldown is why i think we should be challenging the census, as I think we have more people in cleveland than "estimated" and that the poverty isn't as high as it is. Yes we have poverty, but I don't think its as bad as indicated.

Interestingly those social explorer maps would seem to make Ohio out to be one of the lower poverty states.  Of course, a map that is weighted and stretched to show relative population would give the most accurate picture.

Social explorer gives all kinds of census data for each individual census tract, smaller than individual neighborhoods. If you zoom into each city, it shows a much more depressing picture.

This is household income according to the Census:

(Discount industrial areas that are automatically white)

CINCINNATI

 

 

COLUMBUS:

 

 

CLEVELAND:

 

 

They would probably look much different after the development that has occurred in the past 9 years, especially in Columbus. The short north should definitely be darker.

^The darker the color the poorer?  What do the numbers mean?

darker=wealthier

^

(lighter means poorer.  #s are probably census tract numbers)

 

Mucho Gracias to Rando for that Social Explorer link.  What makes that site cool is you can do time series with it, as well as snapshots using currrent data.

 

 

Another way to look at this is by tracking the percentage of income tax returns claiming the Earned Income Tax Credit, which is for lower income earners as well as the working poor, as a proxy indicator of economic stress.

 

 

Looking at the Dayton and Cincinnati numbers, you can see how the recession led to a small growth in EITC filers in Cincinnati, but then it dropped.  The trendline is pretty low, and the % of filers seem to be within a 20% range.  For Dayton, you can see how “hard times” never really ended, as more and more earners claimed the credit, reflecting an increase in lower wage work.

 

 

And important to note that the “working poor” are probably a subset of EITC filers, and that there may be poor folks that this metric does not capture.

 

 

(the EITC source is the Brookings Institution website, which takes the data down to zip level for recent tax years)

 

I am also looking at the Ohio Dept of Ed school test site as a proxy for economic stress, as they have datasets showing % of economically disadvantaged students by school district and even by school building (they supress small counts, though).

 

 

 

 

Interestingly those social explorer maps would seem to make Ohio out to be one of the lower poverty states.  Of course, a map that is weighted and stretched to show relative population would give the most accurate picture.

Social explorer gives all kinds of census data for each individual census tract, smaller than individual neighborhoods. If you zoom into each city, it shows a much more depressing picture.

 

And also if you zoom into areas of almost any city in the country, the rural appalachians/Mississippi/Texas border country or even the poorer suburbs of affluent West Coast cities.  My point was that when we begin to look beyond the relatively underbounded cities of Ohio, which contain most of our poverty, then the truer picture emerges.  For example- yes, City of Cleveland is desperately poor, but Northeast Ohio has a poverty rate slightly lower than the national average.

This illustrates exactly the problem with America (The great land of opportunity...right).

 

% living in poverty

 

Here is a side by side illustrating the distribution of the two predominant minority groups -- Blacks and Hispanics

 

Aside from Appalachia, in the Eastern KY area, you can see a clear relationship here.

KJP-

These seemingly dry numbers represent a lot of despair, hopelessness, broken lives, drugs, violent crimes and even deaths. If these numbers were high in just one city, or even a just a few, then we might blame the city's leaders. Instead, these should be a source of shame to every elected state official in Ohio who served in office for the past 60 years. These numbers didn't just happen overnight. They are the culmination of anti-urban policies that have only been getting more anti-urban in recent decades. I hope our state's leaders are proud of their accomplishment.

 

The feds have a lot to do with this, too.

^^Do they happen to have an appalachian map and a Native American map? that would explain e. ky, wv, and SD and Okla

I think it has less to do with Ohio state officials and a lot more to do with the city on Rando's map in bold.

^^Do they happen to have an appalachian map and a Native American map? that would explain e. ky, wv, and SD and Okla

 

Appalachian -> No

Native American -> I don't think so

 

Check it out and see if you can find something:

www.socialexplorer.com

Look at that splotch of relative wealth downtown, surrounded by an ocean of poverty. Both situations don't seem to exist to such an extent in the other two C's...

 

 

 

The feds have a lot to do with this, too.

 

Very true. The other, older urban centers like Detroit, Buffalo, Pittsburgh, etc. are proof. But some states have been able to override the anti-urban policies to varying degrees of success. Ohio seems to have made them worse.

One minor quibble besides all the excellent ones here is that the data shows percentage in poverty not the overall wealth of a community. So while Cincinnati and Cleveland may have a high percentage of poor people living in town that doesn't mean these are 'poor' cities, because great wealth can often live next to great poverty (see most of the rest of the world). I'm not saying its right, but Ohio has quite a bit of wealth unfortunately it does not have adequate jobs for those who haven't begun to accumulate wealth.

Even at best, Cincinnati is not growing. It's a stagnant city (as proved by the census revision), and Hamilton County is shrinking fast like most urban Ohio counties. All the so-called "Cincinnati" growth is far-removed from the city and is suburban/rural sprawl. If I were a Cincinnatian, I'd feel much better if Hamilton County wasn't dying, but it it's in the same boat as Cuyahoga, Lucas, and Montgomery. Urban growth in Ohio? Only Columbus really, and it's minimal. Ohio is far too suburbanized in my opinion to ever have its cities recover.

 

We'll see what the next Census count says.  The Cincinnati MSA is growing, Cincinnati proper is maintain its status (maybe reversing the trend, maybe not), and Hamilton County is the ONLY part of the region actually suffering from population loss.  I won't go any further because it's way off topic, and this is just you demonstrating your dislike for SW Ohio (yet again).  The bottom line is that Cincinnati is one of the strongest/most stable areas in the Midwest and more specifically Ohio.  Now being the best of the worst isn't necessarily the greatest thing, but it is better than the alternatives.

 

*Note that I'm not saying Cincinnati is the strongest in the Midwest...just using the an example that if Cincinnati (or any place) is the best of the worst it's nothing to write home about.  There is a lot of work that needs to be done...EVERYWHERE.  Including Cbus, Indy, Minneapolis, Cincinnati, etc.

In Ohio, some of the small cities are more urban than the big ones.

 

I have yet to see that.  In my experience they are even more moribund (Springfield, Lima, Zanesville, etc).

 

...& Athens isn't urban, its a rural county seat with a state college in it, like Bowling Green, or Morehead, KY.

 

##########

 

Back to the topic...check out the map for Cols.  Wonder whats up with census tract 46.10, on the west side of Cols?  I thought that side of town was sort working poor, or near poor.

 

 

 

    I agree that some of the small towns are more urban than the big cities, in terms of the built environment. Sure, the larger cities have more skyscrapers, but they also have more parking lots.

 

    "Ohio is a dying state, and will start losing overall population around 2010-2020."

 

    The exact peak year is 2018, according to Census projections. This comes from the age-cohort method, which is based on birth and death rates. Much of the so-called growth is merely new development, which offsets decline elsewhere.

 

    Again, the raw percentage number doesn't show the whole picture. I suspect that the birth rate is higher among poor people.

 

    Here's one of my favorite quotes from a radio talk show:

 

    Caller: "During the Reagan years, the rich got richer and the poor got poorer."

 

    Host: "No, you're wrong. During the Reagan years, the rich got richer, the middle class got richer, and the poor got richer. But, the number of poor people increased because poor people had a lot of kids."

 

    "Ohio is far too suburbanized in my opinion to ever have its cities recover."

 

    I wonder if we have passed the point of no return. I tend to think we have.

Not that it is great, but the poverty rate for blacks is actually lower, approaching 40% according to this latest census information.  I would expect it to be lower in the suburbs.  The article you referred to from 2001 credits the information to a city official but no source for the information is provided.

 

It would be mathematically impossible for the rate to be 67% based on the overall number.  But yes, overall not good numbers.

I'm not sure if any articles pointed out that Cincinnati also has two-thirds of its black population living in poverty and school segregation is amongst the highest in the world. The poverty issue in Cincinnati is mostly a racial issue:

 

http://www.americasurvey.com/ArchivedArticles/CinciEnquirer_Racial_051604.htm

http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:-xRrHlMRPPYJ:www.worldmag.com/articles/4968+two-thirds+Cincinnati+Enquirer+blacks+poverty&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=7&gl=us&client=safari

 

 

The poverty issue in Cincinnati is mostly a racial issue:

 

And as I illustrated earlier with the racial distribution maps compared to poverty map...Poverty is a racial issue in all of America, that is certainly not unique at all to Cincinnati.

Shifting Demographics!    That is our (midwest) competition.      It will come down to which cities appeals most to the next generation of people who do NOT want to live in Suburbia.   Most of us grew up in it, and it has certainly lost its luster here in the 21st century.   Perhaps one day C-bus will realize there is an entire state beyond the Franklin Cty lines and maybe, just maybe, they will start ACTING like responsible elected officials.   Ya know, making decisions that benefit OHIO.

Shifting Demographics!    That is our (midwest) competition.      It will come down to which cities appeals most to the next generation of people who do NOT want to live in Suburbia.  Most of us grew up in it, and it has certainly lost its luster here in the 21st century.  Perhaps one day C-bus will realize there is an entire state beyond the Franklin Cty lines and maybe, just maybe, they will start ACTING like responsible elected officials.  Ya know, making decisions that benefit OHIO.

 

Say it loud, say it proud!!!

Census Bureau wrong again, this time on poverty

BY EDMUND ADAMS

 

 

Why do we put such credence in the gang that can't count straight?

 

Last year the U.S. Census Bureau acknowledged, on Mayor Mark Mallory's appeal, that its estimate of the population of the city of Cincinnati should be revised upward from 308,000 to 331,000. Now the bureau labels Cincinnati the third poorest of major American cities. Wrong again.

 

More below

http://news.enquirer.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070831/EDIT01/708310321/1090

I was doing some thinking myself about how wrong the census bureau had to be, then I ran across this ^. If Cincinnati had a metro form of government along with Cleveland, They would surely be some of the richest cities in america. It all comes down to how you arrange the numbers, you can make them whatever you want.

 

Thats what I like about #'s, you can determine what you want the answer to be then arrange them accordingly. Government projections & predictions are flawed beyond hope. I dealt with it for years in the military. I also know someone from Springfield who worked for the census bureau & they told me how difficult it was to verify peoples residence if they flat choose not to acknowlege them, especially in the inner cities with such dense populations.

If we compare the percentage of the population below the poverty level for Cincinnati, Indianapolis, Louisville, Lexington, Cleveland and Dayton on a county-to-county and metro area basis, Hamilton County has the lowest poverty level of the seven counties, and the Cincinnati metro area has the second lowest poverty level of the seven metro areas, behind only Indianapolis.[/url]

 

Blizzaamm!

 

The Cincinnati area is not a poverty pocket on a fair basis of comparison. The Census Bureau should compare cities either on the basis of their home counties or on the basis of their MSAs. That's straight shooting.

 

No sh!t Sherlock ... I don't think anyone on this board was buying into the news breaker ... and hopefully, other folks out there that also live in the Cincy metro will take note (although, that's a lot harder to do ... you know, get citizens to think logically).

^ :laugh:

The poverty issue in Cincinnati is mostly a racial issue:

 

And as I illustrated earlier with the racial distribution maps compared to poverty map...Poverty is a racial issue in all of America, that is certainly not unique at all to Cincinnati.

I read a study, I think it as based on the 2000 census, not sure, that said (on average) Asians and whites make about 40k a year, blacks make about 30k a year, with Hispanics being behind black by a few grand. It's definitely racial, but of course it's exclusive to Cincinnati, that way it doesn't apply to Toledo!

I find it interesting to see how the Cincy Enquirer nearly immediately publishes an article, column or editorial challenging its purported status as one of the poorest cities in the nation.  Meanwhile up in in Cleveland, our rag hasn't written a freaking thing about the city in the least 3-4 years without reminding its readership about our "poorest big city in America" status.

our former "poorest big city in America" status  :wink: