Posted August 12, 200816 yr More poor leaving inner city http://news.cincinnati.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080812/NEWS01/808120351/1055/NEWS Greater Cincinnati saw one of the greatest dispersals of poverty in the nation from 1999 to 2005, as poor people moved out of the inner city and into middle-class neighborhoods, according to a report from a Washington think tank.
August 12, 200816 yr ^They're already gone. Almost nobody lives there to leave. Drive through at midnight on a weekday and you will see almost nobody. There's fewer people living in that neighborhood than a few of the bigger suburban apartment complexes aruond town.
August 12, 200816 yr Although I have no official study/statistics to back it up, I believe we are seeing the same trend in Cleveland. Many of the low-income families are moving to places to the south and east, like Maple Hts, Garfield Hts, Warrensville, Bedford etc. I think this trend continues (even picks up) as the housing stock in places like inner city Cincy and C-Town either needs to be demoed or requires expensive rehab to be habitable. Most of the houses in those neighborhoods listed above were built for middle class families and are still solid, but are becoming more affordable to lower income people because of their increasing age, bland styling and below average school systems.
August 12, 200816 yr In Cincy they went to the West Side - Price Hill, swathes of Westwood, Mt. Airy. They went to Mt. Healthy and Forest Park (though less so). They went to Roselawn. I have suspect some tried to go other places but were run out over the last couple years (I'm thinking of Madisonville and Kennedy Heights).
August 12, 200816 yr To take it even further, most of the hookers and drug dealers don't even live in OTR.. It is just a place for them to do business for the Kentuckians and indianaians who come to OTR.
August 12, 200816 yr Back about a year ago I used some EITC stats from Brookings to measure downward mobility in Kettering (Dayton suburb): Changing Kettering That Brookings database is pretty cool
August 12, 200816 yr There is another indirect way of measuring the dispersal of low income people. The state apparently keeps stats on economcally disadvantaged students and schools. I used this to map out how the "economically disadvantaged" are being found outside the Dayton City school district. Econmicaly Disadvantaged in Suburban Dayton
August 12, 200816 yr To take it even further, most of the hookers and drug dealers don't even live in OTR.. It is just a place for them to do business for the Kentuckians and indianaians who come to OTR. Of course, no Ohioans would ever dream of going to OTR for those reasons... :-D
August 12, 200816 yr If only this dispersion was true dispersion whereby poor people don't just all move to some suburb and lifestyle tanks. As someone said above, mixing in with people of middle and high income levels assures that even the poorest receive adequate city services (especially schools) where they can improve their lives.
August 13, 200816 yr The most recent Atlantic Monthly has some rather unfortunate findings as to what happens when these folks are dispersed. The article focused on Memphis, but the trend is clear and national.
August 13, 200816 yr In Cincy they went to the West Side - Price Hill, swathes of Westwood, Mt. Airy. They went to Mt. Healthy and Forest Park (though less so). They went to Roselawn. I have suspect some tried to go other places but were run out over the last couple years (I'm thinking of Madisonville and Kennedy Heights). The story is not talking about shifting concentrations...it's talking about dispersion of concentrations. So while places like Price Hill, Westwood, etc may be seeing an uptick in the amount of poverty there it is at lower concentration levels than what previously existed. The difference should be noted.
August 13, 200816 yr The way I see it, we have 4 options: 1.) Make sure you live in a rich enough suburb to keep them out - I think this will only work for maybe 6 or 7 suburbs in the area 2.) Deal with it. Quit working, buy a sweet tv and satellite and stop cutting your grass to fit in. 3.) Keep moving farther and farther out until you're driving 2 hours to work and gas yourself into bankruptcy. 4.) Move back into the core or 1st generation burbs and enjoy the sweet life The choice is yours
August 13, 200816 yr I'm going to make this a blanket warning for this thread. Generalizations and prejudice comments will not be tolerated on UrbanOhio, now or ever. This survey talks about those living in poverty. The U.S. Government recognizes poverty as lacking those goods and services commonly taken for granted by members of mainstream society. The 'poverty line' is the most common determination for poverty in America. In 2007, in the United States of America, the poverty threshold for a single person under 65 was US$10,787; the threshold for a family group of four, including two children, was US$21,027. Not all of these people are milking the system, riding the government/taxpayer, or bad people. In fact the majority are not. Those in poverty are increasingly being made up of women and children. It is working single mothers that are trying their best to make ends meet while also trying to raise their children. Blame whoever you want, but you can't simply place the blanket criticism that those in poverty are bums or don't take care of their families/property. Some of the major causes of poverty are: Unfavorable economic conditions Mental illness and disability Lack of educational attainment and skill Substance abuse Birth of a child Domestic abuse Natural or other disasters Crime Institutional racism Limited job opportunities
August 13, 200816 yr I'm going to make this a blanket warning for this thread. Generalizations and prejudice comments will not be tolerated on UrbanOhio, now or ever. Somebody forgot to bring their sense of humor with them today. :-) I'll issue a blanket apology to any low income people or apologist liberals I might have offended with my misguided attempt at stereotypical humor. For the record, your honor, I'd like to note that I live in a transitioning neighborhood and though I am not low income I was raised by a single mother who was. I am also an apologist liberal.
August 13, 200816 yr In all seriousness, I believe what we're seeing is the beginning of, and is nothing different than, what one can see across Europe today - a disproportionate amount of the poor scattered around the city in outlying suburbs. We are witnessing the end of the American dream of suburbia and the car dependent lifestyle.
August 13, 200816 yr Some of the major causes of poverty are: Unfavorable economic conditions Mental illness and disability Lack of educational attainment and skill Substance abuse Birth of a child Domestic abuse Natural or other disasters Crime Institutional racism Limited job opportunities So Randy did you copy that out of your notes from Women's Studies 101? I hate lists like that because it doesn't just shift responsibility away from the individual -- it shifts it toward the reader and tries to generate NPR guilt (cue the little NPR trumpet fanfare). It also insinuates that the lister has thought deeply about the situation, seen what others don't or choose not to, been awarded grants, published academic papers that maybe 30 people read. Academic language is useless in discussing phenomena involving people who don't know what the word academic means. The one part of the argument about urban poverty that always drove me crazy was when people would say "there aren't jobs in the poor neighborhoods" when ironically, and Cincinnati was by no means an exception, many of the poor neighborhoods were within walking distance of tens of thousands of jobs of all varieties. This will be less the case if this trend continues.
August 13, 200816 yr Some of the major causes of my not being wealthy are: Unfavorable economic conditions Mental illness and disability Lack of educational attainment and skill Substance abuse Birth of a child Natural or other disasters Crime Institutional sexism Limited job opportunities ALMOST the same list!
August 13, 200816 yr So Randy did you copy that out of your notes from Women's Studies 101? No, Wikipedia. :-D The one part of the argument about urban poverty that always drove me crazy was when people would say "there aren't jobs in the poor neighborhoods" when ironically, and Cincinnati was by no means an exception, many of the poor neighborhoods were within walking distance of tens of thousands of jobs of all varieties. This will be less the case if this trend continues. Very true, but this is where the 'spatial mismatch' theory comes into play. High paying jobs are often located in center cities, and those that fill those jobs are able to live wherever they want due to their economic standing. Often times they choose to live out in the 'burbs and commute to the jobs. Jobs that would typically be filled by lower-income individuals are increasingly not where their employee base might live. Lower-income individuals generally live closer to the center city for transportation and social services. This dichotomy presents a problem though as transportation often times does not connect these individuals to the jobs they are able to fill. Some of the major causes of my not being wealthy are: Unfavorable economic conditions Mental illness and disability Lack of educational attainment and skill Substance abuse Birth of a child Natural or other disasters Crime Institutional sexism Limited job opportunities ALMOST the same list! Yes, since being wealthy is the opposite of being poor the list remains the same when you add a "not" in front of the opposite function.
August 13, 200816 yr Some of the major causes of me being in a lot of debt: Unfavorable economic conditions Mental illness and disability Educational attainment and skill Substance abuse Birth of a child Natural or other disasters Crime Institutial Sexism/affirmative action hiring priorities Limited job opportunities ALMOST the same list!
August 13, 200816 yr What it says is you can blame poverty on anything or anybody! Nothing on the list mentions any kind of personal accountability. How about good old fashioned laziness?
August 13, 200816 yr What it says is you can blame poverty on anything or anybody! Nothing on the list mentions any kind of personal accountability. How about good old fashioned laziness? The list doesn't specifically cite personal accountability as a reason, but it doesn't specifically state that it isn't. Lack of educational attainment and skill, Substance abuse, Birth of a child, and Crime are all related to personal accountability...and also factor into the "laziness" perception. You also can't place all the blame on external forces, but you also can't place all the blame on the individual. It is just way too complicated to say that everyone who lives in poverty is there because of the same issues. Hence my statement about no generalizations. I didn't assert that there should be no accountability, but it seemed like that's how some others interpreted it due to my posting of various causes of poverty. I didn't make up the list, do the studies, etc...I'm just reporting the case findings.
August 13, 200816 yr I think its worth noting that there is a difference between being poor and being part of the underclass. They are not the same groups of people. Poverty is often temporary and age-related. You can work very hard and just not get paid a lot of money. Many people spend some time during their lives in which gov't stats would classify them as poor. The underclass on the other hand refers to those with a generational history of low-incomes and high levels of anti-social behavior. Concentrated poverty is usually a signifier of the underclass.
August 13, 200816 yr You can work very hard and just not get paid a lot of money. Many people spend some time during their lives in which gov't stats would classify them as poor. Id also note that the EITC kicks in above the official poverty level, and you have to be filing income tax to claim it, so you have to be working. This is more about "the working poor", and by this it means people above the official poverty line as well as below.
August 14, 200816 yr and people want to gentrify OTR.....sad lets make all the poor people move way out in the suburbs cuz we finally wanna come back to city and be hip! I think this trend continues (even picks up) as the housing stock in places like inner city Cincy and C-Town either needs to be demoed no
August 23, 200816 yr and people want to gentrify OTR.....sad lets make all the poor people move way out in the suburbs cuz we finally wanna come back to city and be hip! I think this trend continues (even picks up) as the housing stock in places like inner city Cincy and C-Town either needs to be demoed no I don't like the term gentrify because it injects a "Rich vs. Poor" mentality to projects, when really the goal of any non-government project is to make money, whether it's in the suburbs or in the city. Businesspeople see an opportunity to buy something cheap and bring out its full potential, in order to make a profit. That's what businesspeople do, and there's nothing wrong with that. Without investors like this, nothing would every get done, anywhere. However, for the purpose of this discussion, OTR needs to be gentrified if it is going to survive. And when I say "it", I'm referring to the gorgeous historic architecture that defines OTR. Most of the that neighborhood is vacant currently (I believe Councilman Chris Bortz stated ~70%), and vacant buildings will only remain structurally sound for so long. I think that there are only two choices for OTR. 1) Allow and encourage structures to be refreshed, rehabbed, and reinvented in order to spur interest in the neighborhood, or 2) fight "gentrification" loudly and publicly and watch the neighborhood vanish as these amazing buildings are slowly demolished over the next few decades. I'm hoping for choice number 1.
August 23, 200816 yr if you really want to displace the current residents of OTR, do nothing for another 30 years, it falls down, residents are gone.
August 23, 200816 yr ^Exactly. Doing nothing is much worse than so-called gentrification. We can restore OTR without pushing out current residents, we just need to go about it in a deliberate, well-planned fashion.
August 23, 200816 yr ^The current residents have had their chance in the neighborhood, and we see its current state. I'm all for preserving character of the neighborhood, but OTR is one hood I wouldn't care if the current "culture" is chased out.
August 24, 200816 yr agree w/ edale!! You gotta be kidding me if you are against "gentrification" in OTR.
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