Cleveland Plain-Dealer, August 29, 2007: Ohio cities attract the poor
Barb Galbincea and Robert L. Smith
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.
For the second year in a row, Ohio was the only state with two big cities among the country’s 10 poorest. Cleveland ranked fourth. Cincinnati was third.
More than a quarter of residents are poor in six of Ohio’s 10 largest cities. Only Texas had more cities — eight — where the poverty rate topped 25 percent, according to census figures.
“Some people will say, Who cares?’ ” said Hazel Morrow-Jones, a professor of city and regional planning at Ohio State University. “But this state really can’t progress unless we get our cities back on track.”
Gov. Ted Strickland, who took office in January, said he was saddened by the Ohio figures.
“Those are numbers and statistics, but they represent children, older folks and struggling families,” he said. “It’s just something that we’ve got to continuously keep in front of us.”
Nationally, the poverty rate dipped slightly from 12.6 percent in 2005 to 12.3 percent. And there was encouraging news for Cleveland.
Fourth is better than ranking first
Along with shedding its unwanted mantle as America’s poorest big city — dropping to fourth behind Detroit, Buffalo and Cincinnati — Cleveland saw median household income rise more than $1,700. Yet, even with the increase to $26,535, it still ranked lowest among the nation’s biggest cities.
Mayor Frank Jackson said that while it’s better to be ranked fourth than first in poverty, “That doesn’t change the challenge. That doesn’t change what we have to do to make sure we don’t make that list at all.”
He said education and training are key to raising Cleveland’s median household income. Jackson also said a more highly trained work force will attract more high-wage jobs and stoke the regional economy, something he considers critical to Cleveland’s well-being.
In both Lorain and Youngstown, the percentage of poor jumped dramatically, and Cincinnati, ranked as the nation’s eighth poorest big city last year, wound up third. Youngstown also had the lowest median household income — $21,850 — of any American city with at least 65,000 residents. Nationwide, median income was over $48,000.
In Lorain, poverty shot from 17.6 percent in 2005 to 26 percent — the biggest leap measured in Ohio.
“It doesn’t surprise me at all,” said Lorain City Council President Ken Shawver, a lifelong resident. “Is it something we should be desperately concerned about? Yes.”
He said his city, hit hard by job losses, has to attract more people with disposable income, perhaps by redeveloping old neighborhoods and enhancing what Shawver calls the city’s curb appeal.
James Gepperth, program director for the Catholic Charities Family Center of Lorain, already had seen signs of growing distress before the census bureau put a number to the problem.
He asks people eating a free, hot meal at the center to fill out a survey. This year, 63 percent of diners said the meal was probably the only one they would eat that day, a 10 percent increase over last year.
Since March, Gepperth has tracked a growing number of families coming to the center for diapers and baby food. Ninety-six percent of those families said they live on less than $10,000 a year.
Poor seek refuge in city’s services
Ericka Thoms, a policy and planning associate for the Center for Community Solutions in Cleveland, said she was surprised by the spread of poverty across Ohio’s mid-sized cities.
Thoms said she suspects that poor people have moved back to cities because of the services available, while the middle-class fled.
As repositories of the poor, that makes recovery of the cities key to fighting poverty in Ohio, she said.
“We’re not seeing the kind of recovery numbers we should be seeing. We’re still not back at 2001 levels,” said Thoms, noting that median income fell statewide and child poverty grew slightly in 2006.
Like Thoms, Mark Salling, a Cleveland State University demographer, believes Ohio remains in recession.
However, he said new, more affluent residents, have helped drive down Cleveland’s poverty rate.
“If there’s anything optimistic, I think maybe it’s reflecting the middle-class housing that’s been built in the city over the last five to 10 years,” he said.
But Salling said that even as Cleveland’s poverty numbers improve, the rate is rising faster in Columbus and Cincinnati.
Strickland said he wants to return Ohio to what it once was: a place of opportunity and growth. To do that, he intends to continue his push to extend health care to the working poor, to make a college education accessible, to encourage regional economic development and to enroll more kids in early-learning programs.
He has formed the Ohio Food Policy Advisory Council in part to ensure that food now being wasted or discarded can get to people in need; established a pilot project on affordable housing and preventing homelessness; and next year the Ohio Department of Job & Family Services will launch an employment program aimed at at-risk youths.
Strickland said many view poverty as a huge, intractable problem, “but I think we’ve got to keep some hope alive. ”