A national study released by the Brookings Institution reveals a steep decline in the concentration of poverty in Columbus and other metropolitan areas.
Columbus ranked No. 9 in the country in the decline of people living in high-poverty neighborhoods, according to the analysis. Between 1990 and 2000, the capital of Franklin County’s number of people living in poverty-stricken areas decreased by 48,020 people – 55.4 percent of the total population.
“Based on the trend of prior decades, one might have reasonably assumed that high-poverty neighborhoods were an unavoidable aspect of urban life and would continue to grow inexorably in size and population,” said Paul A. Jargowsky, author of the report titled Stunning Progress, Hidden Problems. “The latest evidence contradicts this gloomy assessment.”
Jargowsky is also the director of the Bruton Center for Development Studies at the University of Texas at Dallas.
The analysis was based on data from Census 2000 and indicated the number of people living in high-poverty neighborhoods – those with a poverty rate of 40 percent or higher – declined by 24 percent, or 2.5 million people.
Metropolitan areas in the Midwest, especially Columbus and Detroit, experienced the biggest turnaround. Regionally, the Midwest experienced a decrease of 45.6 percent in the population of poor neighborhoods.
“The decline in concentrated poverty represents, in part, the triumph of smart federal policies that demolished failed public housing, rewarded work and overhauled welfare,” said Bruce Katz, director of the Brookings Institution Center on Urban and Metropolitan Policy.
Mike Brown, spokesman for Mayor Michael Coleman, said he hopes the findings are a sign the city is bucking the national trend of urban-outward migration.
“The report seems to show that Columbus is actually taking a step in the opposite direction,” Brown said. “The deconstruction of poverty is happening much faster than outward migration, which is really the positive here.”
“The city of Columbus attributes the progress to an effort to reinvent areas east of Main Street – like Hamilton, Westland and Linden – so there are businesses to serve the neighbors living there,” said Dan Trevas, spokesman for the Columbus City Council.
The city created an affordable-housing program to improve low-income neighborhoods and provide several imperatives for continuing the trend of dispersing poverty.
“We spend a good deal of money on services that help families, work-force development, child and elderly care so that people can get self sufficient,” Trevas said. “It’s paying off in respect that there’s people having a chance to get out of poverty.”
However, evidence does not justify complacency, said Margery Turner, the director of the Metropolitan Housing and Communities Policy Center at the Urban Institute. A 26 percent increase in the population of impoverished neighborhoods occurred in the West; and although the national poverty rate did decrease, the number of persons classified as poor actually rose from 31.7 million to 33.9 million.
“Too many families and children still live in profoundly poor communities, cut off from economic and social opportunities,” Turner said.
In his report, Jargowsky said the issue of the concentrations of poor people in a geographic area has several effects. He said the spatial organization of poverty magnifies the issues faced by the poor and leads to social problems like low-performing school districts and hostile environments that hold many temptations.
Officials for the city of Columbus plan to continue reducing the concentration of poverty through a two-fold effort. The agenda aims to put people of the lower-end of the working level further out of bad neighborhoods and closer to working areas while providing more job training while encouraging job growth.
