Hartford, Connecticut: a future reality for Minneapolis?
A Tale of Two Cities, revisited.
FYI , I'm a transplant from that area; been here in
Mpls for 20 years now, raised three kids, and now
getting ready to escape. I like this study because I'm going
to let the traditional Democratic leadership, in this case
the elected officials of Hartford and the heavily Democratic
Connecticut Teachers Union make the case here.
Let's take the basic stats of Hartford, CN, state capitol,
separated by ten years, from the period 1983 to 1993
A very pro-liberal democratic city, prounion, powerful teacher's
organizations. Oldest newspaper in the USA.
In 1983 it was the wealthy city in the wealthiest per capita
state; had
an abundance of corporate headquarters. The older downtown area boasted
highly maintained historic architecture, high rentals, yuppie condo
development over gourmet coffee bars and thriving high tech spinoffs
from Boston and New York. People were putting tons of money
into making condos in the 19th century downtown buildings instead of
buying much more affordable new condos in the suburbs.
In 1993: 1/30 of its buildings are listed as 'abandoned'. It has
the crime rate of Newark. The tax base is non existent, the downtown
corridor is being boarded as stores closed after the middle class has
left. The school system is 97% minority, with over 90% of the
students failing the state 6th grade tests, and over 40% even after
remediation. The ACLU is taking the state to court to force busing
to the suburbs in a closely watched civil rights case that will be
pivotal to the litigation of forced busing. (It failed, sep story,
state took over schools, no improvement)
I became interested in Hartford because I grew up near there
and could not visualize it as how relatives describe it now;
and discovered on the net that the ZPG, in a city livability
study, included it in the 5 worst cities in US. (The others are
Detroit, Gary, Ind, St. Louis, MO, Newark) Great company!
Using the ZPG's data I found parallels with Minneapolis,
particularly
its inner city zip-code crime rates, which are comparable with Newark.
Then I began to find others.
There aren't any short answers on why a city implodes. The school
system, threats of mandatory busing, crime rates etc; are fairly
constant
for cities during that period. One thing Iv'e noticed in crime stats
using the
website Crime.com is that by themselves they don't predict which cities
are
still operable. It's because middle class people don't commit
measurable
crime. In fact after the middle class has abandoned a city the crime
rate is
likely to dip because the predators don't have easy access to their prey
any more.
This allows city administrations to point at charts indicating how
successful their
new programs are. The Hartford area did have a lot of job loss during
the
50's through the 70s as clothing manufacturers relocated overseas.
But its white collar and high tech industry never stopped thriving, it
just moved
to the suburbs. So what happened?
The city's newly elected leadership in 96 seemed to know. One of
the first
things they did in 1996 was sponsor and pass 8-0 a piece legislation
that
would halt the spread of non profits, the quoted 'poverty industry'.
The deputy mayor who authored this legislation is quoted in a New
York
Times article by a reporter who obviously didn't like the story. But
even after he interviewed all the non profit administrators who told him
how awful and unfair it was to 'blame the poor' he did give Mrs. Frances
Sanchez a few sentences. She did a walking tour of the city, how it
was in the 80's, how it is now after, as she puts it, 'Poverty Inc'
took it over.
I looked up her biography, Frances Sanches is an immigrant from
Puerto Rico with a bachelors in Chemistry from the University of PR,
then took a Masters in Spec Ed in this country, a lifelong family and
children activist, retired from 34 yrs of pub school teaching,
keynote speaker in 96 Demo convention, and grandmother who has lived
25 years in the city.
I also noticed in the makeup of the reform ticket that most were
long
aware of the city's downward path, but social workers, police, teachers
had careers to protect. Notice that Ms Sanchez began to speak up and
run
for office only after she retired.
The accompanying literature shows that no dramatic improvement is
expected, because these imploded cities are remarkably resistant to
change. Basically to entice the middle class back in, you have to
remove the current population who drove them out.
Here's some of the points of interest. The leadership of the
non profits, reacting to being held responsible for the city's decline,
aren't blaming their clients of course. They blame the middle class
who doesn't even live there any more. They were supposed to stick around
to pick up the tab. Theyr'e not even IN the city any more and are
blamed for its problems!
The organizations fighting Deputy Mayor Sanchez' limits on non
profits
are of course our old friends who rose to defend the drug dealers we
tried to evict and singlehandedly changed the demographics of
Minneapolis, Legal Aid and Lutheran Social Services.
The powerful teacher's union that the ACLU included as expert
witnesses in testifying how bad the schools are, damaged their own
case by showing that the city's family and cultural environment was
so toxic the kids were handicapped even before they started school.
(court briefs on request)
So of interest to me were these parallels, that were early
warnings in 1983 if anyone in Hartford were to notice.
In fact I can refer to a Harvard study in 1965 that predicted
trouble for Hartford because of the growing differences between
city and suburbs.
> One-party rule, with the always present non-elected non profits
as a second form of government, whose leadership are political
appointments from the same party.
* Our non profits are also powerful, the NRP, MCDA, McKnight,
Lutheran Social Services, Catholic Charities and numerous others
have a big impact on our community, but are not elected. Lutheran
Social Services shows the same militant social engineering attitudes
I see in the NY Times article quoting the non profits in Hartford.
They are staffed by people who see charity as a career path.
And how does a non profit grow? It provides no service or product
that people pay for. It can only grow by increasing its caseload,
and thus its budget and salaries.
> Hartford tries to prevent middle class parents from removing
their kids and putting them in suburban schools.
* Minneapolis did the same thing, stopping it only when a study
showed it was counter productive, young families moved to suburbs..
> A high child poverty rate.
* Minneapolis shows as actually poorer in its inner city zips than
cities like
Newark. A huge percentage of the kids qualify for free lunch programs.
> A much higher number of schools and students who failed the state's
elementary grade testing.
* Recent school test scores in December for Minneapolis were
dismal,
much lower than hoped for.
Hartford county's crime rate wasn't and isn't bad, but its inner city
zip codes were an order of magnitude higher.
* Hartford County crime rate is .94, but its
inner city zip codes average 336. 100 is national average.
* Hennepin County crime rate is 1.4 but its
8 inner city zip codes average 338.
For those interested in legal landmark cases is
the foundation for the ACLU's appeal of the case they lost
the first time, was when they tried to bus ALL the students to
the suburbs despite records amounts of money spent on
the inner city schools. .
The Education Union officials who were called on as witnesses
for the ACLU's case said Hartford had become such a toxic
environment that the kids were emotionally damaged before they even
started school.
So, liberals can learn, but it seems they have to see their city
destroyed first. I wonder if that's what we need to do.
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