http://www.freep.com/article/20110324/COL33/103240404/0/NEWS06/Stephen-Henderson-Growing-poverty-may-biggest-number
BY STEPHEN HENDERSON DETROIT FREE PRESS COLUMNIST Whether Detroit's number is 713,000 or 750,000 or 500,000, it is what it is. I've been to great cities of all sizes, and nothing in my experience tells me that bigger is inherently better. What really counts for Detroit is who has been leaving -- and who has been left behind. What really matters is that this smaller city becomes a stronger one, and that depends mightily on the ability to create critical mass -- both in population and economic density. Without a healthy middle class to spend the money that supports small businesses and pay the taxes that provide city services, revitalizing the city will be near impossible. Detroit will never dig out of its hole if it remains a city buried under with poverty and lack of education, with greater needs than there is capital to meet them. We don't yet have the economic census data for Detroit to match the population statistics released this week, but the trend has been dour. People with money and means are the ones who have left or are planning their getaway. The people who are staying are increasingly poor and isolated. A decade ago, the city's 2000 census numbers bore this out in stark and frightening ways. The poverty rate was a staggering 26%, and the median household income ranked 88th among the 100 largest cities. A majority of the city's children lived in households led by single parents, an indicator that tracks pretty closely with poverty. By the 2006-08 census estimates, things had gotten even worse. The poverty rate was 34%, and median household income had dropped to a point where 44% of the city's households were earning $25,000 or less each year. I've not seen anything that suggests the 2010 numbers will show any great reversal. And I've been reminded this week of a conversation last year with a Detroit pastor who said the pivotal number in his congregation had become $30,000. Once a family was earning that much, he lost them to the suburbs. The price of entry to inner-ring communities had fallen that low, and the collapse of Detroit city services, with the attendant struggle to find good schools or even feel safe, was driving a new exodus from the city. So the incredible shrinking Detroit is no longer a story of white flight or black out-migration. It's the green leaving. And this makes Mayor Dave Bing's task that much harder. Yes, the city has a new influx of young professionals and empty-nesters, mostly populating the downtown-to-Midtown corridor. And there are other programs on tap, like Live Detroit, that will expand in-migration over the next few years. A Web site that tracks tech jobs nationwide recently identified Detroit as the fastest-growing area for that kind of work. In other cities, that kind of momentum, in population growth as well as economic activity, has been the savior of the tax base, and the foundation on which revitalization was built. But there's a far greater challenge in figuring out how to aid an impoverished population as large as what's left in Detroit. There's a need for the kinds of jobs that don't exist anymore in this market and for the education to compete for more advanced jobs. There's a need for better city services than Detroit residents are getting now. But those are long-term investments. For the immediate future, Detroit has substantial population that cannot support itself and certainly cannot sustain the city. No doubt, the mayor's Detroit Works project aims to serve everyone better by moving people into more densely populated areas. Presumably, Bing also will try to grow the in-migration of areas such as downtown and Midtown. But the question is whether the city's staggering poverty, and the rate at which it's likely increasing, will just sap the positive momentum before it reaches its potential. Bing and other city leaders have to keep that from happening. It won't be easy to meet real needs today while also trying to build a better Detroit for tomorrow. This is no time to get hung up on a number. Detroit's future is not about how many. It's about who they are and how they can help the city get back on its feet. STEPHEN HENDERSON is editorial page editor of the Free Press. Contact him at 313-222-6659, or at shenderson600@freepres _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
