New report paints grim picture of poverty in the Rochester area

Rochester is the fifth poorest city in the country out of the
75 largest metro areas and the second poorest out of comparably sized cities,
according to a sobering new report from the Rochester Area Community Foundation
and ACT Rochester.

But what’s most distressing about the report’s findings is
the extreme concentration of poverty in Rochester, and the deep barriers to
social and economic progress it poses. When compared to other cities, Rochester’s
concentration of poverty is profound. [The report is attached below.]

“It’s abnormal,” says Edward Doherty, vice president of the
Rochester Area Community Foundation and author of the report. “This is not a
reflection of the typical urban environment.”

There are roughly 161,000 people living below the federal
poverty level in the nine-county Rochester region. But that statistic may be
low, considering that the federal guidelines are so low that many human service
professionals find them impractical. For example, a single person earning
$11,490 annually — just above the poverty line — would make $5.53 an hour or about what babysitters earn.

The big problem is that 66 percent of the region’s poor
reside in Monroe County and most are families with children living in the City
of Rochester. And while the region’s white population has a lower poverty rate
than the national average, the poverty rate for African Americans and Hispanics
is significantly higher.

Rochester’s high concentration of poverty is a product of a
historical mix of factors, Doherty says. A great in-migration of African
Americans who generally didn’t benefit from the area’s early manufacturing
boom, unregulated urban sprawl that attracted middle-class families away from
the city, lack of low-income suburban housing, and loss of low-skilled jobs
with Rochester’s big employers have all contributed to the city’s high poverty
rate, he says.

And those trends helped to pack the poor into highly
segregated African American and Hispanic neighborhoods, he says. The report cites
a Brookings Institution study showing that Rochester has 27 neighborhoods
distinguished by poverty rates of 40 percent or higher.

What troubles Doherty most, he says, are the missed
opportunities to reverse course. When it comes to sprawl and housing, for
example, local and state policies that could have mitigated the concentration
of poverty were never developed, he says.

“I think we are remarkably resistant to change,” he says. And
he says he hopes the report will encourage residents, politicians, and
community leaders to take action before it’s too late.

Doherty refers to research by David Rusk published in Rusk’s
book “Cities without Suburbs.” When a city loses 20 percent of its population
or more, has a minority population of 30 percent or more, and a significant
city-suburb income gap, the combination all but doom a central city socially
and economically, according to Rusk.

When this occurs, transformative change becomes more costly
and increasingly more difficult, Doherty says. This is especially evident in
Rochester’s schools, he says. Improving the educational outcomes of a district
where 88 percent of its students live below the poverty level — even with a
budget of three-quarters of a billion dollars — is going to be difficult, he
says.

Doherty says the report shows that there needs to be a
community conversation that puts everything on the table, including taboo
subjects like metro government.

“We really have to change something, he says.

Poverty report by jmouleatcity

This article appears in Dec 4-10, 2013.