Rochester - Extreme Poverty Is Spreading
From the D&C:
Over the past decade, the poverty rate in this Arnett Boulevard neighborhood has doubled. Forty-four percent of Morehouse’s neighbors now live below the poverty line, census figures show, and 59 percent of them are children. And total population has increased.
Poverty is becoming more concentrated and enveloping more of Rochester and other U.S. cities. The number of people living in neighborhoods in which 40 percent or more of residents are below the poverty line increased by one-third nationally in the past decade, according to a Brookings Institution report released last week.
No surprise - as the 1% sucks the money out of the economy, it affects everyone, the poorest first. Rochester is being affected similarly to almost everywhere in the country. The question is, what can we do about it at the city/regional level?
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There is a lot of poverty in the suburbs too. That should have been an opening for the dems but they punted it with a narrow emphasis on fiscal management. Democrats should not simply try to out tax cut republicans. There are pressing social issues like poverty even on the local level and even in the suburbs if not Brighton (ouch). In the older suburbs like Gates Greece and Irondequoit there seem to be real and growing pockets of poverty.
Rochester has had one of the highest poverty rates in the Northeast for many years. The riots started the death of a thousand cuts for Rochester, followed by outsourcing, higher taxes for less return, higher unemployment, which has led to higher crime rates, drug-infested neighborhoods (in the city and suburbs), lower literacy rates, higher teen pregancy rates (highest per capita in N.Y.), fewer high school graduates, which leads to fewer college graduates, which has led to less economic growth, taxpayer-funded boondoogles that our inept, brainless leadership keep shoving down our throats… the list could go on for a long time. The first step is a realization that we have a problem, which the elite in this community (the business, cultural and political “leadership”) fail to recognize, instead telling us how “wonderful” it is to live here. What’s so great about being in a place where you can’t even find a minimum wage job with a college degree? How can it be wonderful. Maybe for Tom Richards, who got a $10 million pay from RGS, sure it’s great. But what about the rest of us?
this in face of of numerous headlines perptually touting Rochester’s “growing” economy, like this one: http://www.rbj.net/article.asp?aID=189513
When did it become in Rochester’s best interest to continually fail to report and act on this and instead to try to fool people by pretending as if the community is prospering. Does “leadership” believe that it will keep younger people in the area and prevent them from job seeking elsewhere. When will we start to discuss the real issues of poverty in Rochester, to discuss the real issue of wage disintergration in Rochester? I find it disgusting and offensive that the media and other analysts of the area really gloss over these issues and instead want to act as if there is nothing wrong.
Adding one more comment to this:
the “improvement that Rochester saw in its economic outlook, as reported by numerous outlets by way of the increase in overall employment numbers, still represents a 2.81% dcline since the end of 2011. That decline was at 4.38% in September. Again, that represents JUST overall job numbers without taking into factor anything to do with wage or real income, poverty levels, etc.