* 12th highest rate of poverty (24.3% - a rate higher than New York , Chicago, Los Angeles and Baltimore); * 9th lowest median household income ($21006); * 9th greatest population loss during the 1990s (-5%); * 6th lowest percent of new homes built between 1980 and 1990; * And 9th lowest home ownership rate (35%)
More recently federal census data for 2000 show that Cincinnati stands as the 8th most racially segregated city in the United States as measured by an `index of dissimilarity`. What more, this represents a worsening from its position as the 18th most segregated city a decade ago.
(Cincinnati Black United Front, "Historical Racism In Cincinnati," December 25, 2002, <http://www.cbuf.info/news.ihtml?cmemstep=1&nid=100&catid=112>) *****
***** [A] new study by American City Business Journals, the parent company of the Courier, suggests that economic segregation is actually a bigger problem in the North than in the South. And the study showed that Cincinnati is one of the most economically segregated cities in the United States.
Cincinnati had the nation's sixth-highest income gap between whites and blacks, the study showed. The top five cities were Milwaukee; Buffalo, N.Y.; Minneapolis-St. Paul; New Orleans; and Rochester, N.Y., according to an ACBJ analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data.
The data showed the median household income for white households in Cincinnati is $47,758; for black households it's $25,858. That means the median black household earns about $541 for every $1,000 that the median white household earns.
(Lucy May and G. Scott Thomas, "City's Economic Segregation High," Cincinnati Business Courier, December 30, 2002, <http://www.bizjournals.com/cincinnati/stories/2002/12/30/story2.html>) *****
***** Bureaucratic enrichment zone. (A Radical Proposal Wasted).(Cincinnati Empowerment Corporation) Reason, May, 2003, by Jesse Walker
CINCINNATI'S "empowerment zone" program, a federally funded effort to jump-start development in several low-income neighborhoods, has just been audited by the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). According to the report, administrators at the Cincinnati Empowerment Corporation have misspent thousands of dollars and failed to account for hundreds of thousands more. Meanwhile, much of the money that was spent "properly" nonetheless failed to achieve the program's goals.
HUD found that one zone-funded company, Nu-Blend Paints Inc., "failed to complete job training or employ a single zone resident--despite spending $239,489," The Cincinnati Enquirer reports. "The Empowerment Corp. disagrees, saying it provided check stubs and documents to show one employee completed job training." . . .
<http://www.findarticles.com/cf_dls/m1568/1_35/99933009/p1/article.jhtml> *****