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Duane Casares wants to restore Kimberly Parkway, a neighborhood on the southeast side of Columbus that surrounds the old Eastland Mall. “Kimberly has a terrible infant mortality problem and a high eviction rate. Many of its residents live at the federal poverty level ($26,200 for a family of four), are there are no youth-oriented services—libraries, recreation centers, YMCAs or Boys & Girls Clubs—anywhere.”

Casares and the non-profit agency he heads, Direction for Youth and Families, work to strengthen families and transform communities. Now that DYF has been gifted an abandoned recreation center on Kimberly Parkway, Casares is focused on restoring the neighborhood—a heavy lift.

The first issue is dealing with unemployment. “If you’re were unemployed while the economy was doing well, you’re probably unemployable for lack of self-regulation, addiction and years of trauma that resulted from a variety of causes,” Casares explains. “These folks don’t need job training. They need to learn how to function in society. The job training comes later.”

Next is education. “We’ve all heard that if you can’t read by third grade, you’re likely destined for a life of crime and prison, but that just speaks to correlation, not causation. A youngster’s inability to read springs from various sources of dysfunction and stress in his life. We have to deal with those issues first.”

After education comes housing, which brings us back to the poverty issue. Columbus enjoys a staggering low unemployment rate of 3.8 percent, but the number of residents living at twice the poverty level has been at or above 400,000 since 2010. Stated another way, too many people are employed at jobs that pay too little, and there isn’t enough housing, meaning housing costs have been increasing at a rate that many residents can’t afford.

Michael Wilkos, senior vice president at United Way of Central Way, sees the housing problem getting worse. “As Columbus’ population grows, so does the number of people living in poverty. If Franklin County continues to grow at the same rate, by 2030, there will be over 200,000 new residents, a third of them will be living at twice the poverty level. Where will these additional low-income residents live?”

Even putting aside the poverty issue, not enough housing is being built. According to the local housing experts, Columbus needs 14,000 new housing units each year to meet population growth, but only 8,000 are produced annually.

When you combine increasing population, stagnant wages for workers at the bottom of the economic ladder and insufficient housing stock, neighborhoods change. A look at the past provides perspective.

Local economic think tank Regionomics calculated that in 1980, 40 percent of German Village residents and 34 percent of Victorian Village residents lived at the poverty level. By 2015, those percentages dropped to seven and 16, respectively.

The low-income earners didn’t suddenly land higher paying jobs. They moved out because of escalating housing prices. Both neighborhoods are where they are today because of gentrification—a sudden influx of people with substantially higher incomes who bought modest and neglected houses and turned them into houses that command high prices.

The median price for a single-family residence in Columbus is $209,900, according to Columbus Realtors. The houses in German Village and Victorian Village have median values, according to Zillow, of $432,000 and $382,000, respectively.

Gentrification isn’t an issue for Kimberly, but stagnant wages and increasing rents are. The median household income has barely moved since 2000. With an inflation rate of 46 percent since 2000, Kimberly residents have less buying power they did years ago, while the median rent in the area has increased from $560 to $732.

Local government is investing in affordable housing. Last year’s increase in conveyance fees on real estate transactions is estimated to generate $6.5 million slated for affordable housing. The city passed a $50 million bond and has partnered with local corporations, philanthropic partners and government to raise a $100 million loan fund, all to support affordable housing.  The question is, will the bonds be enough? The second question is, how much more difficult will the coronavirus make it to restore Kimberly?

[This post was published in The Columbus Dispatch on April 27, 2020.]

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Jack D’Aurora writes for Considerthisbyjd.com

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