WBEZ | census

House lawmakers dispute interests of having crowded prisons

Thu, 16 May 2013 07:22:00 -0500

A controversial measure that would change how the U.S. Census counts Illinois prison inmates is advancing in Springfield.

The census counts Illinois’ prison inmates as residents of the town the prison is in, not the town they came from.

That population can affect a region’s eligibility for government money.

State House members narrowly approved a bill Wednesday saying the state will start keeping track of an inmates’ last known address for census purposes.The measure passed with the bare minimum of favorable votes, 60-55.

The bill’s passage upset Republican State Rep. Chad Hays from Danville, which has a prison that currently holds about 1,800 inmates, according to the Illinois Department of Corrections.

“I just lost 2,000 residents,” Hays said after the vote.

He sarcastically said he’ll start sending expenses to the City of Chicago for projects paid for with government money.

But State Rep. Monique Davis of Chicago suggested those who have prisons in their districts have a financial interest in keeping their prisons full.

“Let’s see how many enhanced penalty bills will pass, let’s see how many new bills were put in the criminal code if that population is no longer valuable to certain groups,” she said.

The measure still needs the support of the Senate.

Tony Arnold covers Illinois politics for WBEZ. Follow him @tonyjarnold.

City's ward remap drawing more battle lines than boundaries

Fri, 16 Dec 2011 14:45:00 -0600

City Hall was tense Thursday and more political maneuvering was expected Friday. Aldermen have been fighting for electoral survival as they redraw the city’s ward boundaries, which they have to do every 10 years using new census data. But demographic shifts have made this decade’s debate more difficult than in the past. WBEZ’s political reporter Sam Hudzik joined Eight Forty-Eight to talk about the map-making mess.

Music Button: 11 Acorn Lane, "Hark The Herald Angels Sing", from the album Happy Holy Days, (self released)

New data paints stark portrait of nation’s poor

Thu, 03 Nov 2011 18:47:00 -0500

WASHINGTON (AP) — The ranks of America's poorest poor have climbed to a record high — 1 in 15 people — spread widely across metropolitan areas as the housing bust pushed many inner-city poor into suburbs and other outlying places and shriveled jobs and income.

New census data paint a stark portrait of the nation's haves and have-nots at a time when unemployment remains persistently high. It comes a week before the government releases first-ever economic data that will show more Hispanics, elderly and working-age poor have fallen into poverty.

In all, the numbers underscore the breadth and scope by which the downturn has reached further into mainstream America.

"There now really is no unaffected group, except maybe the very top income earners," said Robert Moffitt, a professor of economics at Johns Hopkins University. "Recessions are supposed to be temporary, and when it's over, everything returns to where it was before. But the worry now is that the downturn — which will end eventually — will have long-lasting effects on families who lose jobs, become worse off and can't recover."

Traditional inner-city black ghettos are thinning out and changing, drawing in impoverished Hispanics who have low-wage jobs or are unemployed. Neighborhoods with poverty rates of at least 40 percent are stretching over broader areas, increasing in suburbs at twice the rate of cities.

Once-booming Sun Belt metro areas are now seeing some of the biggest jumps in concentrated poverty.

Signs of a growing divide between rich and poor can be seen in places such as the upscale Miami suburb of Miami Shores, where nannies gather with their charges at a playground nestled between the township's sprawling golf course and soccer fields. The locale is a far cry from where many of them live.

One is Mariana Gripaldi, 36, an Argentinian who came to the U.S. about 10 years ago to escape her own country's economic crisis. She and her husband rent a two-bedroom apartment near Biscayne Bay in a middle-class neighborhood at the north end of Miami Beach, far from the chic hotels and stores.

But Gripaldi said in the past two years, the neighborhood has seen an increase in crime.

"The police come sometimes once or twice a night," she said in Spanish. "We are looking for a new place, but it's so expensive. My husband went to look at a place, and it was $1,500 for a two-bedroom, one bath. I don't like the changes, but I don't know if we can move."

About 20.5 million Americans, or 6.7 percent of the U.S. population, make up the poorest poor, defined as those at 50 percent or less of the official poverty level. Those living in deep poverty represent nearly half of the 46.2 million people scraping by below the poverty line. In 2010, the poorest poor meant an income of $5,570 or less for an individual and $11,157 for a family of four.

That 6.7 percent share is the highest in the 35 years that the Census Bureau has maintained such records, surpassing previous highs in 2009 and 1993 of just over 6 percent.

Broken down by states, 40 states and the District of Columbia had increases in the poorest poor since 2007, and none saw decreases. The District of Columbia ranked highest at 10.7 percent, followed by Mississippi and New Mexico. Nevada had the biggest jump, rising from 4.6 percent to 7 percent.

Concentrated poverty also spread wider.

After declining during the 1990s economic boom, the proportion of poor people in large metropolitan areas who lived in high-poverty neighborhoods jumped from 11.2 percent in 2000 to 15.1 percent last year, according to a Brookings Institution analysis released Thursday. Such geographically concentrated poverty in the U.S. is now at the highest since 1990, following a decade of high unemployment and rising energy costs.

Extreme poverty today continues to be prevalent in the industrial Midwest, including Detroit, Grand Rapids, Mich., and Akron, Ohio, due to a renewed decline in manufacturing. But the biggest growth in high-poverty areas is occurring in newer Sun Belt metro areas such as Las Vegas, Riverside, Calif., and Cape Coral, Fla., after the plummeting housing market wiped out home values and dried up construction jobs.

As a whole, the number of poor in the suburbs who lived in high-poverty neighborhoods rose by 41 percent since 2000, more than double the growth of such city neighborhoods.

Elizabeth Kneebone, a senior research associate at Brookings, described a demographic shift in people living in high-poverty neighborhoods, which have less access to good schools, hospitals and government services. As concentrated poverty spreads to new areas, including suburbs, the residents are now more likely to be white, native-born and high school or college graduates — not the conventional image of high-school dropouts or single mothers in inner-city ghettos.

The more recent broader migration of the U.S. population, including working- and middle-class blacks, to the South and to suburbs helps explain some of the shifts in poverty.

A study by the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies found that the population of 133 historically black ghettos had dropped 36 percent since 1970, as the U.S. black population growth slowed and many blacks moved to new areas. The newest residents in these ghettos are now more likely to be Hispanic, who have more than tripled their share in the neighborhoods, to 21 percent.

Just over 7 percent of all African-Americans nationwide now live in traditional ghettos, down from 33 percent in 1970.

"As extreme-poverty neighborhoods emerge in more places, that is shifting the general makeup of those populations," said Kneebone, the lead author of the Brookings analysis.

New 2010 poverty data to be released next week by the Census Bureau will show additional demographic changes.

The new supplemental poverty measure for the first time will take into account non-cash aid such as tax credits and food stamps, but also additional everyday costs such as commuting and medical care. Official poverty figures released in September only take into account income before tax deductions.

Based on newly released estimates for 2009, the new measure will show a significant jump in overall poverty. Poverty for Americans 65 and older is on track to nearly double after factoring in rising out-of-pocket medical expenses, from 9 percent to over 15 percent. Poverty increases are also anticipated for the working-age population because of commuting and child-care costs, while child poverty will dip partly due to the positive effect of food stamps.

For the first time, the share of Hispanics living in poverty is expected to surpass that of African-Americans based on the new measure, reflecting in part the lower participation of immigrants and non-English speakers in government aid programs such as housing and food stamps. The 2009 census estimates show 27.6 percent of all Hispanics living in poverty, compared with 23.4 percent for blacks.

Alba Alvarez, 52, a nanny who chatted recently in Miami, said she is lucky because her employer rents an apartment to her and her husband at a low rate in a comfortable neighborhood on the bay. But her adult children, who followed her to the U.S. from Honduras, are having a tougher time.

They initially found work in a regional wholesale fruit and vegetable market that supplies many local supermarkets. But her youngest son recently lost his job, and since he has no legal status, he cannot get any help from the government.

"As a mother, I feel so horrible. There's this sense of powerlessness. I wanted things to be better for them in this country," Alvarez said. "I (recently) suggested my youngest go back to Honduras. It's easier for me to help him there than here, where rent and everything is so expensive."

Reasons behind Humboldt Park's changing demographics

Fri, 17 Jun 2011 14:18:00 -0500

Humboldt Park has historically been the heart of Chicago’s Puerto Rican community. But the actual Puerto Rican population here began thinning in the 1980s. That was partly due to whites moving back to the city from the suburbs.

Along with new populations came higher rents and property taxes. That priced out some folks with lower incomes. The latest census data suggest Puerto Ricans are still leaving. To find out more Eight Forty-Eight talked with WBEZ’s West Side reporter Chip Mitchell.

Music Button: Arroyo, Hernandez, Martinez, Rodriguez perform Freddy Hubert's "Little Sunflower"

Population of Detroit plummets

Wed, 23 Mar 2011 11:56:00 -0500

The U.S. Census Bureau this week is out with the latest population count for Michigan. Michigan's biggest cities lost people, like lots of places in the Midwest.

Chicago's population declined by almost seven percent in the 2010 census numbers, and Cleveland's dropped by about 17 percent. But Detroit lost a quarter of its population over the last ten years.

It now has the same population that it had in 1910, before the auto industry boom. .

"Now's not the time to look in the rear view mirror," said Robert Ficano, the Executive for Wayne County, home to the Motor City. "Now's the time to look in the future and say 'ok, what do we do to recover and what do we do to stabilize ourselves here?'"

Ficano said he's not surprised by the population decline, given what's happened to the auto industry. He said going forward, economic diversification is key to Detroit's success.

A few Midwest cities gained population, including Columbus, Ohio and Indianapolis, Indiana.

Top cop: Chicago won’t redraw beat maps anytime soon

Tue, 22 Feb 2011 21:36:00 -0600

Chicago may not have enough cops in its highest-crime neighborhoods, but police Supt. Jody Weis says the city won’t redraw patrol maps anytime soon.

Realigning the city’s 285 beats would shift officers and cars to where they’re needed most, an idea popular with some aldermen on the city’s South and West sides. Weis himself had been talking it up for two years.

But aldermen in low-crime areas voiced fears that they would lose protection. And the Fraternal Order of Police said its contract constrained where the city could assign officers.

Now Weis is talking about a different approach. At a Chicago Police Board meeting last Thursday, the superintendent said the city would not redraw beat maps, at least for now. “We certainly don’t intend to do that until the wards have been redrawn,” Weis said, according to the meeting transcript.

What do political boundaries have to do with policing? WBEZ on Tuesday asked Weis spokeswoman Lt. Maureen Biggane, but she didn’t answer.

The police department, meanwhile, is sticking close to the status quo. In a written statement, Biggane said that includes sending mobile units to high-crime areas — an approach she calls less costly than realigning the beats.

“None of these methods entail realigning districts or beats,” Biggane wrote. “However, the process is continual and fluid. Additional data, including recent Census Bureau figures, will be taken into account as the process moves forward.”

Hammond now Northwest Indiana's largest city

Fri, 11 Feb 2011 02:21:00 -0600

In 1960 the population of Gary, Indiana, stood at 178,000. But after that zenith, the count was on the downslide. It started out as a trickle, but with each ten-year census, it was clear the number of people leaving the city was mounting.

Over the next five decades, Gary, the city once known as “The City of The Century,” took its knocks. It experienced racial strife, industrial layoffs and, at times, rampant crime. But even through all that, Gary had remained the largest city in Northwest Indiana.

Now, it’s lost that claim to fame.

U.S. Census Bureau data released Thursday show Gary lost more than 21 percent of its population during the last 10 years. The official count now stands at 80,294, less than half of the city’s population in 1960.

Gary’s neighbor to the West, Hammond, couldn’t help but notice the latest census numbers.

Despite the fact that Hammond saw a two percent decline in its own population, Gary lost population much more quickly between 2000 and today. So, Hammond can now boast being Lake County’s largest city, having edged out Gary by a mere 536 residents.

It’s the first time Hammond has recorded more residents than Gary since the 1910 census. Back then, Hammond had 20,000 residents to Gary’s 15,000. But Gary was a fledgling town; after all, it had only been established as a city in 1906. Hammond, meanwhile, had a running start; it was founded in 1884.

But none of this history matters to Hammond Mayor Tom McDermott, Jr.

He’s only concerned that Hammond has claimed the top spot in 2010.

“As mayor, I am thrilled beyond words,” McDermott said Thursday. “I have always felt that Hammond was going to be bigger than Gary by the 2020 census. But the fact that it came out bigger now, I was flabbergasted to be honest with you.”

McDermott said some predicted Hammond would lose far more than the 2,000 residents indicated in census data.

He said the attrition could be attributed to the city’s removal of a troublesome housing development on the city’s south side off the Borman Expressway.

Meanwhile, Rudy Clay, the mayor of Gary, was livid over the census data, and stated he believes the numbers are inaccurate.

“Gary has thousands of more residents than what’s on paper,” Clay said.

Clay said some residents simply refused to fill out census forms, with the consequence that Gary could lose eligibility for some federal funds.

Clay said the city plans to appeal the census bureau figures, all in the hope they do another count. He says Gary had such a recount 10 years ago, and that effort boosted the city’s official population figure by thousands.

Cook County tops the nation in black-owned businesses

Wed, 09 Feb 2011 06:01:00 -0600

Cook County topped the country in the number of black-owned businesses in 2007, according to recent data from the U.S. Census Bureau. That year the number of black-owned companies in the county reached 84,000, about 50 percent more than in 2002. The uptick in business ownership occurred at the same time the county's African-American population declined slightly.

Rashid Carter, professor of economics at Olive-Harvey College, says it's more important to look at the health of those businesses, as well as their staying power. He said many black businesses wind up shutting down when they can’t get enough capital, and that situation may have gotten worse since the data were collected in 2007. According to the National Bureau of Economic Research, an economic slump began in December 2007.

"You need an expanding and robust customer base and of course you need access to financing and along those two margins, black businesses have suffered catastrophically historically but especially in the last four to five years," Carter said.

The Census Bureau data show that nationally, black-owned businesses tend to be small, with revenue less than $50,000.

Census could fuel case for new Latino Congressional district

Wed, 29 Dec 2010 20:28:00 -0600

Illinois may be losing a Congressional seat, but new census figures could be good news for the state’s Latinos.

A U.S. Census Bureau estimate for 2009 suggests the number of Latinos in the state had grown by almost 440,000 since 2000. Census figures coming out early next year are expected to show those residents concentrated in the Chicago area.

If so, the U.S. Voting Rights Act might require Illinois to create its second mostly Latino Congressional district, according to attorney Virginia Martínez of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund.

“We need to ensure that our voice is not diluted by drawing lines that cut up our community,” Martínez said. “It impacts everything that affects us -- the future of immigration reform, lunch meals served to our children in schools.”

Martínez worked on a pair of 1981 lawsuits that led to the first Latino aldermanic ward in Chicago and the first Latino legislative district in Illinois. By 1992, the state had its first Latino Congressional district, represented ever since by Luis Gutiérrez, D-Chicago.

Martínez said a second Latino Congressional district would not have to come at the expense of African Americans. That is because Latinos have been settling in areas that had been mainly white, she said.

Illinois' loss of a Congressional seat may have a budget impact

Wed, 22 Dec 2010 06:11:00 -0600

The loss of a Congressional seat for Illinois means the state could lose out on federal dollars. Data from the 2010 Census show that Illinois has been growing more slowly than states in the south and west. Illinois grew by just 3 percent over the past decade while Nevada’s population jumped 35 percent. Arizona’s grew by 25 percent. Those states each gained a seat in Congress while Illinois lost one.

Alan Gitelson is a political science professor at Loyola University Chicago. He said as Illinois’s delegation shrinks, it may lose clout in Congress.

"As Illinois proportionately has fewer seats, it is likely to get proportionately less of federal funding and that it is problematic for the state," Gitelson said.

Gitelson said issues important to the Midwest in general may get less attention. Ohio lost two seats, while Michigan and Iowa each lost one. Indiana remained the same.