Great article with the kind of research we no longer get from our newspaper. I was elected to the school board immediately following the closing of two small schools in the inner city of Davenport due to funding issues. Closing schools particularly K thru 5 kills neighborhoods. The state continues to underfund public education and last year made it worse by funding private religious schools for the most part. If we spent the money to keep schools open, provide assistance for home ownership in those neighborhoods, we would have a chance at improving our poverty issues significantly. Without that kind of investment, we will continue experiencing outcomes like increased crime.
I lived in an area of Cedar Rapids which was considered the "hood", for 37 years. I have since moved to rural Iowa where by circumstances, I live well. Your story is a reminder of my old home, uUnfortunately it leaves out Cedar Rapids. Many of the things you speak, people living in these areas can justify; they have seen it happen. It makes it very clear what politicians and develpers do in these areas which completely miss the mark. I was confronted by a man who represented acompany who were coming into our neighborhood with the help of all kinds of government money for "re-developing" our home turf. What they were doing was gutting our century old homes and rebuilding them like they were new. No more plaster and lath, no more old woodwork, all new plumbing, all new heating systems and air conditioning, all new bathrooms, all new kitchens, all new windows, all new siding and roofs. Then they would sell them to people looking for housing in the new "Hospital District" with deep discounts! The president of this organization and I met head to head so he could try and understand why I was bad mouthing his efforts to "improve" the neighborhood. I started off with a couple of questions, "how long have you lived in Cedar Rapids? followed by, "how long have you lived in this neighborhood?"
It started off OK, he had lived in Cedar Rapids 10 years, more than I had expected. After that, the reality of the situation came crashing in, he had never lived in the neighborhood! Worse, he couldn't see how that mattered! With no understanding of what I was getting at I attempted to show him what he could not see, and since we were right in the middle of the neighborhood at the time, I asked him to look across the street and tell me what he ssaw, he didn't understand the question. I zeroed in a bit and said , "Do you see anything wrong where the street joins the other one" He still didn't get the question. So to make it crystal clear, I explained what people would see who live here, that he couldn't see because he doesn't live here.
"People here don't have lots of options they ride the bus or they walk to get where they are going. Look at the cross walk, you didn't notice water sitting on each end of the cross walk? You also didn't notice the drains on both sides of the street three feet away that are getting no water from those low spots in the cross walk." He still didn't understand how that had anything to do with his project, or why the locals were not happy!
I tried to explain it to him in words he probably still didn't get, but I gave it a shot. "You walk in here and think you have all the answers to "our" problems. You have no idea how you are affecting the lives of people who have lived here for years and struggled to keep a house they could afford. With every house you completely rebuild you are increasing the property values and taxation for all your "neighbors". At the sametime you are getting butt loads of money to do exactly that, and pushing people out of their homes as a result. You see it as "cleaning up the neighborhood" we see it as you taking over. At least the people dealing drugs and shooting up the neighborhood weren't pushing us out!
This was a middle class neighborhood that went from here to the east and gradually became more wealthy the further east you went. All that changed when Robert Armstrong sold a lot on the far end of the neighborhood to a black doctor and instantly "white flight" happened. The large Methodist Church in the neighborhood became the epicenter and suddenly all those who could afford it moved to "Lovely Lane" Methodist church within two blocks of the soon to be built Kennedy High School! As that happened, the cities interest in the old neighborhood declined with the property values and suddenly our neighborhood became the dumping ground for every halfway house, every shelter house, every cheap apartment house and the zoning reflected that until we changed it by using the funding they were spending on the neighborhood against them! The Community Development Bloc Grant Program was being squandered on what the city wanted to do and we, as residents, were supposed to approve it, with a small chunk set aside for sidewalks and trees for us to decide where to put them! The trick to it all was the bloc grant program was established to help neighborhoods remain neighborhoods. So when we went with a petition to down zone the neighborhood, it passed without a whimper! My guess is they figured out we would take them to court if they didn't because they were not holding up their end of the bargain with the CDBG program. We could bring a suit against them for mis-appropriating the governments money if they were not doing what the grant proposed. The city didn't expend a dime of their own money in our neighborhood if they could keep from it.
The local Catholic Church had hired an organizer on a short term to try and improve the neighborhood and he was leaving, never to be replaced, unfortunately. So, without him, we quickly lost ground that we had dilligently worked to get power back in our hands. The city didn't waste time, they went to work trying to undo everything we had accomplished. Which had lead the city to this new attempt to cover up the failures they were resposible for in the first place by bringing in this current outfit that was pouring money into the neighborhood in an attempt to "erase the crime" and not talking about who else they were erasing!
Well, it is working! and now that criminal activity has been pushed out of the old neighborhood; shootings are happening all over town and rarely are they happening here! Our streets are still full of potholes, and water still settles in low spots in the cross walks, but property taxes are on the rise even if nothing gets done in the neighborhood, so all the power people are happy! Now I see new shelter houses in the neighborhood being established so things are getting back to "normal". The Police ignore calls, the street department does its best to make a joke out of the local streets, the engineering department doesn't bother with checking anything and life goes on! The President of the organization has moved on and some other monkey is probably in charge of the housing project. It is unfortunate, but no longer on my radar, although I sympatize with those who live there.
Thinks for your reporting on this problem. As I think I may have said before, my wife taught elementary school for many years in the inner city of Davenport. Many people I talked to over the years said they were unaware Davenport had an inner city with high poverty levels!
Ed—This is the kind of reporting that legacy newspapers used to do and which is sorely missed in these times. It is obvious you are working hard at this and I look forward to the next piece in the series. Congratulations, Richard
Ed, I've read through both parts of this series. This is important work and you really did your research. I worked with Dave Peters on a series Lyle Muller and I did for Iowa Watch on "Shrink Smart" communities -- rural towns not gaining population but which still seem able to do cool things.
We looked at the disadvantaged census tracts in Waterloo when I was at the Courier. What we noticed, superimposed over decades-old racist practices like redlinining, is that there is an inverse relationship between home ownership and poverty -- which is probably intuitively obvious. But one of the most disadvantaged areas of the city, besides the traditional disadvantaged east side, is the near west-side neighborhoods near downtown where a lot of older homes (some of them really nice architecturally) have become rentals. These were where my grade school classmates grew up. New immigrant populations (Burmese, Congolese, Bosnian) have settled there until they build up wealth. Waterloo is definitely not as economically and racially segregated as it was when I was a kid but there's still a lot of work to do. But it is even more ethnically diverse than it was. We still have the highest percentage Black population and public school enrollment in the state (17 percent and 28 percent, respectively). And the nice part is we're actually seeing some investment on the old "north end" of the east side, prompted by Unity Point/Allen Hospital, some developers with an eye for reuse and the east side's proximity to the very prosperous community of Denver just across the Bremer County line. (See the Courier article linked below) There's been a bit of investment in the east side of town and it's nice to see but we have to penetrate deeper into those pockets of poverty you so aptly coined and identified, as is the case in your town of Davenport. And we need to encourage and cultivate more Black-owned and minority-owned businesses, which is starting to happen as well. Thanks again Ed. This is great stuff.
Those two tracts above the lowest in your map, Ed, represent part of the district that I represented in the Iowa Legislature from ‘73 through ‘81. I knew it well then, and it sadly seems that things have little improved there since. Investing in urban areas remains a challenge for the Iowa
Legislature today, it also the federal government. There has long lingered resentment and suspicion towards city dwellers by rural residents, and it show. Greg Cusack
Great article with the kind of research we no longer get from our newspaper. I was elected to the school board immediately following the closing of two small schools in the inner city of Davenport due to funding issues. Closing schools particularly K thru 5 kills neighborhoods. The state continues to underfund public education and last year made it worse by funding private religious schools for the most part. If we spent the money to keep schools open, provide assistance for home ownership in those neighborhoods, we would have a chance at improving our poverty issues significantly. Without that kind of investment, we will continue experiencing outcomes like increased crime.
I lived in an area of Cedar Rapids which was considered the "hood", for 37 years. I have since moved to rural Iowa where by circumstances, I live well. Your story is a reminder of my old home, uUnfortunately it leaves out Cedar Rapids. Many of the things you speak, people living in these areas can justify; they have seen it happen. It makes it very clear what politicians and develpers do in these areas which completely miss the mark. I was confronted by a man who represented acompany who were coming into our neighborhood with the help of all kinds of government money for "re-developing" our home turf. What they were doing was gutting our century old homes and rebuilding them like they were new. No more plaster and lath, no more old woodwork, all new plumbing, all new heating systems and air conditioning, all new bathrooms, all new kitchens, all new windows, all new siding and roofs. Then they would sell them to people looking for housing in the new "Hospital District" with deep discounts! The president of this organization and I met head to head so he could try and understand why I was bad mouthing his efforts to "improve" the neighborhood. I started off with a couple of questions, "how long have you lived in Cedar Rapids? followed by, "how long have you lived in this neighborhood?"
It started off OK, he had lived in Cedar Rapids 10 years, more than I had expected. After that, the reality of the situation came crashing in, he had never lived in the neighborhood! Worse, he couldn't see how that mattered! With no understanding of what I was getting at I attempted to show him what he could not see, and since we were right in the middle of the neighborhood at the time, I asked him to look across the street and tell me what he ssaw, he didn't understand the question. I zeroed in a bit and said , "Do you see anything wrong where the street joins the other one" He still didn't get the question. So to make it crystal clear, I explained what people would see who live here, that he couldn't see because he doesn't live here.
"People here don't have lots of options they ride the bus or they walk to get where they are going. Look at the cross walk, you didn't notice water sitting on each end of the cross walk? You also didn't notice the drains on both sides of the street three feet away that are getting no water from those low spots in the cross walk." He still didn't understand how that had anything to do with his project, or why the locals were not happy!
I tried to explain it to him in words he probably still didn't get, but I gave it a shot. "You walk in here and think you have all the answers to "our" problems. You have no idea how you are affecting the lives of people who have lived here for years and struggled to keep a house they could afford. With every house you completely rebuild you are increasing the property values and taxation for all your "neighbors". At the sametime you are getting butt loads of money to do exactly that, and pushing people out of their homes as a result. You see it as "cleaning up the neighborhood" we see it as you taking over. At least the people dealing drugs and shooting up the neighborhood weren't pushing us out!
This was a middle class neighborhood that went from here to the east and gradually became more wealthy the further east you went. All that changed when Robert Armstrong sold a lot on the far end of the neighborhood to a black doctor and instantly "white flight" happened. The large Methodist Church in the neighborhood became the epicenter and suddenly all those who could afford it moved to "Lovely Lane" Methodist church within two blocks of the soon to be built Kennedy High School! As that happened, the cities interest in the old neighborhood declined with the property values and suddenly our neighborhood became the dumping ground for every halfway house, every shelter house, every cheap apartment house and the zoning reflected that until we changed it by using the funding they were spending on the neighborhood against them! The Community Development Bloc Grant Program was being squandered on what the city wanted to do and we, as residents, were supposed to approve it, with a small chunk set aside for sidewalks and trees for us to decide where to put them! The trick to it all was the bloc grant program was established to help neighborhoods remain neighborhoods. So when we went with a petition to down zone the neighborhood, it passed without a whimper! My guess is they figured out we would take them to court if they didn't because they were not holding up their end of the bargain with the CDBG program. We could bring a suit against them for mis-appropriating the governments money if they were not doing what the grant proposed. The city didn't expend a dime of their own money in our neighborhood if they could keep from it.
The local Catholic Church had hired an organizer on a short term to try and improve the neighborhood and he was leaving, never to be replaced, unfortunately. So, without him, we quickly lost ground that we had dilligently worked to get power back in our hands. The city didn't waste time, they went to work trying to undo everything we had accomplished. Which had lead the city to this new attempt to cover up the failures they were resposible for in the first place by bringing in this current outfit that was pouring money into the neighborhood in an attempt to "erase the crime" and not talking about who else they were erasing!
Well, it is working! and now that criminal activity has been pushed out of the old neighborhood; shootings are happening all over town and rarely are they happening here! Our streets are still full of potholes, and water still settles in low spots in the cross walks, but property taxes are on the rise even if nothing gets done in the neighborhood, so all the power people are happy! Now I see new shelter houses in the neighborhood being established so things are getting back to "normal". The Police ignore calls, the street department does its best to make a joke out of the local streets, the engineering department doesn't bother with checking anything and life goes on! The President of the organization has moved on and some other monkey is probably in charge of the housing project. It is unfortunate, but no longer on my radar, although I sympatize with those who live there.
Thinks for your reporting on this problem. As I think I may have said before, my wife taught elementary school for many years in the inner city of Davenport. Many people I talked to over the years said they were unaware Davenport had an inner city with high poverty levels!
Ed—This is the kind of reporting that legacy newspapers used to do and which is sorely missed in these times. It is obvious you are working hard at this and I look forward to the next piece in the series. Congratulations, Richard
Hope you decide to review the west side of Rock Island and Moline. The situation in Rock Island in particular is similar.
Ed, I've read through both parts of this series. This is important work and you really did your research. I worked with Dave Peters on a series Lyle Muller and I did for Iowa Watch on "Shrink Smart" communities -- rural towns not gaining population but which still seem able to do cool things.
We looked at the disadvantaged census tracts in Waterloo when I was at the Courier. What we noticed, superimposed over decades-old racist practices like redlinining, is that there is an inverse relationship between home ownership and poverty -- which is probably intuitively obvious. But one of the most disadvantaged areas of the city, besides the traditional disadvantaged east side, is the near west-side neighborhoods near downtown where a lot of older homes (some of them really nice architecturally) have become rentals. These were where my grade school classmates grew up. New immigrant populations (Burmese, Congolese, Bosnian) have settled there until they build up wealth. Waterloo is definitely not as economically and racially segregated as it was when I was a kid but there's still a lot of work to do. But it is even more ethnically diverse than it was. We still have the highest percentage Black population and public school enrollment in the state (17 percent and 28 percent, respectively). And the nice part is we're actually seeing some investment on the old "north end" of the east side, prompted by Unity Point/Allen Hospital, some developers with an eye for reuse and the east side's proximity to the very prosperous community of Denver just across the Bremer County line. (See the Courier article linked below) There's been a bit of investment in the east side of town and it's nice to see but we have to penetrate deeper into those pockets of poverty you so aptly coined and identified, as is the case in your town of Davenport. And we need to encourage and cultivate more Black-owned and minority-owned businesses, which is starting to happen as well. Thanks again Ed. This is great stuff.
https://wcfcourier.com/news/local/north-crossing-development-waterloo/article_34d36d7c-2251-11ee-b63e-3ff3fe9b9be4.html
Those two tracts above the lowest in your map, Ed, represent part of the district that I represented in the Iowa Legislature from ‘73 through ‘81. I knew it well then, and it sadly seems that things have little improved there since. Investing in urban areas remains a challenge for the Iowa
Legislature today, it also the federal government. There has long lingered resentment and suspicion towards city dwellers by rural residents, and it show. Greg Cusack