Hot News!
• Freestore Foodbank Battle of the Blogs!
• Cincinnati NAACP President shares update on Cincinnati Retirement Plan
Contact Us
v mail, fax: (214) 481-6464
e mail: click here
On today's date in The Beacon archives, we published:
•Fans find reality not reported by Enquirer (2007)•Open Letter to John Pepper about Disney Characters (2006)
•More Lack of Coverage from The Cincinnati Enquirer (2006)
Events
 |
|
|
Tuesday, December 04, 2007
Invisible Cincinnati Residents
Posted by Michael Earl Patton
In July, Mayor Mark Mallory announced the results of a study which purportedly showed that Cincinnati was actually growing—maybe even booming—in population. Specifically, that the city’s population is 46,007 more than what the U.S. Census Bureau estimated. A few questioned such a finding since a large increase seems at odds with the declining school population. Now there is further evidence of a continuing exodus from the city.
In the past election there were 61,465 ballots cast in the City of Cincinnati (this number may change slightly with the last recount). 2007 was an off-off year election—no President or Congress, and no mayor on the ballot. The previous off-off year election, 2003, there were 67,704 ballots cast in the city. This means a 9% decline in 4 years. In the county as a whole there were 200,286 cast in 2007 (again, this number may change slightly) and 184,082 in 2003. For the county as a whole there was a 9% increase.
Let me repeat that. For the city there was a 9% decrease in ballots cast compared to 2003, but in the county as a whole there was a 9% increase. The hot issue, number 27 (jail tax) affected the whole county, so why didn’t it bring out more city voters? The weather was wonderful in 2003 and only middling in 2007, but why didn’t it stop county voters from turning out if it stopped city voters? Or had many city voters simply moved and simply weren’t there to vote?
As further evidence, consider the number of buildings ordered vacant or condemned by the city’s Building and Inspection Department. Around Thanksgiving of 2006 there were 1,777 buildings on the list. But as of December 3, there were 2,099 buildings on the list. And that presumably does not count the ones that had been torn down in the past year.
The 2000 Census counted 330,662 people in Cincinnati, which continues a decline since 1960 when the population was 502,550. For 2005 the Census Bureau initially estimated the population to be 308,728, a number which was later challenged by the City of Cincinnati. The difference between that number and the July study is 69,531, or more than a fifth of the 2000 population count.
But let’s be fair—maybe the study is correct. Maybe all the new residents simply don’t vote, don’t have children, and maybe don’t even have their own homes or apartments. Maybe Cincinnati is full of invisible residents.
• Share This Article!
Listen to this article
|  |
Register
Anonymous comments are allowed, but you can create an account above to stamp your name and to avoid typing the anti-spam code.
If you are not familiar with our rules for leaving comments, click here! The Cincinnati Beacon is not responsible for the contents of any comments. Comments do not represent the views of the moderators of The Cincinnati Beacon.
04 Dec 2007 at 12:57 pm | #
I don’t think using the number of buildings ordered vacant or condemned is a good measure of people leaving the City.
There are too many other factors that enter into the mix--greater enforcement by neighborhood groups in collaboration with the CPD during these neighborhood “blitzes”, for example.
Also, how many of these buildings were simply abandoned or lost to foreclosure? We can’t be sure the former residents left town and moved to West Chester.
04 Dec 2007 at 01:58 pm | #
....and maybe your ‘reasoning’ is just flawed.
You are obviously using the same ‘powers of deduction’ that led to your laughable post about the ‘scandal’ at the BOE. Which. Did. Not. Exist.
Let me set you straight on a few facts Patton:
-There was a very controversial issue on the ballot this year, Issue 27. Suburbanites overwhelmingly voted against this initiative, largely because they view the issue of crime to be a City problem which they shouldn’t have to pay for. These homeowners also opposed a tax increase when the economy is in decline, and so many home owners are facing increased mortgage payments due to the mortgage crisis; i.e., lowered home values, increased interest rates due to variable/subprime rate loans, etc.
-The City is 42% Black, while the County is only 24.5% Black. Black voter participation decline greatly in this election over the last one.
-As to the condemnedabandoned, neglected & nuisance buildings issue, the simple reason for the increase is that THE CITY LAUNCHED A CRACKDOWN ON NUISANCE PROPERTIES IN MAY. (linked to a reprint of the article due to the Enquirer’s for-pay only firewall). While this issue may be of significant concern to slumlords everywhere, the rest of us in the City welcome this long overdue action by the City to crackdown on the blighted properties which are littering this City. YMMV.
Honestly Patton, I don’t see how your reasoning of A + B = C works. If you want to be taken seriously as a candidate for a significant office in this City then I encourage you to rethink posting these outrageous tirades, because they really do make you look foolish.
04 Dec 2007 at 07:21 pm | #
CincyCappel:
Do you understand that MEP and me are different people? In any event, this strand is not about the BOE, and further comments about it will not be accepted.
04 Dec 2007 at 07:34 pm | #
.
The BOE is a legitimate post. The poster was comparing what they perceived as the beacon posting flawed number interpretation.
MEP is a regular poster and the comparison was appropriate.
It sounds like, the dean, has taken the BOE incident personally.
MEP is using ‘fuzzy math’, PERIOD !
It is refereed as: comparing apples to oranges in Accounting 101.
.
04 Dec 2007 at 08:13 pm | #
Dean: you’re becoming hypersensitive to the issue of contexting comments.
MEP’s credibility in analyzing anything more than the Nutrition Facts on his box of All-Bran is very much relevant to this post, esp. since MEP has never apologized for or recanted his flawed hystrionics.
Declining public school enrollment? Blame fewer kids in toto and more of the ones being produced steered into charter and private schools.
Depressed voter turnout? Uninspiring candidates and a general sense of “ok-ness” with how things are going.
More vacant buildings on the list? CincyCapell summed it nicely.
All in all: not really sure what point MEP is trying to make.
04 Dec 2007 at 10:15 pm | #
just looking at vacant buildings isn’t enough, if you have 100 single family houses foreclosed on or demolished and you have the american can building in northside rehabbed into 110 units, then you have a net gain. one of the problems with the census methodology is that they suppose x buildings over y age are destroyed at z rate per year. this might not always be the case in a historic city like cincinati
04 Dec 2007 at 11:04 pm | #
Dean; I never ‘confused’ you & Patton. My point in regard to the previous BOE story was that it began with Patton. He passed the ‘breaking news’ onto you, and you (in good faith I believe) hurriedly posted the story, albeit without any fact checking. The genesis of that post was Patton, and now he has posted this obviously flawed article today. His 3+3=7 calculations just do not add up. It was the same way with the BOE lead that he gave you. Messer Patton seems to be one issue candidate (City government vs landlords), and this issue colours the too many of his posts. Please fact check his work before posting it. You - and he - will be the better for it.
Urb. II; good point about private school students. All of the families on my West Side block send their kids to Mother of Mercy, Elder and/or Roger Bacon. There are 9 families with high school aged kids on our street (none younger), every one of them goes to private schools.
FF; Fuzzy Math indeed!
04 Dec 2007 at 11:06 pm | #
The list of vacant buildings is significant because they represent housing units that are not available. Mayor Mallory wrote a letter dated September 28, 2006 to the U.S. Census Bureau challenging their estimate of 308,728 people for the city. In it he wrote, “First, in the late 1990’s and early 2000’s, Cincinnati had a considerable vacant housing stock, in this decade we has (sic) seen significant redevelopment of these vacant buildings into available housing.”
So, if the rehabbing of vacant buildings is the first reason as to why the Census Bureau estimate is wrong, then what dows it mean when the number of vacant buildings increases?
Mallory also goes on to state that Cincinnati is not experiencing any major loss of housing units. Well, if a building is on the list, all of the housing units in that building are lost.
04 Dec 2007 at 11:35 pm | #
This story about the reduced number of people voting in Cincinnati is one that I’ve wanted to do since I counted the candidate vote totals and saw that they indicated a greatly reduced turnout. The problem has been that the BOE data have not been consistent.
When I went to the BOE I asked them how many people voted in Cincinnati, and they gave me a data disk and said all the information was in there. They also said that that was the same disk that they had been giving out to everyone. When I looked at it I saw that it was at variance with what had been published. I went back to the BOE and they insisted that the disk had ALL the numbers. And that was verified by yet another person at the BOE. I questioned that assertion in an article, but thought it was worth reporting that the BOE was giving out conflicting information.
The data disk—which I still have—has other items which do not appear to make sense. For example, in the question on Issue 26 (NW School Levy) North College Hill precinct 2A is shown as having 44 registered voters, of whom 113 showed up to vote and absolutely none voted on that issue.
Later information from the BOE now shows that no one showed up to vote but that there were 6 absentee ballots. This is statistically highly unlikely, but at least it is mathematically possible.
There are other inconsistencies, even in the later data, which we are trying to get clarified. The additional absentee ballots found a couple weeks after the election, for example. When these additional ballots were counted somehow some of the precinct totals went down. Anyone can see this by comparing the results for the City Council elections. Both the “official” and the “amended” results were still at the BOE website as of Tuesday afternoon.
The purpose of this and many other articles is to show that not all of us automatically believe everything the mayor or any other government official tells us. We will often point out the inconsistencies that we find.
04 Dec 2007 at 11:57 pm | #
CincyCapell’s analysis is wrong. As the Enquirer said on the day after the election, only 33% of the voters in predominately African-American precincts voted for the jail tax, while 45% of the voters in predominately white precincts voted for the jail tax. Since the suburbs are mostly white, as CincyCapell pointed out, it’s clear that the white suburbs did not “overwhelmingly” vote against it.
The passion against the jail tax seems to have been in the black neighborhoods of Cincinnati. But there’s the question again, what happened to those voters? The simplest explanation (a principle known as Occam’s Razor—the simplest explanation is probably the correct one) is that they had moved.
05 Dec 2007 at 12:03 am | #
I had answered this in my earlier article, “Is Cincinnati Booming or Busting?,” to which I linked in the current article. I’ll repeat it for the sake of Urbanists II is Dead, who apparently would rather make stuff up than actually follow a link. To wit, charter school enrollment is included. And the numbers are still going down.
05 Dec 2007 at 04:58 pm | #
MEP, WHO did you speak to at the BOE? Given your track record of talking to secretaries, tech geeks and janitors you need to clarify this in your ‘reporting’.
You cite charter schools, but what about private (predominately catholic) schools that are so popular in Cincinnati?
Blacks only make up 21% of the county while they are 43% of the city, and only 11% of the black population voted, plus most of the black population lives within the city limits. 33% of 11% of 21% of the County’s population. Thus the statistics you site from the Enquirer don’t support your argument.
And you failed to quote this little ditty in that same piece, which shoots down your thesis:
“It passed in only five jurisdictions: Terrace Park, Wyoming, Indian Hill, North Bend and Green Township”
The ‘burbs did reject the tax, and likely for at least some of the reasons that he listed.
05 Dec 2007 at 09:57 pm | #
Last time I checked all of those jurisdictions were outside of city limits. The point that CincyCapell made—that the suburbs “overwhelmingly” voted against the levy—is not borne out by the Enquirer article, nor by the quote from the article mentioned above. Neither does the statement “ 33% of 11% of 21% of the County’s population.” (sic) back up CincyCapell.
In my earlier article I admitted that I did not have firm data on parochial schools (apparently this commenter did not read that article either). But surely no one is stating that the Catholic schools are on some kind of building program? One hears instead of Catholic schools closing.
With all the comments, one would have expected that someone would have provided one piece of data to show that the city’s population is increasing. I had proposed that maybe the Census Bureau was right in its first estimate—the the population is decreasing. If it is decreasing, what effects might one observe? I came up with decreasing school population, increase in vacant buildings, and decrease in voter turnout. And all of those are things that are observed.
Instead of endless speculation about possible other causes, why doesn’t someone try to find measureable data which indicate that the population is increasing?
For that matter, why doesn’t someone check out the BOE numbers as I suggested?
05 Dec 2007 at 10:15 pm | #
The Beacon has been trying to get answers to several questions about the BOE results. Some of these questions have been posted. But not all of them have been answered by any means. Most of the questions have arisen from information that is available to all readers of the Beacon. Some sources have been identified by name, others not. But that does not give anybody an excuse to make up names or positions for my sources.
07 Dec 2007 at 06:05 pm | #
MEP; The Cincinnati Archdiocese says that enrollment is up at their schools. There is a waiting list at 1/3 of their schools in the area.
http://www.catholiccincinnati.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=195&Itemid=530
08 Dec 2007 at 06:55 am | #
Which schools? Does Bishop Fenwich, for example, count as impacting Cincinnati?
08 Dec 2007 at 10:29 am | #
The Archdiocese of Cincinnati covers 19 Ohio counties in South-Western and Central-Western Ohio (map at bottom of link).
It doesn’t surprise me that overall enrollment is up, but what about the enrollment in the parochial schools within Cincinnati? I’ve talked to several Cincinnati Catholic parents who tell me that it has gotten a lot easier to enroll their kids in Catholic schools over the last several years because the schools now have room. And, as I have said, I have not heard of any parochial school building program within the city limits over the last several years.
To absorb the losses from the public school system, the parochial school system would have to grow by several thousand students. Since the typical city elementary parochial school just has from 200 to 500 students, this would be equivalent to several new schools. Sometime I’ll try to track down the actual numbers, but for now I’m just taking the parochial school numbers to be unchanged. If I were to actually bet though, I would bet that they have decreased since 2000.
08 Dec 2007 at 10:34 am | #
What are the Catholic schools in the City limits? Purcell Marian, for example, has lower numbers compared to 2000.
08 Dec 2007 at 03:00 pm | #
Here’s a link to the parochial schools within the archdiocese. Note that they call schools in Middletown, Hamilton, and Riply as schools within the Greater Cincinnati area. So one would have to go through the lists school by school.
I’m sure one could find the numbers by checking with the archdiocese or maybe even the Wayback Machine. It’s just a question of time.
08 Dec 2007 at 06:39 pm | #
middletown hamilton and riply are all within the archdiocese of cincinnati, that is way they are included
08 Dec 2007 at 07:25 pm | #
I know—see my comment #17. I should have stated that the archdiocese divides its school list into three parts: Greater Cincinnati, Greater Dayton, and the Northern Part, and that Greater Cincinnati extends many miles from Cincinnati itself. So one can’t just use that list as is, but must go through the school list address by address.
I started doing that, but it was taking too much time. But I did notice that the list stated under St. Vincent de Paul School that it closed on July 1. I think this school used to be in Riverside, one of Cincinnati’s neighborhoods. It illustrates my point that the Cincinnati parochial schools have not been expanding. If anything they are, too, losing students.
09 Dec 2007 at 02:11 am | #
MEP, when you were counting the empty buildings in Cincinnati, did you also take into consideration the section 8 housing that has been demolished over the last several years? Where did all of Cincinnati’s poor folk go? Are these the missing, the invisible people you speak of? You do know don’t you that there are people who are being forced out due to the gentrification of our cities. Where did all those people go?
Vera Z.
09 Dec 2007 at 03:18 am | #
Well, for every Purcell Marion There is a Mother of Mercy, Elder or Seton. All three of them are within the city of Cincinnati and all three had to add on expansions this year to accommodate their growing student populations.
09 Dec 2007 at 10:27 am | #
No, I did not take those into account. Perhaps I should mention some of those. There were many buildings demolished to make way for City West in the West End. City West is not finished yet, but even if it were there would be fewer housing units than before, many of which are not reserved for Section 8. Huntington Meadows wasn’t government owned, but it was ordered vacated by the city and was torn down. The reason for the vacate order is disputed, but in any event, the number of new housing units is much less than what was there before. I doubt if there are any Section 8 tenants in the new houses. I’m sure there are other cases, too.
09 Dec 2007 at 11:05 am | #
That is evidence that at least some Catholic schools may have added students—at least the high schools. What we need are actual numbers, and since Judy has presented some evidence that maybe there is some growth the question can only be settled with actual numbers.
I’ll try to get some recent historical numbers. An addition, by itself, does not mean that the school population expanded, although it is certainly suggestive. St. Mary School in Hyde Park put on a rather expansive addition a few years ago, but that was more for consolidating classroom space that was in three separate buildings than for actual student expansion. Any increase was purely nominal.
Mother of Mercy, from their website, says that their enrollment used to be greater: “By 1977 student enrollment in Grade 9-12 reached 875 young women.” It is now 569 per the archdiocesan website. It may have gone way down and is now trending up, but I do not have those data.
Elder now has 956 students and Seton has 543. I do not know what the numbers were in the recent past.
09 Dec 2007 at 11:01 pm | #
I don’t know how relevant historic catholic school population would be. Catholics having double digit numbers of kids was not uncommon up until the 1960s, since that time, the catholic birth rates have fallen to around the average. the catholic cohorts of the middle of the century are much larger than they are now.
10 Dec 2007 at 10:05 am | #
Which is why I need recent historical data—data from the 2000’s. When the city challenged the U.S. Census Bureau, one of the assumptions was that the average household size was unchanged since 2000 at 2.15 persons per household. The vacant building data challenges the assertion that the number of households is increasing; the school data challenges that assertion and also the assumption that the household size is unchanged.
My hypothesis is that the Cincinnati population is continuing its decades-long decline and has not reversed, contrary to what City Hall says. Everybody in City Hall is saying that their policies are responsible for a turn-around. I don’t believe that there is a turn-around. Unfortunately the next count won’t be until 2010.
10 Dec 2007 at 04:28 pm | #
"My hypothesis is”
Why are you running a story about your guesses and hypothesis? Shouldn’t you go out and do some investigations before jumping to a conclusion? Isn’t that what has caused you embarrassment in the past?? Vacant buildings were ignored in this city for many years, and just this year the city undertook an aggressive campaign to get rid of them, so that doesn’t prove anything at all. You are looking at every issue through the lens of a building owner/landlord.
11 Dec 2007 at 09:38 am | #
Hypotheses form the basis of the scientific method. One makes a hypothesis and looks for evidence to support it. I did that. Once one makes a hypothesis and presents evidence others may present opposing evidence, such as what Judy did in comment #23.
Compare that to the city’s claim that the population is increasing. There is the “Drilldown” study, but how they came up with their results is proprietary and is not subject to review. There is the letter they sent to the U.S. Census Bureau, from which I quoted in comment #8. The city claims that the number of vacant buildings is going down. On what basis did they make that claim? The city’s own data show otherwise.
Just yesterday I saw an apartment building torn down. It had, I estimate, about 20 housing units in it. Until a couple years ago there were people living in it. It is the third apartment building that I have seen torn down in Walnut Hills in the past few months. This is anecdotal evidence, but it is consistent with my hypothesis and with the data that I submitted. I simply don’t see housing units being built or rehabbed at the same rate I see them torn down. If I did, I would have cause to question my hypothesis, but I don’t see building at anywhere near the same rate.
11 Dec 2007 at 12:05 pm | #
I think that the point of the article is that investigations have been made and the data support the hypothesis that Cincinnati’s population is declining. The comment about “embarrassment” is mysterious, unless the author means that I should be embarrassed by not mindlessly repeating the official stories.
Some of those that I have challenged are: 1. That thousands of “dangerous criminals” are released early every year due to lack of jail space, 2. That Cincinnati’s population is increasing, 3. That a streetcar line from Fountain Square to OTR will jump-start development there and is a bargain at $100 million, 4. That accepting a contaminated industrial site for free is a bargain for the county, 5. That TIF’s (special tax zones) don’t cause property taxes to go up, 6. That multi-million dollar hand-outs to a favored few are good for the overall economy, 7. That special tax breaks to a favored few are good for the overall economy, 8. That all laws are evenly enforced in Cincinnati, 9. That landlords should be criminally repsonsible if their tenants’ kids don’t go to school, 10. That the Fountain Square redesign meets ADA requirements, 11. That all buildings in Cincinnati which are condemned are done so for valid reasons, 12. That arresting people for small amounts of marijuana is a good use of time, resources, and helps community-police relations, 13. That arresting peoople for marijuana possession is a major factor in keeping guns of the street, 14. That BOE personnel are always consistent in their statements, 15. That eminent domain being used to seize private property to give to a private developer is good policy, 15. That we incarcerate nobody for trivial offenses or because they cannot afford bail, and 16. That the drug war has been effective.
There are several other official stories which I have challenged, for all of which I have been heavily criticized and, on rare occasions, threatened. But not embarrassed.
11 Dec 2007 at 07:38 pm | #
MEP, keep up the great work! CincyBrockemann and his multiple personalities are too comfortable with the status quo and their official stories. Good citizens ask questions, challenge authority and inspire others to think for themselves.
Trolls like him offer nothing to our community other than useless drivel. They simply tow the corporate party line and make nasty personal attacks on those who dare to question it. He’s the one that should be embarrassed and that’s why he hides behind his anonymity.
No matter what the reality is about the population of the city and the county, it’s a worthy debate. We must know where we are in order to know where we are going.
12 Dec 2007 at 04:59 am | #
Thank you Michael, Keep digging, keep asking questions. The only way we are going to be able to figure out how to fix what is wrong in Cincinnati is to understand what is going on and why. I for one greatly appreciate what you are doing and I suspect that there are more people like me reading your blogs than like the people opposing you. Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Vera Z
12 Dec 2007 at 01:00 pm | #
Michael, you and Justin are a breath fresh air in a political scene dominated by corporate interests. I was proud to support both of you in the last election and will do so again if the both of you run. Let’s hope you will as I am tired of candidates that are more beholden to companies than to the people that elect them. Vera Z is correct, there are more and more people reading and listening to what you both have to say and as a result you have legitimized two more political parties in this city. Well done and keep it up!