Sep 12, 2006 08:03 AM
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CLEVELAND (AP) - The city returned to the top of the U.S. Census Bureau's ranking of poorest big cities, reclaiming the unwanted title from Detroit. Cleveland had 32.4 percent of its 452,200 people living below the poverty level in 2005, according to the American Community Survey released Tuesday.
"I'm shocked," said Myron Robinson, president and chief executive officer of the Urban League of Greater Cleveland. "We're stuck with it and we've got to do something about it. It just seems that we as a community have got to pull our resources closer together and try to move together to come up with a concerted effort. We're so fragmented."
Last year, Cleveland fell to No. 12 on the list. City leaders celebrated when the 2005 survey put the city's poverty level at 23.2 percent, down from the nation-leading 31.3 percent the year before. But some questioned how the ranking could fall so far in just 12 months.
Two years ago, in the middle of a hotly contested presidential campaign focused on Ohio, Cleveland's spot as the nation's poorest city quickly became a political lightning rod. The city's leaders began numerous efforts to try to combat the problem, including forming a group to study the issue.
The new rankings are based on various-sized samples of data collected monthly last year. The Census Bureau has said it quadrupled its data collection from the last survey, making this year's ranking a more accurate poverty picture and making comparisons to the 2005 survey tricky.
Detroit is No. 2 in the latest report, with 31.4 percent of its residents living in poverty. When accounting for the margin of error, the estimates for Cleveland and Detroit were not significantly different, the bureau said.
Overall, the nation's poverty rate was essentially unchanged last year, the first year it hasn't increased since before President Bush took office. Some 37 million Americans were living under the poverty line last year - about 12.6 percent of the population. That's down from 12.7 percent in 2004, but census officials said the change was statistically insignificant.
The median household income - the point at which half make more and half make less - was $46,300 nationwide, a slight increase from 2004. Cleveland had the lowest median household income among large cities at $24,105. Dayton was ninth lowest among smaller cities at $25,928.
In this year's report, Cleveland wasn't the only Ohio city in the top part of the rankings. Cincinnati ranked No. 8, with one out of every four Cincinnatians, or 25 percent, living in poverty last year, according to the report. Cincinnati was No. 22 in last year's rankings, which said 19.6 percent of its people lived in poverty.
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