It all started with an article in Wednesday’s Enquirer, about the partnership between First Congregational Church and the SNAP pre-school, in which it referred to the location of the church as being in “one of the city’s poorest neighborhoods.” In the first paragraph. On the front page.
For those who aren’t familiar with First Congregational, it is across from the YMCA on Capital Avenue just north of where Capital and M66/Division merge. This neighborhood is known as the Northside or more officially, the Historic Northside.
Here is a map that shows what most people I’ve talked to generally agree on as the boundaries of the Northside.
Unlike the Post Addition, this is a created area incorporating a number of neighborhoods such as Quaker Park, Piper Park, Merritt Commons and Merritt Woods, not a development with clearly delineated boundaries.
There are some debatable lands between North Avenue and Washington Avenue, some of which are in the Heights and others (such as my tiny neighborhood) are considered part of the Northside, and Battle Creek Central is in a sort of “no man’s land”. The area between Capital and the River is another debatable lands area.
The Historic Northside is also a state of mind.
Later in the article, the area was referred to as the “city’s impoverished north side.”
Not surprisingly, there was some outrage generated among middle-class Northside residents and proponents. Especially after I forwarded the link to the head of an organization that has been trying to market the Historic Northside to prospective residents for all of the homes restored through the NSP2 program.
Not surprisingly, he was not pleased.
The subject came up during last night’s meeting of the Community Watch Coalition in regards to the cause of the perception of crime not being the same as the reality of crime. This has long been a problem in the almost entirely crime-free downtown business district, thanks to years of negative stories by the Enquirer about how dangerous the area is.
This is especially significant when you are mindful that the basic tenet of marketing is that customer perception = market reality. If customers perceive that the Northside is an impoverished area, that is the reality of the market.
The story in Friday’s Enquirer was even more offensive to residents of the Historic Northside.
The same reporter interviewed a resident of Parkway Manor, which was described as a “housing complex on Battle Creek’s north side”. For those not familiar with Parkway Manor, it is generally referred to as “The Projects”, and the neighborhood it is part of is Washington Heights (aka “The Hood”). It is north of the river, making it technically the north side of town, it just is not referred to that way by residents, because that confuses Washington Heights with the Northside neighborhood.
The article was filled with the terms “high poverty areas”, “impoverished neighborhoods”, “areas of concentrated poverty” and “poor neighborhoods”.
The article’s statements about poverty were based on a pair of reports, one of which is a map of Michigan showing the “high poverty areas” marked in red, indicating that in those areas the poverty level was 30% or above. Here is the section of the map showing the parts of Battle Creek that are “impoverished neighborhoods”.
That’s zoomed in at about 3000%, and I still couldn’t tell what part of town this red blotch indicated. I needed to know whether or not this indicated the Northside and Washington Heights. So, I called the organization in Lansing who compiled the data and spoke to Jane, who created the map. She explained that the rates were by census tracts, and sent me a spreadsheet showing the poverty rates in all of the census tracts in Calhoun County. She included the top 10 list, only 8 of which are above 30% and thus reflected on the map above. The last two tracts (11 and 13) are not reflected on the map above as they are below 30%. Tracts 33 and 36 are not on the map above as they are in Albion.
Tract Tract Poverty Rate (Total Population)
Census Tract 6 51.8
Census Tract 36 44.4
Census Tract 41 44.3
Census Tract 21 40.7
Census Tract 3 37.8
Census Tract 7 34.7
Census Tract 33 32.6
Census Tract 11 29.8
Census Tract 13 28.5
The next step was to figure out what the tract numbers meant. Thankfully, there is a complete directory on the Census website that includes maps of all tracts in all states, and I was able to locate the map of Calhoun County census tract areas in a few minutes. Here is the relevant part of Battle Creek.
Comparing these numbers to the list, I was able to determine that most of the “impoverished neighborhoods” were on the south side (The Battle Creek River is the boundary) of Battle Creek, not the north side, nor the Northside. And that the highest poverty area in Calhoun County isn’t the “impoverished northside”, nor is it anywhere near Parkway Manor.
It’s the Franklin neighborhood (census tract 6), with a poverty rate of 51.8%. That’s on the south side of town.
The Historic Northside didn’t make the top 10 for the county. It is not an area of high poverty or concentrated poverty.
And only part of Washington Heights did (census tract 3), with a poverty rate of 37.8%.
It is the only one of the “high poverty” areas on the north side of town. Areas 6, 41, 7, and 21 are all on the south side.
Interestingly, Parkway Manor is not in that tract. Nor is it in any of the tracts in the top 10, because it just misses the boundaries of tract 3. Here is their location in relation to the northern boundary of census tract 3.
It appears that the resident of Parkway Manor was not featured prominently in this story because she lives in one of the areas of high poverty included in the report on the census data, but because she lives in an area that has a reputation for being one of, if not the poorest area in town. She was featured as the voice of the poorest neighborhood in town because she lives in the Projects that are located in the Hood.
Because the perception is that the north side, the Northside, and Washington Heights are the impoverished parts of town. It would appear the perceptions are inaccurate.
What I found most interesting is the other two entries in the top 10 list for Calhoun County. Tracts # 11 and 13. Although not areas of high poverty according to the 30% rule, tract 11 misses that cutoff by .2 percentage points and 13 by 1.5 percentage points.
Here is a look at the two areas that I never suspected as being so close to high poverty.
Tract 11 is Urbandale.
Tract 13 is most of the city of Springfield.
Both of them are within a handful of percentage points of tract #7, otherwise known as the Post Addition, yet I have yet to see an article referencing Urbandale as “one of the city’s poorest neighborhoods”, or describing Springfield as “the impoverished city of Springfield”.
That would be fair, because their poverty rate is higher than it is in the Historic Northside (we didn’t make the top 10), and within 10 points of the part of Washington Heights included in census tract 3.
But the perception isn’t the same, and so the market reality is different. And who is responsible for that inaccurate perception?
I think that should be obvious.
