Poverty expanding beyond urban core: Leaders presented new data on issues affecting the region
News story By Mark Ferenchik
Featured expert: Jason Reece, senior researcher at Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity at Ohio State University.
South Side neighborhood leader Deborah Macklin said she thought “everything was OK” in Columbus’ suburbs. But the maps and numbers two researchers presented to 250 community leaders at Veterans Memorial yesterday gave her a new perspective. What struck her most was how poverty has spread throughout Franklin County. “I was saddened to see it move out of the urban areas, move into the suburbs,” said Macklin, who leads the civic association in the Alum Crest Acres neighborhood south of Rt. 104 near Rt. 33.
That was among the trends that researchers from the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity at Ohio State University displayed at the Community Development Neighborhood Summit hosted by the Community Development Collaborative of Greater Columbus. Nonprofit groups, foundations and government and community leaders hope to use the information to attack neighborhood problems.