The poorest residents of Cincinnati saw their numbers increase by more than 13,000 between 2007 and 2017, the city having one of the largest increases in poverty among the largest US cities, according to new census estimates. .

The city's poverty rate in 2017 is also among the five highest for US cities with at least 250,000 inhabitants. The rankings were achieved despite an economic recovery that left the city's economy with fewer unemployed and a lower unemployment rate than in 2007, before the Great Recession.

Cincinnati's poverty rate is set at 27.7% in 2017, up 4.2 points from 2007, according to estimates from the American Community Survey released Thursday by the Census Bureau American.

The increase was the third highest among the country's 81 largest cities, according to an Enquirer analysis of new estimates. Only New Orleans and Mesa, Arizona, saw their poverty rates rise further between 2007 and 2017.

Enquirer's analysis shows that the ability to lift people out of poverty was stronger in other cities with historically high poverty rates, such as Cleveland, Detroit and Newark, New Jersey.

Yet Cincinnati was not the only one to see poverty rise. Half of the country's 81 largest cities have not seen their poverty rates return to pre-recession levels. Poverty rates at the national level and in Ohio also remain slightly higher than in 2007.

The mayor of Cincinnati, John Cranley, made the city's poverty rate a campaign issue when it was introduced in 2013 and the poverty rate in the city was 31.1%. The rate fell to 30% in 2014 and fell again to 26% in 2016 before rising again in 2017.

"These figures underscore that we, as a community and as a country, must tackle this problem," he said. "We have not experienced a complete recovery since the Great Recession, I believe that there should be dignity in all work and that people who work full time should have a viable salary."

Cranely created the Child Poverty Collaborative in 2015. He said he would attend a meeting on Thursday with the leaders of the collaboration who have prepared a plan for a large public-private investment to fight poverty. He repeated his goals of moving 5,000 families and 10,000 children out of poverty.

(Editor's Note: The Enquirer does not report Cincinnati's child poverty estimates released Thursday in the American Community Survey because the margin of error is greater than or less than 5 points, making unreliable estimates according to newspaper standards.)

"We will not end poverty," Cranley said. "But we can advance social justice and improve our regional economy, which is the right thing to do for the region, and these numbers remind us that we have a lot of work ahead of us."

Kurt Reiber, President and CEO of Freestore Foodbank, said his agency serves people in the ALICE category, meaning "limited assets", "limited income" and "employee".

"These census figures are telling when you think about what we see," said Reiber. "These are individuals and families who are a major car repairs, a sick child or higher utility bills than expected upon arrival at any of our food banks." emergency."

In the Freestore service area of ​​20 counties, 250,000 people suffer from food insecurity, which means that they are not sure of the source of their next meal; 82,000 of them, according to Reiber, are children.

Many of Freestore's client families are run by members who work part-time and can fluctuate between 20 and 40 hours per week. They have incomes between 130% and 200% of the poverty rate, the level at which they lose their eligibility for government assistance programs.

The 2018 federal poverty rate for a single person is an annual income of $ 12,140. For a household of three, it is $ 20,780.

"I'm not surprised," said Pastor Ennis Tait, one of the co-chairs of the Child Poverty Collaborative, when he was briefed on census estimates of global poverty.

About two in five (38%) of the city's African-American population were living in poverty in 2017, according to new estimates. This compares to one in eight (15.7%) non-Hispanic whites.

"Race is a reason," said Tait, who is African-American and heads a predominantly black congregation, the Church of the Living God in Avondale. "There is a lack of employment opportunities, and educational opportunities and funding are not fair in the black community.

"We knew it 10 years ago, but we did not take it seriously, we knew it, we saw it, we now have these people we want to see employed coming out of this environment or coming back from African-American Community: There are pockets of poverty throughout the city. "

Ross Meyer, Senior Vice President of United Way, said that while the census report is "stunning", it does not fully capture the scale of the problem.

"In reality, it's a lot, much worse," he said.

Last year, the poverty line was about $ 25,000 for a family of four.

This figure is "terribly inaccurate to accurately capture what a family really needs," Meyer said. Doubling the rate is a more useful measure for determining the income that families need to "provide the basics".

A majority of adults and children live at twice the poverty rate in Cincinnati, Meyer said, and about one-third of the region's population.

Whether it's a family member, a friend or an acquaintance, poverty 'affects us all when we recognize the true story', a- he declared.

Kelly Dolan, a social entrepreneur, co-founded an information technology consulting firm in 2016 to bring in diverse workers.

Thrive Impact Sourcing has trained and employed approximately 50 low-income workers to date.

Although Mr. Dolan stated that Mr. Cincinnati was filled with "philanthropy-centered" people, some people in the community responded with some trepidation to Thrive's program.

"What has a little downgraded to us is how poorly this population is," she said. Some have assumed that new employees would have criminal convictions or fight against drug addiction.

According to Dolan, the hurdle was less about providing low-income workers with the skills they need to thrive in the information technology field than from tackling a set of prejudices against them.

"If this were the case for the 50 people, what's happening (79,897 Cincinnatians impoverished in 2017)?" she says. "What are they against?"

Enquirer's data and research editor, Mark Wert, contributed to this report.

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