CLEVELAND -Along typical streets in this city's Mount Pleasant neighborhood, some homes are beautifully maintained, but some are in disrepair or boarded up. Abandoned storefronts mix with businesses alive and well.
The neighborhood is home to people like Rose Blade, a former factory worker who is among the thousands of unemployed in Cleveland, which the U.S. Census Bureau recently ranked as the nation's poorest big city.
Things are really tough around here
said Blade, 45. There (are) too many hungry people.
Cleveland ranked high in poverty before, but not No. 1. The unwanted distinction is the latest in a litany of struggles for a city that had appeared to be on the rebound.
Over the past decade, new symbols of rejuvenation went up in a city crushed by the steel and other manufacturing job losses of the 1980s. There was the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Cleveland Browns Stadium, Jacobs Field and Gund Arena, home of LeBron James and the Cavaliers.
But this year economic woes again got in the way. The budget-strapped Lake Erie port city laid off hundreds of police officers and firefighters and reduced trash pick up and other city services. Hundreds of teachers and other workers were laid off from improving city schools once so bad that the government took control of them. Officials are pushing a $68 million tax increase on the November ballot to try to ease some of the schools' financial needs.
To be ranked No. 1 that's bad said Councilman Zachary Reed, who represents Mount Pleasant and a few other neighborhoods. Let's be honest
the fact is people in our community are living in poverty and just making it day to day.
Cleveland's poverty rate stands out even in Ohio, which ranked 22nd among all states, with 12.1 percent of its people in 2003 living in poverty. Cincinnati was 15th (21.1 percent), Toledo 20th (20.3 percent) and Columbus 34th (16.5 percent).
Cleveland in the 1990s had an image that it was thriving, although poverty was always in the background, said Myron Robinson, president of the Urban League of Greater Cleveland and co-chair of a newly formed civic committee on job creation.
Once a booming manufacturing mecca until the 1980s, the city remains home to a few steel and other manufacturing companies, many with scaled back work forces. Hospitals, banks, law firms and universities are other big employers in Cleveland, which has a 12.2 percent unemployment rate.
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Debra Lewis Curlee, executive director of the Collaborative for Organizing Mt. Pleasant, looks out her office window overlooking the Mt. Pleasant neighborhood Monday, Sept 13, 2004, in Cleveland. Cleveland owns the dubious distinction as the number one ci
