BUFFALO, N.Y. (WIVB) — Four Buffalo artists are bringing new life to Buffalo’s east side, honoring 28 civil rights leaders.
On Sunday, the Freedom Wall at the northern entrance to the Michigan Street African American Heritage Corridor was unveiled.
Its finally finished after about 7 months and a big crowd gathered to celebrate Sunday.
The faces in the mural are a mix of national and local leaders.
The Albright Knox says the mural is an opportunity to teach American history both past and present.
“This wall is about the education of the African-American people and the people of this city and nation. This is about attempting to understand the history of African Americans and their fight for liberation and freedom,” said Dr. Henry Louis, professor at the University at Buffalo.
You can check it out at the corner of Michigan Avenue and East Ferry.
It is the product of more than a decade of community organizing, but residents in east Buffalo’s historic Fruit Belt neighborhood cheered when Common Council President Darius Pridgen announced on his radio program last Friday that the “City administration [will start] setting aside land…for the first land trust in the Fruit Belt.”
Pridgen elaborated that the “land trust means those lots would stay in the hands of working class and low-income people. So, whatever the community land trust builds there, as far as housing, for 99 years it cannot be transferred to wealthy people. It cannot be sold to wealthy people.”
As WGRZ reports, “The folks who live in the Fruit Belt neighborhood, east of the thriving Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus, worry that soaring property values are forcing people out who can’t afford to pay increased rent or property taxes.” The land trust provides an avenue to protect residents by creating a nonprofit, governed by a community board, that holds title to the land and provides affordable housing to residents.
A 2016 policy brief from the nonprofit Partnership for the Public Good made the business case for the community land trust, which helped spur city action. The study estimates that “53 percent of residents spent over 30 percent of their income on housing” in a neighborhood where, as of 2014, poverty remains a high 42 percent. The city holds title to more than 200 vacant lots in the neighborhood—vacant lots that, if transferred to the community land trust, could help existing residents remain in the community and reduce their housing cost burdens. Pridgen’s announcement means that at least some of these 200 lots will be transferred to the trust.
“I’m terribly excited,” says Annette Lott, treasurer of the nonprofit Fruit Belt Community Land Trust. The land trust ensures long-term affordability; in exchange for signing a purchase agreement at a below-market price, the buyer agrees to accept a lower price at sale, thereby ensuring that the housing remains available at below-market prices for future generations.
Effectively, the land trust provides housing that serves as an intermediate rung between renting and owning. The stewardship of the community-based nonprofit also allows for residents to guide long-term planning. Another benefit of this structure is that the below-market prices help ensure that the land trust homebuyer does not get overextended, which is one reason why foreclosure rates on land trust homes are dramatically lower—about one eighth as high—than market-rate homes.
As we have covered in NPQ, the idea of a community land trust—first used in the US as a mechanism to protect rural lands for Black farmers in the late 1960s in Albany, Georgia—has gained ground as a tool for cities seeking to preserve housing affordability for low-income residents as wealthier, often whiter, residents move in, frequently pushing residents of color out into suburban areas—reversing what had been the opposite pattern of previous decades.
Buffalo joins a growing number of cities that are pursuing land trust solutions. Others acting in the past year include Washington, D.C., New York City, Pittsburgh, and Baltimore.
The Fruit Belt itself provides “a classic tale of how urban policies have destabilized the African American community and robbed low to moderate‐income blacks of the wealth producing power of homeownership,” notes Henry Louis Taylor, Jr., an urban studies professor and director of the Center for Urban Studies of the University at Buffalo. The Fruit Belt was originally German, but, starting in the 1950s, white flight and Black in-migration changed that dramatically.
Taylor explains that,
Two interactive factors triggered black migration to the Fruit Belt…. First, the building of the Kensington Expressway in 1960 split the Fruit Belt and separated most of it from the lower East Side and devalued property.… Second, during the 1950s, a massive urban renewal project on the lower East Side destroyed about 30 city blocks and decimated the historic center of Black Buffalo. Many of those displaced…settled in the Fruit Belt.
The number of Blacks peaked at 9,125 in 1970, but neighborhood population would fall by more than two thirds by 2000. (As of 2013, the neighborhood had 2,670 residents, 83 percent of whom are Black). As Taylor details, “Between 1970 and 2000, the proportion of Fruit Belt residents living in poverty increased from 28 percent to 45 percent.” A key factor behind neighborhood decline, Taylor adds, was city-backed housing demolition that pushed residents out to facilitate the expansion of the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus (BNMC).
Ironically, now BMNC is driving a revival that threatens to displace residents again, only this time through rising prices. Lott notes that current “rents in the Fruit Belt are $1,400 in some places…much too high for individuals for low income and poor people to be able to afford.”
The community land trust that Lott participates in is part of a broader effort to make sure that as the Fruit Belt neighborhood rebounds, a new wave of resident displacement is prevented. Involving a dozen local neighborhood groups and known as the Community First Alliance, the land trust is part of a broader strategy that includes support for local business development and the development of work pipelines to help residents obtain jobs at BMNC.—Steve Dubb
UB’s Equity, Diversity and Inclusion website says the university prides itself on the diversity of its community. But black students and black faculty feel left out of the diversity conversation.
For years, UB has struggled to bring in minority faculty. That is partially because black professors are demanding higher salaries because there are so few. UB does not have the money to compete with larger universities and offer higher pay.
UB also struggles to bring in black faculty because the few who are here feel undervalued.
And many who start here, leave, because they felt isolated. Often they were the only black people working in their departments. Or they felt the university didn’t put enough money, time or resources into black studies.
And students – many of whom come to UB for its diverse student population – feel discouraged because almost none of their professors look like them.
In a city as diverse as Buffalo and at a time when racial tensions are exploding across the nation, students say they expect more racial equality from UB. Black people make up 38.6 percent of the Buffalo population, according to the U.S. Census. Yet as of fall 2015, out of 2,513 faculty at UB, only 98 were black, according to UB Spokesperson John Della Contrada. That’s 3.8 percent. Out of those 98, only 41 were tenure track, which brings the total down to 1.6 percent.
David, a senior biological sciences major, feels having a black professor would have been inspirational. He thinks he would have aspired for greater leadership roles at UB if he had seen someone who looked like him and shared the same struggles achieve success.
But David never got his wish.
In the past 10 years, black faculty have continued to leave the university. Data from Teresa Miller, vice provost for Equity and Inclusion shows black faculty continued to decline from 2005 to 2015.
Miller has spent the last three years trying to recruit faculty of color. Faculty acknowledge Miller has worked hard, but say the university as a whole needs to take more responsibility in hiring black faculty.
Della Contrada said the university employs 202 state-supported staff “the second-largest race/ethnicity group, after whites for staff.”
“So that’s basically janitors and Campus Dining food workers…” David said. “That doesn’t make the lack of black faculty any better, if anything that makes it worse because it’s just placing more black people in more marginalized menial work.”
Addressing black issues
The number of black faculty at UB is “beyond disgraceful,” said urban and regional planning professor Henry Taylor.
Taylor said the university’s failure to do something about the lack of black faculty is a form of systemic racism. Such failure, he said “under develops” the black community by not allowing the African American studies program to evolve.
“The African American people were people that this country had a special responsibility to in the sense that they had been brought here as slaves, stolen from their country, imprisoned on their homeland and brought here to work,” Taylor said. “The university has a huge responsibility to [us] and I think the university has failed in a very miserable way.”
Taylor said black people get nothing, “absolutely zero” for suffering as a result of slavery.
When Taylor first came to UB in 1987, one of the university’s priorities was addressing issues black people faced, he said.
He was hired at the university specifically to help design a public service infrastructure that would connect the university to a larger urban community. He addressed these issues with then-UB President William Greiner and visited his house so often people thought he was Greiner’s relative.
Taylor also helped redevelop the University Plaza area, located across from South Campus.
He said administrators slowly began to feel race was too divisive of an issue and thought it needed to be minimized. Taylor said he was among the minority who felt race needed to be grappled with, talked about and placed at the forefront of university discussions.
Taylor said the university often boasts about its diversity by placing minority groups like Asians in the forefront so the campus looks diverse.
“There is no diversity because the university no longer has the commitment to dealing with the exploitation and oppression of black people,” Taylor said. “In the old days, we used to call that window dressing, when you get enough black people around just to say ‘there they are,’ but that’s not authentic and that’s not legitimate.”
Lack of blacks vs Buffalo demographics.
Blacks are the second-largest ethnic group in Buffalo, second only to whites, who hold a 50.4 percent majority.
“We live in a city that’s close to 50 percent black and Latinx, and yet we have not a single major initiative that’s focused on that,” Taylor said. “We have a Global Health Equity Institute that doesn’t even have a focus on the African American population.”
Taylor said despite the high concentration of blacks, the university continues to prioritize addressing refugee and immigrant issues over black issues.
“And my response is ‘seriously?’ Why don’t you try moving the health equity needle in Buffalo? And why would you ever focus on the refugee population and not have a focus on the African American population whose health indicators are horrendous? Who face an enormous level of inequities in comparison to whites and they don’t even make your cut? Seriously people?” he said.
Taylor said there has been a dramatic decline in tenure-track black faculty in the past 25-30 years and the university continues to lose the small number of tenure-track faculty embedded on the campus.
“When you talk about faculty… the only thing that counts in a really meaningful way – and I don’t wanna disparage anyone – are those individuals who are full time and on tenure track because unless you’re full time and on tenure-track lines, you’re not providing instructional activities that are leading to degrees,” he said.
Taylor said the U.S. has a responsibility to create opportunities for black people to achieve their larger freedoms.
These larger freedoms, he said, aren’t the same as small freedoms like the right to vote, the right to speak or the right of social mobility.
“The larger freedoms are our human rights. The right to a high-quality education. The right to an employment that allows us to earn a livable wage. The right to live in safe and wholesome neighborhoods. The right to have high quality health care. The right to have nutritious food. These are our human rights. And education is an anchor human right. So that is the right that we have not yet been given or granted,” he said.
Faculty members who are not of color like transnational studies Professor Carl Nightingale agree that the lack of black faculty is a problem.
Nightingale said the university hasn’t done an adequate job of retaining faculty of color and the transnational studies department continues to lose more minority faculty. He said retaining more faculty of color should be a “major institutional priority.”
Recruitment of black faculty
The desperate need for the university to find a solution that brings in more faculty of color is an issue that keeps Teresa Miller up at night.
She has a daughter who’s a freshman in college and she evaluates diversity through her eyes. She worries that UB students of color don’t have enough professors who look like them.
As a black woman, in her role, she says people expect her to have a certain level of insight on issues facing people of color. They expect her to bring her own racial experiences to the table to help increase the university’s diversity.
She doesn’t think the resolve to hire black faculty has wavered, but UB’s strategy to hire them has changed in the last 30 years in light of widespread criticisms of initiatives like affirmative action.
Because of this, she says the university can’t use race as the sole criteria of hiring.
“The legal definition of affirmative action changed in the last 30 years, so there’s been an attack on the way race gets used in the hiring process so we’ve had to change the hiring process of people of color,” she said.
The university responded by changing its strategies for minority faculty recruitment.
Miller carved out a 10-step “strategic plan” to hire more culturally diverse staff.
The plan encourages the university to advertise for positions in areas with more people of color to gain more diverse applicant pools and take part in minority cluster hiring. It advises to reduce hiring barriers against people of color by training faculty to eliminate implicit biases.
Miller also regularly goes to conferences and sees how other universities hire faculty of color, and she carves out a plan based on her discoveries.
But many faculty of color drop out of these searches early, Miller said.
Other black faculty don’t want to come to the university because they don’t see people who look like them on campus.
Miller said colleges like Columbia University, Yale University or University of Michigan invest $30 to $50 million in recruiting faculty of color.
UB doesn’t have that money.
“Underrepresented minority faculty are demanding much higher starting salaries because there are fewer of them so it’s scarce and we often compete with schools that can pay a lot more,” Miller said.
While the university struggles to recruit blacks, Miller said the university continues to draw international, non-black faculty from across the globe in management, engineering and the sciences.
“I think the demographics of the nation and the state have changed over the last 30 years so the diversity of the non-white population has become greater in New York State than the rest of the nation,” said Craig Abbey, associate vice president and director of Institutional Analysis.
Miller doesn’t agree that the university’s commitment to hiring diverse faculty has shifted; she says the commitment has only gotten stronger.
“I don’t agree that our commitment is much less today, I think our commitment has grown. This office being created and being staffed and built out. That’s a commitment, it’s a commitment of resources to really make a difference,” she said.
How lack of black faculty affects students
The lack of diversity isn’t just limited to faculty; it also extends to the student body. Out of 28,444 UB students, only 1,881 students are black.
Students of color yearn to see people who look like them teaching in the classroom. Many students said they grew used to being the only black people in their classes, but they found it puzzling that many African American studies professors at UB were white.
Miller went to college at Duke University in North Carolina and said she only had one black professor.
“I say to people all the time, students are our clients and they want to see people who can relate to their experiences who are role models and mentors and it’s absolutely important,” Miller said.
While Taylor agrees a black professor could bring a unique perspective that a white professor couldn’t, he says the color of people’s skin doesn’t qualify them to teach black studies.
“I’m a firm believer based on my experiences that black faces in high places don’t mean a thing unless their ideologies and viewpoints are emphasizing change,” he said.
Taylor said there are some black people he wouldn’t want anywhere near UB students and within the black community there can be an ideological divide.
“There are some black people that I know through these buildings that I wouldn’t want anywhere near our black students and I certainly wouldn’t want them trying to teach them anything about the black experience,” he said.
He’s come across white scholars who have deep understandings of that experience and he says he would be happy to call them colleagues.
Taylor feels the university is responsible for finding and attracting “outstanding black scholars” but feels UB has never done that for its black studies program. He feels UB’s black studies program is one of the weakest in the country.
Black faculty departures
Lakisha Simmons, a former global gender studies professor, left UB to teach at the University of Michigan earlier this year. She found it difficult to teach in a department where she was the only black woman.
When she first came to UB, she loved that there was a core group of young faculty of color and she became very close with them and built “a strong community.”
That strong community of faculty of color dwindled over the six years she taught at the university.
“Things got really difficult for me a couple of years ago when the fate of global gender studies and African American studies seemed uncertain and I feel like at that time, there were messages that those studies were not valued,” Simmons said. “I feel like things changed with the current dean and Provost Miller but at that point, it was already almost too late. And if you feel that what you do is unimportant to the university for a certain number of years… it hurts your morale.”
At University of Michigan, she says black faculty are more valued because more money is invested in programs like black studies and global gender studies.
Another reason Simmons left UB was because black studies, global gender studies and African studies didn’t have their own department and were under the transnational studies department.
“It’s never perfect because there’s bias against people of color and women in the workplace… it’s not limited to the university. In the current political climate, where you go to school does make a difference but it’s difficult wherever you are,” she said. “It’s difficult to be a black person working wherever you are.”
Finding solutions
Simmons believes the university has to make a “huge push” for cluster hires in order to rectify the issue of lack of black faculty.
Miller said she is currently working with College of Arts and Sciences Dean Robin Schulze to cluster hire faculty of color.
The Spectrum reached out to Schulze three weeks ago, but her chief of staff said she could not fit an interview into her busy schedule.
Simmons said she sees Miller and many deans support recruiting black faculty, but she still doesn’t know if there’s urgency across the university, particularly from President Satish Tripathi and Provost Charles Zukoski.
“I think it’s getting to a point that it’s going to take drastic action just to get back to where UB was five years ago so there has to be some kind of targeted hire,” Simmons said. “Either you’re a school that’s recruiting faculty or you’re one that’s losing them because there are only so many professors of color.”
Taylor said he gets offers to teach at different universities often, but chooses to stay at UB.
“I’m not trying to run away from problems, I’m trying to solve them,” Taylor said.
Ashley Inkumsah is the co-senior news editor and can be reached at ashley.inkumsah@ubspectrum.com
BUFFALO, N.Y. – Robert Silverman, professor of urban planning at the University at Buffalo, has been elected chair of the Urban Affairs Association (UAA) Governing Board. UAA is the international professional organization for urban scholars, researchers and public service professionals.
UAA includes more than 700 institutional, individual and student members from colleges and universities throughout North America, South America, Europe, Africa, Australia and Asia.
UAA’s Governing Board comprises 15 members who are nominated and elected by members of the association to serve three-year terms. Silverman is entering his second term on the Governing Board and first as chair.
He is the first UB professor to be elected board chair. Three other UB faculty members have served previously on the UAA board: Kathryn Foster (2002-2005), Henry Louis Taylor (1995-1999) and William Lobbins (1981-82).
“UAA is fortunate to have Dr. Silverman play this important leadership role. He brings to the position years of experience within the organization, and his extensive knowledge as an accomplished urban scholar,” said UAA Executive Director Margaret Wilder.
Among its activities, UAA sponsors the Journal of Urban Affairs, a refereed annual journal that publishes manuscripts related to urban research and policy analysis of interest to both scholars and practitioners.
The Urban Affairs Association also holds an international conference each spring in an urban center. The conference program features both topics of institutional concern and those related to urban issues from local, national and cross-national perspectives.
“It was an honor being elected chair of the Governing Board, and it is exciting to serve in this role during the year that the UAA conference is being held in Toronto, which is one of the most dynamic cities in North America and our neighbor to the north,” said Silverman.
The UAA was founded in Boston in 1969 as the Council of University Institutes for Urban Affairs. The name was changed to the Urban Affairs Association in 1981.
Silverman’s current research projects include studies of non-profit organizations, anchor institutions, inner-city schools and fair housing. Silverman is interviewed regularly by media outlets, including The Christian Science Monitor, Next City, The New York Times and The Washington Post, for his insight on fair housing policies and practices.
Large numbers of people live in “transit deserts” in Buffalo and other upstate cities, where ride-hailing services could fill gaps in the public-transit network because carless residents must walk too far or wait too long for a bus, according to a report that Uber and the state conference of the NAACP plan to unveil Monday.
They are releasing the report as ride-hailing services – more commonly known as ride-sharing services – wage a multimillion-dollar lobbying campaign to operate in upstate New York. Uber and the NAACP argue that the ban on ride-hailing holds back the economic redevelopment taking place in the downtowns of Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse and Albany, where businesses and residents are relocating.
But local public transit officials dispute many of the report’s claims, and cab companies point out that they serve the areas in question.
“We really vehemently deny their assertions,” said C. Douglas Hartmayer, spokesman for the Niagara Frontier Transportation Authority.
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The document contends that census data shows tens of thousands of people across the four regions don’t have cars, and it focuses on sections of each city where it says residents must walk too far or wait too long for a bus to take them where they want to go. In Buffalo, Uber and the NAACP flag one South Buffalo neighborhood and one Broadway-Fillmore neighborhood.
“This report confirms the sad truth that inadequate public transportation options have created a barrier preventing low-income communities from enjoying the benefits of a growing economy in upstate New York,” said Hazel Dukes, president of the state conference of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, in a prepared statement.
But Uber drivers would not be willing to to travel to the “transit deserts” highlighted in the report, said Henry Louis Taylor, Jr., director of the University at Buffalo’s Center for Urban Studies.
“The whole world of Uber is really designed for the millennial class. It’s not designed for poor people,” said Taylor, whose son drives for Uber in Chicago.
And John Tomassi, president of the Upstate Transportation Association, the lobbying arm for the taxi industry, dismissed the idea of unserved “transit deserts.”
“The taxis do cover the area now,” Tomassi said. He also said Uber drivers are unlikely to drive into the communities identified in the report, whereas taxi drivers are required to pick up fares wherever they call from.
The NFTA said no transit system is set up to provide door-to-door service. Officials, though, concede buses don’t run as often to the farthest-flung suburban communities or deep into the night. But the agency defended service levels in Buffalo and challenged the report’s motivations.
“I think they’re trying to put pressure on the politicians to vote ride-sharing to the sections of our state that don’t presently have it and are trying to make the case, in our opinion unfairly, using public transportation as a wedge,” said Hartmayer, the NFTA spokesman. “And, again, I think it’s misguided and self-serving.”
The joint Uber-NAACP report is part of an aggressive campaign waged by Uber and Lfyt, its main competitor, to open the rest of the state outside New York City to ride-hailing.
Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo has come out in favor of expanding ride-hailing into upstate and Long Island, as have the Senate and the Assembly, but all have backed slightly different approaches. It’s not clear whether the parties will reach a compromise as part of this month’s budget negotiations, or before the end of the legislative session this summer.
If Uber gained the NAACP as an ally, the company said it did not buy the support of the civil-rights organization. The association did not receive a contribution or donation in return for participating in the report, said Alix Anfang, an Uber spokeswoman.
The report cites several reasons why Buffalo needs “innovative transit alternatives,” such as ride-hailing.
First, its downtown is thriving, with more people working there, particularly on the burgeoning Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus, and living there. The NFTA offers limited, infrequent service at night, the report contends.
Next, Buffalo and its suburbs cover 52 square miles, according to the report, and census data from 2014 shows 14 percent of workers didn’t have a vehicle to transport them to their jobs.
The report drills down to a house located at 83 Hilton St., near Buffalo’s Central Terminal, that it says is located at least an 8-minute walk from the closest bus stop, on Broadway.
The NFTA, however, says bus service in that area is “robust” and that a bus regularly travels on Fillmore Avenue.
In South Buffalo, Uber and the NAACP lament that buses along the No. 16 route on South Park Avenue and the No. 14 that serves Abbott Road – “Abbot” in the report – are spaced an hour apart weekday evenings and as much as 90 minutes apart on weekends.
Further, Uber and the NAACP say, ride-hailing would help cut down on drunk-driving fatalities. Asked to back up the claim, Anfang shared a study by researchers at Temple University that found a 3.6 percent to 5.6 percent decline in drunk-driving deaths after UberX, the service’s low-cost option, was introduced in California between 2009 and 2014.
Gary Bennett, senior transportation planner for Metro bus and rail for the NFTA, said the agency views ride-hailing as a complement to public transit.
Bennett said there are suburban and rural sections of the system where demand doesn’t merit the same number of bus stops, or the frequency of buses, as there are in Buffalo. But he said the report is wrong to flag Hilton Street, for example, as a “transit desert.”
“The service in that area is quite robust,” Bennett said, pointing to the No. 23 bus that serves Fillmore Avenue, though the report only looked at bus lines heading to and from downtown.
Would Uber drivers even serve the neighborhoods featured in the report?
Asked for data on where Uber calls come from, Anfang said 40 percent of calls in New York City originate from one of the four outer boroughs, and 60 percent start in Manhattan. In comparison, she said, 92 percent of taxi trips in New York City are in Manhattan.
However, Uber drivers only work at ideal times and in ideal neighborhoods, said Taylor, director of UB’s Center for Urban Studies.
He said he has a better-than-average insight into how Uber works because his son, Chad, works as a driver in Chicago to make money while he launches his hip-hop group.
“You’ve got to learn where the hotspots are, because they’re going to go only to the hotspots. And you have to learn where not to go because you don’t make much money,” Taylor said.
Re-post from The AtlanticDuring his campaign for president, Donald Trump pledged to help inner cities and African American communities in particular. But his proposed budget eliminates programs that have helped these communities for years, and would deal a particular blow to Americans with the lowest incomes.The proposed budget, announced Thursday, would slash funding from federal agencies that lend assistance to poor people who live in cities, including the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Department of Education, and the Department of Health and Human Services. “This budget seriously harms low-income people and communities at the expense of everyone else,” says Elyse Cherry, the CEO of Boston Community Capital, a nonprofit that provides funding to organizations that work on affordable housing and jobs in low-income communities.
One of the agencies that does the most work in cities is the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), which owns and maintains public-housing complexes across America, provides vouchers for low-income people to live in private housing, and doles out grants that help nonprofits and developers invest in essential parts of neighborhoods, such as apartments and parks. The budget proposes a $6.2 billion cut from HUD next year, which would represent a 13.2 percent decrease from the level of funding for this year.
What specifically would go away? Among other things, the budget eliminates the roughly $3 billion of funding for the Community Development Block Grant program, which provides money for neighborhood investment, saying that the program “is not well-targeted to the poorest populations and has not demonstrated results.” It also eliminates funding for the HOME Investment Partnership Program, which provides grants for low-income people to buy or rehabilitate homes, and the Choice Neighborhoods program, which provides grants to organizations attempting to revitalize neighborhoods. The proposed budget also eliminates the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness, which coordinates how 19 federal agencies respond to homelessness.“If all of those cuts were implemented, they would have some pretty extreme effects not only on cities, but on low-income households,” says Robert Silverman, a professor of urban and regional planning at the University of Buffalo. (This is a big if—the proposed budget lays out the administration’s priorities, but will likely be significantly altered before it gets approved by Congress and signed by the president.) The Community Development Block Grant program, for example, has been essential in providing funds that cities use for a variety of activities, including building parks, funding after-school programs, and supplementing the funding of nonprofits. HUD has been trying to ensure that the money is used most effectively in recent years, even as funding levels have been reduced, Silverman said. (The Community Development Block Grant already receives 49 percent less funding than it did in the year 2000, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a left-leaning nonprofit.)
Trump’s proposed cuts represent the most severe funding threat to HUD since the early days of the Reagan administration, according to Diane Yentel, the president of the National Low Income Housing Coalition, a nonprofit.Sunia Zaterman, the executive director of the Council of Large Public Housing Authorities, said that a more detailed version of the budget being reported on by some media outlets is set on reducing money that pays for maintenance of public-housing complexes, and on the program that provides vouchers for low-income residents to help them pay for housing. That budget is one sent from the Office of Management and Budget to HUD, in response to a budget that HUD itself proposed. Those numbers indicated that the Trump administration would cut hundreds of thousands of vouchers from the Section 8 program, which is facing a severe shortage of resources, she said. Already, some public-housing agencies have decided not to open long-closed voucher waiting lists because of the uncertainty around the funding of the vouchers.
That OMB budget also indicated funding cuts for public-housing agencies’ maintenance and repair work, Zaterman said. This will be a particular obstacle to agencies like the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA), which gets $2 billion of its $3.2 billion operating budget from HUD and currently has $17.1 billion in unmet capital needs. NYCHA told TheWall Street Journal earlier this month that it could see $150 million in cuts from HUD. “It’s a pretty direct message I think that says we are no longer investing in this public portfolio—we are walking away from this,” Zaterman said. “The cumulative effect on low-income people is going to be devastating.”
It’s not just the budget’s provisions regarding HUD that would significantly reduce support to low-income communities. The proposed budget would also dispose of $4.2 billion in community-services programs from the Department of Health and Human Services such as the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, which provides funds to help poor people pay energy bills in winter. It would cut $1.2 billion in funding in before-school and after-school programs and summer programs from the Department of Education. It would eliminate funding for the Legal Services Corporation, which helps low-income people with legal issues, such as fighting an eviction in court. It would get rid of the Community Development Financial Institutions Fund from the Department of Treasury, which provides capital to underserved neighborhoods and programs. “It seems like any program that emerged in the last 40 or 50 years to address environmental issues, education inequality, affordable housing, or fair housing, all seem to very low priority,” Silverman said.Of course, this document is just a starting point, and there will be many negotiations over the budget yet to come. HUD Secretary Ben Carson reportedly sent a memo to employees last week to reassure staffers that the numbers were preliminary, and that “starting numbers are rarely final numbers,” according to the Associated Press.
But the document indicates where the Trump administration’s priorities lie. And they don’t seem to include many programs that have helped cities’ poorest residents.
The big players in Western New York must address racial disparities if they want the region’s economic renaissance to continue.
Closing the gap of racial inequity will not only strengthen neighborhoods and schools – it will create more money and more jobs.
Those findings are among those in a new report, released Tuesday by a roundtable group formed by the Community Foundation for Greater Buffalo.
The commitment to tackling this complex issue would result in a concrete payoff, according to the report released by the Greater Buffalo Racial Equity Roundtable.
“This is not just the right thing to do,” said Community Foundation President Clotilde Perez-Bode Dedecker. “It’s the smart thing to do.”
Millions spent on social services, health care and prisons could be redirected to job growth, education and recreation.
Businesses would have a richer, employable workforce.
The report, titled “The Racial Equity Dividend: Buffalo’s Great Opportunity,” is grounded in data, showing what is as well as what could be. It comes as a challenge to influential players of this community. It doesn’t offer answers, but instead offers motivation for finding solutions that work.
Alphonso O’Neil-White, chairman of the Racial Equity Roundtable, said community activists and nonprofit groups have long criticized the many racial inequities that have plagued the city and region.
“How many rooms have you sat in where people have raised issues, concerns and problems, and there’s nobody in the room that can do anything about it?” he said.
The point of the roundtable is to bring together the region’s top employers, as well as elected and community leaders, and those who deal with the consequences of racial inequity every day.
More than 30 people – representing government, private businesses, nonprofit agencies, educational institutions and the religious community – make up the roundtable.
That’s the only kind of partnership that can yield the type of sweeping changes this community needs, according to O’Neil-White and other community leaders.
“When we look back 10 years from now, Buffalo is going to be a model for how we deal with equity issues,” said Samuel L. Radford III, a parent advocate for the Buffalo schools. “This is a top-down, bottom-up movement.”
Those who have championed the issue of racial inequity say the Buffalo Niagara region is an example of how a divided region brings everybody down.
“It’s a challenge at a moment of time when the nation is torn between two conflicting visions of the future,” said University at Buffalo professor Henry Louis Taylor Jr., director of the Center for Urban Studies. “And in Buffalo, we are torn with our vision of the future. We will build a just city, or will we build the unjust latte city, the city for upwardly mobile white folks. That’s the choice.”
Talking about race and institutional racism is a tricky business.
Business leaders sat alongside government administrators, nonprofit and religious leaders a few weeks ago, trying to parse the difference between the words “equity” and “equality,” between “inclusion” and “diversity.”
“Equality” means everybody gets the same thing, explained the trainer, Paula Dressel. “Equity” refers to situational fairness.
She used the example of three children of different heights trying to look over a wall to see a baseball game. The tallest kid could see the game fine. The second tallest kid needed a small box to stand on in order to see over the wall. And the shortest kid needed a much bigger box to stand on to see over the wall.
The box represents “equity,” said Dressel, who is vice president of Just Partners, Inc.
“Our nation uses equality as the anchor for our narrative,” Dressel said. “Equality only works for everybody when we have equity.”
The training session, hosted as part of the Racial Equity Roundtable, represents the first step in tackling the issue of racial disparities in this region. It gets all the players understanding a common language when it comes to race and racial inequity. It also gives participants a way of understanding what “institutional racism” means and how it works.
So far, 70 organizations, businesses, nonprofits and government agencies have participated in the training sessions, as well as more advanced ones designed to prepare them for the harder work of addressing racial inequities in their own organizations, Dedecker said.
“When leaders of systems commit to this change, you’re going to see things happen,” she said.
The model has already seen success in Say Yes to Education, which came to Buffalo five years ago. Aside from offering all Buffalo public school students an opportunity for fully paid college tuition, it also engaged all stakeholders to provide student and family support services to every child that needs it.
Now, the school district is seeing double-digit increases in the percentage of minority students enrolling in college, O’Neil-White said.
The roundtable group, formed with assistance from the Community Foundation 18 months ago, is built similarly to the Say Yes model.
“We didn’t come to this group of people and say, ‘We’ve got the answers, we’ve got the solutions,’ ” Dedecker said. “These are all multidimensional problems, overlapping, complex issues that we face.”
Taylor, at UB, said the report is a challenge for the region’s public and private leaders to step up.
“You can run, but you can’t hide from this truth,” he said. “It comes back to, what are you going to do? The policy makers, the heads of the corporations, they have the power.”
Funding from the Department of Housing and Urban Development helps reduce homelessness, fund infrastructure, and enhance community services, data suggest. But how would cuts to HUD’s budget affect the families and communities that use those services?
Preliminary budget documents obtained by The Washington Post and others seem to suggest that HUD is facing approximately $6 billion in budget cuts for the next fiscal year, which starts in October. Around $4 billion worth of cuts would come from community development grants that provide facilities such as gyms and community theaters as well as funding local services. The rest of the cuts would come out of public housing programs. Assistance for the elderly, veterans, and Native Americans is among the hardest hit.
All in all, the proposed cuts would shrink HUD’s budget by around 14 percent, though HUD Secretary Ben Carson reassured staff in an email that “starting numbers are rarely final numbers.”
For advocates, budget cuts are a way to trim the budget deficit and reorient government spending toward other priorities, such as national defense. Fair housing advocates, however, see the proposed cuts as the latest in a series of cost-reduction measures that have stretched the beleaguered agency beyond its capacity. They emphasize how valuable these programs are for families and communities, and suggest the importance of maintaining that value.
“When low-income families with kids … move into lower-poverty, safer neighborhoods with better schools, it has a pretty significant impact on long-term outcomes for kids,” says Douglas Rice, a senior policy analyst at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, in a phone interview with The Christian Science Monitor.
Children are more likely to attend college, much less likely to become single parents, and enjoy higher salaries when they start work, Mr. Rice says. By some alternative census measures looking at the impact of in-kind benefits, he adds, federal rental assistance helps to lift 4.1 million people – including 1.4 million children – out of poverty each year.
But in an era of tight budgets and budget deficits, HUD has been underfunded “for a number of years,” says Robert Silverman, a professor of urban and regional planning at the University of Buffalo, N.Y., in a phone interview. Estimates suggest that just 1 in 4 eligible people are currently receiving HUD rental assistance because of funding limitations.
The Trump administration has also stated that it plans to find $54 billion in its budget proposal for increased defense spending, meaning many of these cuts are likely to make it into the White House’s proposal, Rice says. He estimates that HUD will cut above and beyond the estimated $6 billion, potentially reaching a total of $7.7 billion in cuts.
For advocates, the question is how to maintain that positive impact of HUD programs in the face of further funding reductions. Since the Nixon era, presidents have experimented with welfare reform and privatization, writes Holona Ochs, a political science professor at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pa., in an email. Could private corporations and philanthropic organizations help bridge the gap now?
“To the scale of this, the answer is no,” says Marc Morial, president of the National Urban League, in a phone interview. “Social organizations already stepped up to the plate.” In many cases, these organizations are already working at the limits of their own capacity, he adds.
“Over-reliance on charity leaves tremendous gaps in services,” Professor Ochs, the author of “Privatizing the Polity,” agrees. “Simply put, we cannot meet need by relying solely on charity.”
And if the Trump administration is hoping to increase public-private partnerships, cutting community development grants like CDBG and HOME may be counterproductive, explains Jerry Anthony, associate professor at the University of Iowa School of Urban and Regional Planning. The funds for these programs are leveraged to bring in more money from the private sector.
“These programs are crucial to local economy development,” he says, explaining that every federal dollar invested in these programs can bring in three or more dollars.
“Localities have a lot of flexibility in how those funds are used,” he adds, noting that they have been used to build community theaters, preserve historic buildings, and support parks, among other initiatives.
But if the private sector cannot provide a complete solution to the challenge of maintaining funding, it might be able to “soften the blow” by growing an existing pilot program, Professor Silverman indicates.
Since federal housing often lacks the money to do maintenance, many buildings have fallen into disrepair, he explains. That amounts to tens of billions of dollars in repairs, a 2010 HUD report found, making federal housing a costly option. Instead, as HUD has moved toward a voucher program that allows families to find their own housing on the market, private developers can get tax credits and loans to rehabilitate existing developments.
With private developers doing the work, this approach “doesn’t really have a big revenue impact” for HUD, Silverman explains. And companies are happy to do it because they know that tenants with rental vouchers will occupy the building when it is rehabilitated, giving them a secure revenue stream.
Ultimately, many observers indicate, maintaining these social benefits may hinge on increasing, rather than decreasing, HUD investment. Even if funding was held steady, 200,000 households could still be affected, Rice indicates, thanks to a combination of rising rent prices and inflation.
And they suggest Congress, which has the final say on the budget, may agree. There has been longtime bipartisan support for many of these programs. Part of that is pragmatic, according to Silverman.
“I wouldn’t imagine that there would be broad-based support in Congress for just cutting the budget drastically,” he says. “Every Congressman has constituents that they’re trying to maintain their level of funding for.”
The White House is expected to release its budget proposal in the next few weeks, after which it will go to Congress for consideration.
Often perceived as socially drab lawmaking centers, many state capitals actually are thriving hubs of activity and thus some of the most livable places in America. But not all state capitals are created equal. And though 17 of them are the largest cities in their states, the biggest population doesn’t always represent the best quality of life.
So in order to determine what state capitals are worth, WalletHub’s data team compared all 50 across 42 key indicators of affordability, economic strength, quality of education and health, and overall living standards. Our data set ranges from “cost of living” to “K–12 school-system quality” to “number of attractions.” Read on for our findings, expert insight from a panel of researchers and a full description of our methodology.
Living in a state capital offers many perks, but there are tradeoffs as well. For additional insight, we asked a panel of experts to weigh in with their thoughts on the following key questions:
What are the benefits and drawbacks to living in a state’s capital city?
What are the pros and cons of the state’s largest city also serving as its state capital?
In evaluating the best state capitals to live in, what are the top five indicators?
How does exempting government buildings from local property taxes affect the fiscal well-being of capital cities?
Are residents of capital cities more likely to be politically engaged, all else equal?
Professor of Sociology at The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
What are the benefits and drawbacks to living in a state’s capital city?
Capital cities are hubs for culture, history, education, and civic activities.As such, they can provide vibrant and innovative places to live.Job opportunities in state capitals attract more highly educated workers than surrounding regions, which also contributes to the city’s intellectual capital.
On average, the cost of living in capital cities tends to be higher than surrounding regions, which can be a drawback.They are also marked by a relatively high population turnover rate, with many residents in residence for only a few years. Smaller capital cities can suffer from a lack of economic diversification, leading to over dependence upon government related firms and businesses.As well, over reliance upon government can diminish economic resilience.
What are the pros and cons have the state’s largest city also serve as the state capital?
Many argue that having the largest city in the state serve as the capital can serve the state well. Large cities tend to host large media markets, with numerous media outlets enabling clear and comprehensive coverage of state political news. Large cities augment the cultural, civic and historical resources of capital cities. However, placing the capital city in the largest city can lead to an over concentration of resources, perceptions of undue influence of the city’s industries and financial interests on State government, and the marginalization of rural residents of the state.
In evaluating the best state capitals to live in, what are the top five indicators?
Cost of living
Quality of educational opportunities
Employment opportunities
Diverse cultural activities
Housing stock and quality
How does exempting government buildings from local property taxes affect the fiscal well-being ofcapital cities?
In smaller capitals, having large sections of prime real estate exempt from taxes can hamper revenue generation.High population turnover is also associated with less support for revenue generation efforts linked to long term investments (infrastructural improvements, school improvements etc.).
Are residents of capital cities more likely to be politically engaged, all else equal?
All other things equal, there is little general support for assuming residents of capital cities are more politically engaged.While residents may have more opportunities to interact informally with government representatives (lessening social distance), this is only true when government officials spend time in the capital or establish residence. Capital cities tend to attract young, educated inhabitants, and these people tend to be more politically active.At the same time, many local residents may be dependent upon state agencies/state government for employment, which can dampen activism.
Professor and PhD Program Director in the Department of Urban and Regional Planning at University at Buffalo
What are the benefits and drawbacks to living in a state’s capital city?
This really depends on the type of state capital you live in. For instance, some state capitals are in very large, economically diversified cities. A couple good example of this type of city are Phoenix, AZ and Atlanta, GA. That can be contrasted with smaller cities like Harrisburg, PA and Lansing, MI. There are a lot of possibilities in terms of large, medium and small cities. Being in a state capital usually means that you have access to a lot of amenities that you find in larger metropolitan areas, and that you live in a large media market. Even in the case of smaller cities that are homes to state capitals, there is usually a large university and medical center located nearby. So, state capitals tend to offer access to educational resources, quality healthcare, technology, recreational amenities, and they are homes to relatively well educated and skilled professionals who work in government and the sectors mentioned above.
What are the pros and cons have the state’s largest city also serve as the state capital?
It is a two-way street. State government benefits from having access to all of the other businesses, organizations and resources that larger cities have to offer. There are also more urban amenities to attract and retain a professional workforce. At the same time, surrounding industries have more direct access to policymakers and benefit from the added visibility that proximity gives them. There are incentives for state government to attempt to address urban problems and improve the quality of life when the state capital is in a large urban center. A good contrast is Denver, CO and Detroit, MI. Obviously, there are other factors that contribute to the vitality of Denver versus Detroit, but having the state capital located in the heart of Denver increases the visibility of issues related to urban development and revitalization to the elected officials who navigate the city’s streets on a daily basis. In contrast, Detroiters do not benefit from that type of proximity to policy-makers.
In evaluating the best state capitals to live in, what are the top five indicators?
A lot of the things that serve as indicators are characteristic of any city with a high quality of life. They may include: a robust economy characterized by growth and high-skilled jobs, quality K-12 schools, the presence of colleges and universities, a quality health care system, and a vibrant cultural and recreational environment. A couple good example of state capitals that scores high on these indicators are Austin, TX and Madison, WI.
However, the ability to maintain the quality of life in a state capital can change over time. For instance, Nashville, TN checks most of the boxes mentioned above, but its recent growth has made it more challenging to remain an affordable city with high quality services.
How does exempting government buildings from local property taxes affect the fiscal well-being ofcapital cities?
This really depends on the size of the city and other elements of its tax-base. Smaller state capitals probably struggle with this issue more than larger ones. But, there are trade-offs. For instance, the exemption of public sector buildings from the tax rolls may reduce local revenues, but the presence of a more professional workforce will increase revenue in other areas, like local sales taxes. Also, state workers tend to have middle-class incomes, buy homes and pay property taxes, help stabilize neighborhoods, and contribute to the tax-base in other ways. State capitals also add entail revenue from tourism, individuals visiting the state capital to conduct official business, and spending on the maintenance and upkeep of government property.
Are residents of capital cities more likely to be politically engaged, all else equal?
This really depends on the city and local political culture. In some cases, there may be more politically inclined people in state capitals. But, the best counter examples to this are in states like CA, FL, MA, IL, and NY. For instance, the level of political engagement in cities like San Francisco and Los Angeles probably dwarf Sacramento. The same would probably be true when comparing political activism in Miami, Boston, Chicago, and New York City to their respective state capitals. It is probably the case that state capitals become the focal point for political activism in smaller state like Kansas or Idaho, but political activism tends to be more vigorous in big cities.
Associate Professor of Economics at Washburn University School of Business
What are the benefits and drawbacks to living in a state’s capital city?
In general, the benefits of living in the state’s capital city is that state government spending and employment is less susceptible to economic downturns than other industries, as government spending and employment related to its administration functions tend to be fairly stable.
State government is also analogous to an exporting (or primary) industry as it provides administrative services to all residents of the state. This draws economic activity into the local economy from tax dollars of other state residents, as a disproportionate share of economic spending on the administrative portion of government budgets will take place in state capitals. The drawback to this, of course, is that when the state government is reducing employment and spending on its administrative functions (like we’ve done here in Kansas), the state capital’s economy will be harmed more than in other portions of the state. Statewide, lower government spending is offset by more spending in the private sector as taxes fall. But in state capitals the decrease in government spending in the local economy will overwhelm any increase in private spending via lower taxes. The reverse of course happens when states are increasing spending on administrative functions.
As you mention with your follow-up question, another big drawback is the large amount of government property that is exempt from property taxes. State offices are often located in central areas with higher property value per acre. So it puts pressure on local governments and school districts to fund services while having a big portion of its tax base exempt. The needs of local schools and municipal services are just as large when serving residents employed by a government bureaucracy, as when they are employed by a private business. But the private business pays property and business taxes, whereas and the bureaucracy does not.
Another benefit of being a state capital is that state legislators (even though being from outside the area) probably feel a stronger connection to the local community, since they spend a significant amount of time there. This probably helps the local area garner support from the legislature for policy that are of local importance. Being a state capital also probably draws in a higher proportion of educated workers.
What are the pros and cons have the state’s largest city also serve as the state capital?
The pros of having a state capital in the biggest city is that the larger labor pool in big cities is beneficial to both the state government’s ability to find the most qualified workers. The large labor market is also beneficial to potential workers as it lowers the search cost for government workers who may want to switch jobs or for the spouses of government workers in two-worker households.
A drawback to being in the largest city is that it may make the residents of rural and secondary cities to feel even more dismissed by the larger, more economically prominent city.
In evaluating the best state capitals to live in, what are the top five indicators?
As for the best state capitals to live in, I would use the same indicators that you would use for cities that are not state capitals. I guess you could add a measure for volatility of state government employment in the metropolitan area (standard deviation of state government employment). Otherwise it would be things like poverty rate, quality of local schools, crime rate, unemployment rate etc.
Are residents of capital cities more likely to be politically engaged, all else equal?
I do think residents of state capitals are more likely to be politically engaged. Employees of government agencies and legislators are likely to be very attuned to the political issues in the state. As such, friends and family members of these workers will become more exposed to these issues through their personal interactions with state employees. Information flows through personal contacts like a virus. So invariably state capitals will have a more politically engaged population.
Methodology
In order to identify the best state capitals to live in, WalletHub’s analysts compared all 50 across four key dimensions: 1) Affordability, 2) Economic Well-Being, 3) Quality of Education & Health and 4) Quality of Life.
We evaluated those dimensions using compiled 42 relevant metrics, which are listed below with their corresponding weights. Each metric was graded on a 100-point scale, with a score of 100 representing the most livable state capital.
We then calculated a “State Capital Index” for each state capital based on its weighted average across all metrics and used the resulting indexes to construct our final ranking.
Affordability – Total Points: 25
Cost of Living: Double Weight (~10.00 Points)
Median Household Income: Double Weight (~10.00 Points)
Note: This metric was adjusted for the cost of living.
Housing Costs: Full Weight (~5.00 Points)
Note: This metric was adjusted for the cost of living.
Economic Well-Being – Total Points: 25
Population Growth: Full Weight (~2.50 Points)
Income Growth: Full Weight (~2.50 Points)
Average Credit Score: Full Weight (~1.25 Points)
Income Inequality: Full Weight (~2.50 Points)
Debt as a Share of Median Income: Full Weight (~2.50 Points)
Share of Population Living Below Poverty Level: Full Weight (~2.50 Points)
Unemployment Rate: Full Weight (~2.50 Points)
Underemployment Rate: Full Weight (~1.25 Points)
Foreclosure Rate: Full Weight (~2.50 Points)
Building-Permit Activity: Full Weight (~2.50 Points)
Note: This metric measures the number of new unit permits pulled per capita.
Share of State & Local Government Employees: Full Weight (~2.50 Points)
Quality of Education & Health – Total Points: 25
K–12 School-System Quality: Full Weight (~1.79 Points)
Note: This metric is based on data from GreatSchools.org.
Average University Score: Full Weight (~1.79 Points)
Note: This metric is based on data from U.S. News & World Report.
Number of Universities in Top 231: Full Weight (~1.79 Points)
Note: This metric is based on data from U.S. News & World Report.
Share of Adults with at Least a Bachelor’s Degree: Full Weight (~1.79 Points)
Note: “Adults” include the population aged 25 and older.
Share of Population with Health-Insurance Coverage: Full Weight (~1.79 Points)
Note: “Population” includes ages 16 and older.
Quality of Public Hospital System: Full Weight (~1.79 Points)
Note: This metric is based on data from Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.
Hospital Beds per Capita: Full Weight (~1.79 Points)
Premature-Death Rate: Double Weight (~3.57 Points)
Note: This metric measures average years of potential life lost.
Infant-Mortality Rate: Full Weight (~1.79 Points)
Share of Adults in Good Health: Double Weight (~3.57 Points)
Note: This metric is based on a health survey conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “Good Health” includes responses of “good,” “very good” and “excellent” health. “Adults” include respondents aged 18 and older.
Share of Live Births with Low Birth Weight: Double Weight (~3.57 Points)
Quality of Life – Total Points: 25
Share of Millennial Newcomers: Full Weight (~1.25 Points)
Number of Attractions: Full Weight (~1.25 Points)
Note: “Attractions” include, for instance, zoos, museums and theaters.
Nightlife Options per Capita: Full Weight (~1.25 Points)
Restaurants per Capita: Full Weight (~1.25 Points)
Bars per Capita: Full Weight (~1.25 Points)
Coffee Shops per Capita: Full Weight (~1.25 Points)
Fitness Centers per Capita: Full Weight (~1.25 Points)
Walkability: Full Weight (~1.25 Points)
Note: This metric is based on data from Walk Score.
Average Commute Time: Full Weight (~1.25 Points)
Traffic Congestion: Full Weight (~1.25 Points)
Note: This metric measures average annual hours of traffic delays.
Likelihood of Traffic Accidents: Full Weight (~1.25 Points)
Note: This metric measures the likelihood of traffic accidents compared with the U.S. average.
Driving Fatalities per Capita: Full Weight (~1.25 Points)
Average Weekly Work Hours: Full Weight (~1.25 Points)
Sports Fan-Friendliness: Full Weight (~1.25 Points)
Note: This metric is based on WalletHub’s Best Sports Cities ranking.
Violent-Crime Rate: Double Weight (~2.50 Points)
Property-Crime Rate: Double Weight (~2.50 Points)
Sources: Data used to create this ranking were collected from the U.S. Census Bureau, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Department of Housing and Urban Development, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Council for Community and Economic Research, Chmura Economics & Analytics, ATTOM Data Solutions (RealtyTrac), TransUnion, GreatSchools.org, U.S. News & World Report, Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, Health Resources & Services Administration, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, County Health Rankings, Walk Score, Texas A&M Transportation Institute, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, Allstate, Yelp, TripAdvisor and WalletHub research.
