URBAN HARDSHIP Cleveland in the top 10 for difficulty

The Rockefeller study covered there decades of changes.
CLEVELAND (AP) -- Cleveland, which had the worst poverty rate among big cities in a recent U.S. Census Bureau survey, has landed in the top-10 list of cities where living is difficult.
The city is among a handful of American cities where major urban hardship has existed for decades, according to a long-term study the Rockefeller Institute released Sunday.
The 64-page document, analyzing 2000 U.S. census data on income level, education, poverty, unemployment, crowded housing and proportion of young and elderly dependent residents, put Cleveland among the top 10 "hardship" cities for the fourth time in more than three decades.
The Rockefeller study drew from earlier data than last month's census report ranking Cleveland No. 1 among big-city poverty rates.
The Rockefeller study took a broader measure of social and economic conditions of cities and examined changes over three decades.
Still, the studies carried a similar message of a troubled city.
Placing blame
Thomas Bier, with Cleveland State University's Center for Housing Research and Policy, said that as long as state and federal policies "continue to drain resources from the core city" to suburban counties, Cleveland's urban hardships would continue.
Richard Nathan, one of the report's authors and director of the Rockefeller Institute, said that during the 1990s, Cleveland and other cities enjoyed enough improvement "to give us some glimmer of optimism" about the plight of urban centers.
But though rankings of Akron and Youngstown gradually got better over 30 years, Cleveland stumbled from its position in 1970 and 1990 as ninth-highest in the United States to seventh in the latest study.
The study looked at issues including inflexible city boundaries with little annexation of surrounding areas and potential for growth; the migration of a city's population into a larger metro area; residential racial segregation; a high proportion of older housing; and lower reduction in crime than other cities.