Harness resources, will to end the bleak listing of Youngstown

Once again, the city of Youngstown finds itself among familiar and dismal company in the latest Top 10 list of this nation’s most impoverished cities. A new report from the U.S. Census Bureau ranks Youngstown No. 6 with a poverty rate of 40.2 percent, only slightly behind such perennial bleak-listed places as Detroit; Camden, N.J.; Flint, Mich., and Gary, Ind.

What’s more, the report shows that poverty in the Youngstown-Warren-Boardman Metropolitan Statistical Area continues to increase, despite a slow but discernible decline nationwide.

The news likely strikes many as hard to fathom, considering the gains the Mahoning Valley has made in recent years in revitalizing industry and recharging economic development.

In short, the new Census report renews the lingering stigma long attached to Greater Youngstown. Its cold hard data, however, should also serve as a challenge for all agencies, leaders and individuals in our community to redouble the seemingly never-ending battle to reduce unemployment and poverty.

Clearly, far too many continue to be left on the outside of this region’s slow but steady rejuvenating economy. Even more continue to be cast aside from the wide array of local, state and federal social-safety nets.

The scope of prolonged helplessness in our community is demonstrated in some of the details of the report. Consider:

Some 43.1 percent of the urbanized Youngs-town area population were not in the labor force last year. Even when taking into account the retired, the disabled and children, that figure is abysmally high. It speaks, in part, to the need for aggressive jobs and skills-training programs.

Among female-headed households (no husband present) with young children, an appalling 69.3 percent lived in poverty here last year. That disturbing fact points to the impact of fractured family structures on quality of life.

Mean retirement income for senior citizens fell from $19,321 in 2011 to $17,271 by the end of 2013, a 10 percent decline, even as the cost of living increased 6 percent in that short time frame. That data indicate the need for additional resources and commitments to our Valley’s deserving and proud golden-agers.

Collectively, the results of the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey 2013 stands as a reality check for Youngstown and the Mahoning Valley. While our region has been buoyed by such recent success stories at General Motors Lordstown, Vallourec Star, the Youngstown Business Incubator, and Hollywood Gaming, the reality remains that thousands of adults continue to struggle — yet fail — to make ends meet, and countless numbers of children go to bed hungry many nights.

As a result, individuals and community institutions must rise to the challenge of lowering the region’s heightened economic insecurity.

Expanding outreach

Agencies from drug-treatment centers to family service agencies should explore expanding their outreach. Government entities, in cooperation with economic-development organizations and state and local lawmakers, should leave no stone unturned in their quest to create and retain jobs. Educational institutions must work harder at recruiting and training individuals for needed jobs to transport them out of poverty and into productivity.

In addition, private individuals should continue to support — in their actions and in their monetary contributions — those bedrock institutions such as the Second Harvest Food Bank of the Mahoning Valley and the Rescue Mission of the Mahoning Valley that have a solid track record of responsibly and successfully servicing the less fortunate.

In so doing, the city and the region can at least crack at the edges of the obscenely high long-term unemployment and poverty rates that continue to stain the image and sour the quality of life in the Mahoning Valley. Such efforts also can help push Youngstown off the next list of the bleakest places in America.