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Report looks at how mid-sized Ohio cities fare
By Kalea Hall
YOUNGSTOWN
Local job losses have had a great impact on Ohio’s legacy midsize cities, including Youngstown.
The Greater Ohio Policy Center, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization based in Columbus, recently reviewed Ohio’s small and midsize legacy cities to compare them with Columbus and other larger legacy cities.
The report looks at economic health, population and housing data from 2000 to 2014 and finds a struggle for these cities, including Youngstown, to recover from the 2007-2009 recession.
A specific problem highlighted in the report is the population loss, which remains “significant” for legacy cities of all size.
The U.S. Census Bureau said the estimated number of residents in Youngstown as of July 1, 2015, is 64,628, a loss of 438 people compared with the July 1, 2014, estimate of 65,066, according to Vindicator files.
The city has lost an average of 471 people annually since the 2010 census.
Economists say the population loss is a main trigger of job losses.
Mekael Teshome, PNC economist, used the loss of steel companies in the region as an example.
“Once a shock like that happens, the jobs don’t come back in large numbers,” he said.
From 2000 to 2014, midsize cities saw a net loss of about 2 percent in the percentage of adults in the labor force, according to the report.
Job loss and population loss have led to long-term vacancy in midsize cities. Eight out of every 100 houses in the cities were vacant in 2014. In Youngstown and Dayton, 13 out of every 100 homes are vacant, according to the report which uses Census estimates.
The report recommends both short- and long-term strategies to sustain stable and strong neighborhoods be implemented; to build on the respective city’s place-based assets to stimulate economic development; encourage regional collaborations to promote downtown core investments; and to tailor state interventions to avoid “one- size-fits-all” policies.