10-09-18 Community Relations - Laserfiche WebLink

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®CITY OF SOUTH BEND OFFICE OF THE CLERK of this report was four point nine percent(4.9%), for blacks it was nine point two percent (9.2%). When it comes to income, they discovered that Blacks make only half (1/2) of what White households make. In terms of liquid asset poverty, which is basically how much money you have in the bank or what you have that you could sell pretty quickly in case of a crisis,this report found that Blacks are two (2) times more likely to be in liquid asset poverty than Whites. Sixty-eight percent (68%) of Blacks in the City of South Bend live in liquid asset poverty. So if something goes wrong,they really don't have the money to cover that. For the Latinx community, sixty-three percent (63%) live in liquid asset poverty as opposed to only thirty-four percent (34%) of White families. The study also talks about households with zero percent (0%) net worth and the homeownership rate. Medium household income for Whites is about $41,000, for Latinos it is $35,000,and for Black families,it is only$21,000.This shows very clearly that we have a problem. If we value diversity and equity, I think you could say we have a problem. I would encourage you to go to that report to learn more about where we are. We need to do some real self-reflection as a community to determine what we need to do differently. We are focused on the City now,but what is the disparity in education? What kind of jobs are we able to get, Black vs. White vs. Hispanic? These are all different things we need to go into. It is not the City's responsibility to solve everything. We'd like to, but tonight we are going to focus on what the government policies are that help contribute to this problem and what are we doing about it. We've already begun the process of collecting some data on different things, and tonight, Code Enforcement is the Department we are going to talk about. How to use the recommendations of the Racial Wealth Divide Report to bring about equitable economic development as it relates specifically to housing options in SB Dr. Judy Fox, Notre Dame Law Clinic with offices at 1100 Eck Hall of Law, Notre Dame IN, stated,A few years ago, Regina gave my students and I some data about Code Enforcement in the City of South Bend. This is looking back from 2012 to February of 2017 (Referencing a map on the presentation). The darker the color, the higher the concentration of African Americans in that neighborhood, and the little black dots are the Code Enforcement actions in that neighborhood. The reason I started with this one (1) is that I did a study before this on sub-prime lending and foreclosure, and this section(pointing to the presentation) was targeted for sub-prime lending and foreclosing was highly concentrated.What we had,was this particular neighborhood along Lincoln Way between Portage and Olive on the east side. Families that owned homes during that time were targeted. People were going door to door to try to get them to refinance, and then people ended up getting foreclosed on and then investors moved in, so this has been a challenge. The pattern for the Hispanic population is similar but not quite as stark. The light areas are where most of the violations were found. That raised some concerns as to why this is happening. The numbers in these areas also correlate with the poverty. She continued, We know that this is a complex problem that is not unique to South Bend, but we need to find ways to improve neighborhoods without driving out the people that have lived there. South Bend has a series of issues that has exasperated this problem. One (1) of them is that our housing stock was built before 1960. A little over forty percent (40%) was actually built before 1940. Homes that are that old have condition issues and need improvements. The other interesting piece is that sixty-five percent(65%) of our housing stock is valued at less than $100,000. Banks, essentially, stop lending money to homes in that range. Specifically, they stop giving home improvement loans. Whether justified or not, it is not worth it to the banks, so folks in that range have limited ability to get income to make repairs. They also typically don't have a lot of liquid EXCELLENCE ACCOUNTABILITY INNOVATION INCLUSION EMPOWERMENT 455 County-City Building 227W.Jefferson Bvld South Bend.Indiana 46601 p 574.235.9221 f 574.235.9173 TTD574.235.5567 www.southbendin.gov 4