The Pittsburgh Neighborhood Project is a street by street exploration of the city’s 90 neighborhoods. As the beauty and uniqueness of each neighborhood is explored so too will the reality of lasting racial and economic segregation.
Welcome to The Pittsburgh Neighborhood Project’s Pittsburgh Neighborhood Disadvantage Map or PNDM.
Place matters in determining a variety of long-term outcomes for children and The Pittsburgh Neighborhood Project’s mission is to educate Pittsburghers on the causes, consequences and persistence of neighborhood level poverty, disadvantage, advantage and racial segregation over long stretches of time. Place matters because race matters and our neighborhoods were segregated by design.
Our map can be accessed here and is a tool to help users understand the connection between place, race, advantage, and disadvantage in City of Pittsburgh neighborhoods. Our majority White neighborhoods tend to be advantaged areas that are well connected to opportunity (with exceptions) while our majority Black neighborhoods face steep challenges and disadvantages and are not connected to the same opportunity.
By “disadvantage” we mean the collection of entrenched challenges, stressors (risk factors) and unequal conditions that some people are born into that are beyond their control, limit their opportunity and cause a a wide range of adverse outcomes. By “advantage” we mean the collection of sustained privileges, protective factors and favorable conditions that other people are born into that are beyond their control, expand their opportunity and facilitate a wide range of positive outcomes. Urban sociologists often refer to place-based disadvantage as concentrated disadvantage.
In this context, we specifically define disadvantage as an index comprised of the following variables: 1) percent of families living below the federal poverty line 2) percent of single mothers 3) percent of men ages 20-64 unemployed or unattached to the labor force 4) percent of those ages 25 and up without a Bachelor’s or more 5) rate of gun shots reported/fired per 500 people and 6) average adult income rank for children born to parents at the 25th percentile of the income distribution from 1978-1983.
The map contains an about section, detailed mapping methodology and a brief county level racial analysis, in addition to information on a variety of neighborhood level data points included and not included in our disadvantage index.
Located just northeast of Manchester, California-Kirkbride is a majority Black and extreme poverty neighborhood that is bridged between the City’s lower and upper Northside. As such, California-Kirkbride is split between a southern section which is topographically flat, filled with vacant lots and is home to historic row homes and a northern section that sits directly south of the architecturally beautiful and distinct Oliver Citywide Academy, a sparse collection of homes and the breathtaking Union Dale Cemetery; the two sections are connected via Pittsburgh city steps and the neighborhood’s eastern border of Brighton Road.
A pair of city steps connect the southern section of the neighborhood to the northern section. The steps sit off Morrison Street and connect up to Sunday Street.
California-Kirkbride is bordered to the north by Marshall Shadeland, to the west by Manchester, to the East by Perry South and to the south by Central Northside, which is more commonly known as the Mexican War Streets. Allegheny Avenue and California Avenue are adjacent to the Norfolk Southern Railroad and comprise the western border; Island Avenue and a section of Marshall Avenue makeup the northern border; and Brighton Road and Pennsylvania Avenue constitute the eastern and southern border, respectively. The community is accessible via the 13, 16 and 17 but is somewhat cutoff from the rest of the lower Northside. Formerly an industrial rail yard, the U.S Postal Service now houses a sorting center that takes up a significant amount of land in the most southwestern part of the neighborhood. Other industrial sites exist off of California Avenue and in the northern section of the neighborhood off of Sunday Street.
California-Kirkbride (or Cal-Bride) is located on Pittsburgh’s Northside region.
Neighborhoods like Northside’s California-Kirkbride are a microcosm of the decline, disinvestment and extreme poverty and inopportunity that many Black Pittsburghers face. While much attention has been given to Pittsburgh’s revitalization, that revitalization has not taken place in most of Pittsburgh’s poorest and Blackest neighborhoods, and the living wage opportunities that stem from economic growth often remain out of reach for Pittsburghers of all races without a college degree. While the northern part of the neighborhood is quiet and tucked away, the southern section is largely green and emptied – with the effects of its overwhelming poverty and abandonment evident. But neighborhood groups like the Northside Coalition for Fair Housing aim to revitalize the neighborhood in an equitable manner and helped give life to a colorful play space surrounded by public murals off California Avenue. Likewise, Project Destiny sits off the neighborhood’s western border and offers programs to engage inner city youth. Project Destiny runs an afterschool program, mentoring networks and offers a 6-week summer camp program, and is partnered with the Pittsburgh Zoo and PPG Aquarium. Lastly, Northside Common Ministries is located in the south-eastern section of the neighborhood and offers employment services, a homeless shelter, a food pantry and other services to disadvantaged populations of the Northside and beyond.
The southern section of the neighborhood conveys a visual sense of emptiness and abandonment. A considerable number of lots are now green and unoccupied and reveal just how dense this neighborhood once was by both population and housing stock.A playground that was constructed with the aid of Kaboom!, the Northside Coalition for Fair Housing and others. It sits in the southern section of the neighborhood off of California Avenue. A unique mural overlooks the play space.
As workers of the former rail yard, slaughterhouses and other local industries increased residential demand during the late 1800s and early 1900s, the neighborhood became densely populated with industrial style row homes. But California-Kirkbride shares a similar history with many of Pittsburgh’s other poorest neighborhoods. Increasing suburbanization and White flight emptied out neighborhoods following World War II and the collapse of the region’s Steel Industry delivered a punishing blow to neighborhoods already struggling with poverty. Additionally, the practice of redlining and other discriminatory housing and lending policies served to concentrate Black people in the poorest neighborhoods and was legal until the passage of the 1968 Fair Housing Act. While Pittsburgh passed an anti discrimination law regarding the rental, purchase, sale or financing of residential housing 10 years prior to the passage of the federal law, neither law has had a significant impact on changing patterns of economic and racial segregation overtime. As can be seen in the graph below, researcher Patrick Sharkey found that the number of Black versus White children living in high or moderate poverty neighborhoods remained nearly unchanged both before and long after the passage of the 1968 Fair Housing Act.[1] As those who sought new opportunity went elsewhere and/or others left for racially motivated reasons, local businesses collapsed, religious and social institutions slowly closed their doors (as membership declined), and those that remained did so in a still depopulating neighborhood and city without the tax base to properly address such cemented issues of poverty and disadvantage.
Sharkey defined high poverty neighborhoods as those with 30% poverty or more and moderate poverty neighborhoods as those with rates between 20 and 29%. The 1968 Fair Housing Law was past in 1968, but a number of factors ranging from deindustrialization to implicit and explicit means of continued discrimination and exclusion kept the law from achieving the intended effect of changing such segregated residential patterns.
I did my street by street walk of the neighborhood on a fifty something degree day in late March. While I’ve been though California-Kirkbride on a number of occasions over the years, I had never explored the neighborhood in such an intimate way. Most notably, the southern part of California-Kirkbride feels empty and there are few Pittsburgh neighborhoods that convey such a sense of vacancy and abandonment. Boarded up businesses and vacant lots give a sense of what the neighborhood used to be like. However, there were a handful of homes that appeared to be undergoing renovations, especially so in the more historic sections of the neighborhood. These sections were composed of large, unique and sturdy brick row homes. Pella, a door and window replacement company, had their stickers on a number of these row homes which suggest that some investment is returning to the neighborhood. Colorful murals were scattered throughout the southern part of the neighborhood and portrayed Black portraits of children, workers, past community members and a bride walking through a door. As I walked past historic row homes and dilapidated housing, Black bodied children were laughing and returning from school, a handful of residents were walking through the neighborhood, and a few women did gardening work in their backyards.
Historic row homes off Brighton Place. The neighborhood was once an alienated, unpopulated corner of the former Allegheny City. But industry brought workers and housing to the neighborhood. However, today, the neighborhood is depopulating and again feels alienated from other more prominent neighborhoods in the lower Northside. Mural with complementary color tones in the southern section of the neighborhood.
As I walked northward up the city steps off Morrison Street, I immediately noticed that the housing was not subject to the sort of emptiness present in the southern section. This part of the neighborhood was quiet and tucked away; something that a young Black resident really enjoyed about the neighborhood, as said to me. Her name is Britney and she has lived in the area for about 13 years. I spoke with her off Island Avenue and Winifred Street. Britney is quiet, shy and reserved and said that the peaceful calm of this part of the neighborhood is only sometimes interrupted by children and teens at Oliver Citywide Academy. Oliver is a school that is composed entirely of special needs children and teens throughout the city and was once the former Oliver Highschool. The sounds of teens were evidenced by the track meet that was about to start in the athletic field just north of the neighborhood in Marshall-Shadeland. Because of her shyness and avoidance of social media, something I should aspire to, she did not wish to have her picture taken. Britney mentioned that she liked how her close her neighborhood was to her school. Although, she wished that there were more to do in California-Kirkbride; the community does not have its own commercial corridor and is almost entirely residential, except for the swaths of land owned by nonprofits and industry. She attends the Community College of Allegheny County’s Northside campus and stated that she has to go to the Mexican War Streets or the businesses off Western Avenue in Allegheny West to, “Have something to do.” However, the shops are not too far by foot and are very accessible by bus.
Single family homes in the northern section of the neighborhood.
The northern part of the neighborhood was serene and home to another playground. However, the playground looked quite old and had features reminiscent of the original play equipment that was housed in Moore Park and Brookline Memorial Park in Brookline during the 90s. But Brookline’s equipment had been replaced when I was still a child and has received additions since then; California-Kirkbride’s playground has not. Surrounded by Oliver Citywide Academy, Highwood Cemetery in Marshall-Shadeland and Union Dale cemetery, the most north-eastern section of the neighborhood is breathtaking. Old tombstones from the 1800s, large green spaces and ancient trees collide with the brick of old row homes and single family homes, and the sound of bouncing basketballs echoed throughout the landscape as a few Black children shot hoops off of one of the compact streets. As is the same with many other Northside neighborhoods, the steeper parts of the California-Kirkbride give way to wide vistas that show the Northside down below and Downtown in the distance. Much like the rest of Pittsburgh, the neighborhood showcased both what had changed during the period of Pittsburgh’s deindustrialization and what has remained largely the same since.
Old playground off of Success and Winifred Streets. Old row homes line the northern section of the play space.The tree-lined Brighton road. Oliver Citywide Academy is located in the most southern part of Marshall-Shadeland but the section of Union Dale Cemetery located in California-Kirkbride is visible in the distance.The entrance to the beautiful Union Dale cemetery in the northern part of the neighborhood. Downtown, the West End and Duquesne heights and Mount Washington are visible from the most southern part of the cemetery.
From 1960 to 2017 the neighborhood changed from 3% Black to 73% Black and the population dropped from 4,235 to an estimated 717, according to census data. From 1990 to 2017 the poverty rate remained within the extreme poverty designation (with levels upwards of 40%) and rose from 42% to 49%. In fact, California-Kirkbride is one of only 8 Pittsburgh neighborhoods that have poverty rates of 40% or more as of 2017 ACS estimates; all but one of which hold a Black simple racial majority. When adjusting for college heavy neighborhoods, California-Kirkbride is the 4th poorest community in the entire city after Northview Heights, Bedford Dwellings and Homewood North and is the least populated city of Pittsburgh neighborhood (outside of commercially dominated neighborhoods like Chateau and the South Shore). Like many other high poverty, majority Black neighborhoods, the area suffers from a high male unemployment rate (33%) and has the 8th lowest median income in the city ($20,268), when adjusting this measure in college heavy neighborhoods. From 2012 to 2017 the median gross rent and the median home value saw significant declines (from $750 to $516 and from $81,292 to $54,700, respectively), along with a substantial population decline composed of mainly black residents (a 7% decline). As of 2017, the community had the 8th lowest median rent in the City. Unlike those few neighborhoods that are rapidly changing in the direction of increased rent, investment and residential demand, California-Kirkbride is declining in value, has gotten poorer and continues to lose a significant portion of its population.
Regarding other measures of need from 2012-2017, those 25 and up without a bachelor’s degree decreased by 6% (89% to 83%), male unemployment decreased by a sizeable 19% (52% to 33%), the White poverty rate rose by 12% (17% to 29%) and the Black poverty rate decreased by 12% (64% to 52%). However, the steepest decline in need was rate of single mothers with children which decreased by an incredible 51% (57% to 6%). While ACS data is known to have sizeable margin of error, this kind of steep decline may not be due to that error alone. Something else significant may be at play due to such a steep decline over such a short period of time. Regarding income, median income rose $12,158 to $20,268. While the White median income declined by an incredible $45,945 (roughly $61,000 to $16,000), the Black median income rose from $10,280 to $23,750. Very few White residents were estimated to leave over this time (just 13) but over 300 Black residents left over the 5-year period. Perhaps those few White residents who left had significant incomes, which led to such a decrease; but that is just speculation. And perhaps the most disadvantaged Black residents are leaving the neighborhood. One thing is clear, while issues of affordable housing are an issue in high and low poverty areas alike, the rent and home value are declining at a high rate in California-Kirkbride, not increasing. Such a steep drop and raise in indicators of need and value by race are more than likely tied to the continuing and significant depopulation of the neighborhood. But other factors may be at play as well.
Vacant lots and row homes off B Street in the southern part of the neighborhood.Dilapidated house in the southern section of the neighborhood.
Despite it’s incredibly high poverty and male unemployment rates, the neighborhood experienced minimal gun related violence as compared to other high poverty Pittsburgh neighborhoods over the last decade. As with the Knoxville and Garfield neighborhood profiles, concentrated poverty, prolonged inopportunity and unemployment and high rates of single mother families tend to have strong relationships with violent gun related crime, as discussed in those profiles. And the fatal and non fatal gun violence and shootings in Knoxville and Garfield are considerably high. However, California-Kirkbride is fairly safe, which affirms that these aforementioned measures alone are not the only predictors of comparatively high rates of gun violence. By all measures, gun related violence is lower in most U.S cities than it has been in decades, with the exception of spikes in crime in the past few years. In fact, 2014 was one of the safest years in American history according to researcher Patrick Sharkey. But as discussed in his new book, violent gun related crime is still comparatively higher in high poverty neighborhoods than low poverty neighborhoods, and is often carried out by a small number of individuals in micro areas of a given neighborhood. The emergence of crack cocaine in the 1980s hit poor neighborhoods hard and led to an explosion in drug and gang related gun violence. But not all poor neighborhoods were hit by these same forces. And crack’s hold has since declined in many of the nation’s high poverty areas. Comparatively, many poor urban neighborhoods are far less violent than they were during the peak of violent crime in the early 1990s. But again, many are still much more challenged by community violence than low poverty neighborhoods. [2] While such a low and steadily declining population may be a factor in the neighborhood’s low rates of crime, other factors may be at work, although it is unclear what they are. Age is often a factor regarding the likelihood to commit crime with crime significantly tapering off after 30. But 47% of the neighborhood is below the age of 30 and only 10% is above 65, according to 2017 ACS estimates. Whatever the reasons may be, California-Kirkbride is a much safer neighborhood for residents when compared to other high poverty neighborhoods profiled so far, as can be seen via Allegheny Analytics.
California Kirkbride is a neighborhood that faces steep challenges and embodies the growing divide between durably affluent and durably high poverty neighborhoods in American cities.[3] Even within the neighborhood, inequality is found. As of 2017, 52% of the Black population lived below the Federal Poverty Line as compared to 29% of the White population and this trend holds for most of the city. In fact, an analysis shows that while only 14% of poor White people in the City of Pittsburgh live in high poverty neighborhoods, a staggering 59% of poor Black people do.[4] Given the breadth and depth of sociological, economic and human developmental research that show the causal link between childhood development in high poverty neighborhoods and negative long-term socio-economic and health based adult outcomes, such a measure is alarming. Researcher Patrick Sharkey has shown the causal effect between childhood development in high poverty areas and generational poverty and impaired cognitive development,[5] and researcher Raj Chetty has reexamined data from the federally funded Moving to Opportunity experiment to show that a childhood move from a high to low poverty area has a significant positive effect on adult earnings.
Analysis used 2017 ACS 5-year estimates. The total percentage of poor whites versus poor blacks living in neighborhoods with 30% poverty or more was calculated. As can be seen, lack of income may only explain a portion of why this pattern exists. Other factors must be at play to cause such a sharp divide between where poor black versus poor white residents primarily live.
There are several neighborhoods in Pittsburgh that are experiencing rising rents and affordable housing and wage policies must be enacted to ensure that long-term residents can benefit from investment, improved access and opportunity. However, the main challenges that poor and Black neighborhoods like California-Kirkbride face is concentrated poverty, its effects on childhood development and the harsh reality of extreme racial segregation. While vulnerable residents of Lower and Central Lawrenceville, East Liberty and Manchester have to deal with the reality of rising rents that result from increased public and private investment and residential demand, California-Kirkbride and a significant majority of other high poverty neighborhoods must deal with depopulation, disinvestment and neglect. The history of Pittsburgh neighborhoods over the past 3 decades is not often change, despite the attention some neighborhoods undergoing change get. Our focus must also shift to the large number of neighborhoods that have simply been left behind.
The historic California-Kirkbride.
Methodology Notes
All neighborhood level statistics were gathered via census tract level data from the 2012 to 2017 5-year American Community Survey estimates. Citywide statistics were gathered via the 2017 1-year ACS estimates. The 1990 poverty rate was gathered via poverty estimates from the National Historic Geographic Information Systems. The University of Pittsburgh Library System informed which census tracts comprised a given neighborhood in a given year. Because some neighborhoods share a census tract as of the 2010 census, several neighborhoods were combined and are known as neighborhood areas. There are 74 unique neighborhoods and neighborhood areas used in the analysis. 2012 dollar amounts, incomes and values were adjusted for inflation using the consumer price index.
ACS estimates at the census tract level have sizeable margin or error. This may impact results.
Snippets of broader Pittsburgh history were not cited because they are common knowledge. “Student heavy centers” include all those census tracts within known student heavy locations and those neighborhoods that contain a 4-year college or university.
In neighborhood profiles and data briefs, neighborhoods and neighborhood areas are considered to have a simple racial majority when a given race constitutes 51% of the total population. Otherwise, it is considered a mixed-race neighborhood.
Poverty intervals were informed by standards in neighborhood-level poverty research. Specifically, researcher Patrick Sharkey’s poverty intervals were referenced from his book Stuck in Place – regarding what constitutes an extreme, high, moderate, low or very low poverty neighborhood.
*The views expressed on this profile and blog are mine alone and do not necessarily represent those of my previous or current employers.*
[1]Sharkey, P. (2013). Stuck in Place (p. 27). Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press.[2] Sharkey, P. (2019). Uneasy Peace: The Great Crime Decline, The Renewal of City life and The Next War on Violence. New York City, NY: W.W Norton and Company, Inc. [3] Sharkey, P. (2019) (p. 99)
[4] Analysis used 2017-ACS 5-year estimates. The total percentage of poor whites versus poor blacks living in neighborhoods with 30% poverty or more was calculated.
[45 Sharkey, P. (2019) (pp. 83-86)
I want to get this out-of-the-way now; I adore Garfield. My first ever rental home was on Broad Street in Garfield and I lived there with some of my best friends for roughly 2 and half years before moving back to Brookline. Our neighbors were overwhelmingly hospitable and sociable. Cook outs were abound (shout out to the time when our neighbor Jimmy liked my instant potatoes more than Cory’s methodically prepared steak). The neighborhood is close to just about everything in the East End via a high degree of walkability and a myriad of public transit options. Grocery stores are quite accessible and Garfield is home to a vibrant business district filled with wonderful Vietnamese, Indian and Black owned restaurants and businesses, the arts and First Fridays, and my favorite DIY (Do It Yourself) all ages music venue in Pittsburgh (aka the Mr. Roboto Project). Well, technically speaking, Roboto is in the most northern part of Bloomfield, but it’s literally across the street from Garfield. And I’ve had the pleasure of both playing and going to shows at Roboto for years. Garfield is filled with some of my favorite post-college and graduate school memories. As such, it’s hard to remove my positive bias towards the neighborhood itself, its institutions and my former neighbors. But like many other neighborhoods in the city, longtime residents of Garfield face steep challenges.
I rented this house on the eastern side of Broad Street with some friends from the fall of 2014 to the summer of 2017.
The durably high poverty and overwhelmingly Black Garfield is situated in the northern section of Pittsburgh’s East End and residents on its southern and eastern borders have easy access to several major buses via the Penn Avenue and N. Negley corridors. The 88 rides along the southern border on Penn Avenue and the 77, 87s and the 71 A and C stop at Penn and N. Negley Avenue. And you can catch the 64 just a few blocks north of Garfield at the intersection of Stanton and N. Negley avenues (on the border between East Liberty and Highland Park). Much like East Liberty, Garfield is in prime port authority territory and residents can get to Downtown, the Lawrenceville neighborhoods, the Oakland Neighborhoods, the Strip District, Friendship, East Liberty, Bloomfield, Highland Park and a number of suburban boroughs and more with ease. However, the northern most part of the neighborhood grapples with extreme poverty, and residents there are much more isolated than those on the southern and eastern borders of Garfield – as will be discussed. Garfield is bordered to the west by N Mathilda Street and Mossfield Street, to the north by Mossfield Street and Black street, to the south by Penn Avenue and to the East by N. Negley Avenue. Allegheny Cemetery of Central Lawrenceville borders the neighborhood to the West and Bloomfield, Friendship, Stanton Heights and East liberty border the neighborhood to the southwest, southeast, north and east, respectively.
Garfield is located in Pittsburgh’s East End region.
At one time, Garfield was home to Irish immigrants who worked in the mills and foundries along the nearby Allegheny river corridor. And this concentration of working-class Irish Catholics remained in effect from the 1880s to the late 50s and early 60s. However, as was the case with a sizeable portion of Pittsburgh neighborhoods that will be profiled, suburbanization and White out-migration from the 1950s onward, de-industrialization from the late 1970s and 1980s and Urban Renewal in the 1950s and 60s heavily contributed to the depopulation and economic decline of the neighborhood and its transition from one that was once overwhelmingly White and working class to one that is now overwhelmingly Black. And a significant portion of the Black population lives below the Federal Poverty Line. In an attempt to lure suburbanites back into the City, the city’s Urban Redevelopment Authority used eminent domain to buy up houses, businesses and land to repurpose them for automobile focused development and suburban like amenities in nearby East Liberty – which once had the 3rd highest economic output for a business district in Pennsylvania. The plan massively back fired and led to further depopulation and economic depression. And when segregated, Black housing projects were erected in the Northern portion of Garfield and in East Liberty, White residents fled the neighborhoods in droves. Thus, it was racism against Black residents that delivered another blow to a Garfield of times past. The neighborhood was roughly 10,000 strong and 80% White in 1970. As of 2017 American Community Survey estimates, the neighborhood is 72% black and has a population of 3,846 – a roughly 60% decline in population.
The neighborhood may be high poverty, but its local community development corporations aim to revitalize the neighborhood while keeping it both affordable and mixed income through low-income, moderate and market rate housing rehab and development. The Bloomfield Garfield Corporation and Garfield Jubilee Association have been committed to affordable housing development in the neighborhood, and it shows. Additionally, the Bloomfield Garfield Corporation has a number of home rehab and development initiatives, business improvement programs and an income eligible rent to own program that is dubbed the Garfield Glen Project. The latter was funded via an awarding of Low-Income Housing Tax Credits from the Pennsylvania Housing Finance Agency and received additional gap funding from the Urban Redevelopment Authority. Redevelopment and blight reduction were evident throughout my street by street walk of the neighborhood. Unlike other high poverty neighborhoods, as with our Knoxville profile, Garfield does not appear to be plagued by high rates of neighborhood blight. There were examples of new and rehabbed housing everywhere. And with my own eyes, I saw at least 6 housing rehab crews at work on the beautiful 50 something degree day that I walked the neighborhood. A revitalized commercial corridor focused on the arts and mixed income housing development and rehab have played a significant role in making the neighborhood more desirable for longtime residents, artists and new renters and for home owners looking for a neighborhood that is affordable and close to just about everything and anything the East End has to offer.
A small section of Garfield’s vibrant commercial corridor at N. Winebiddle and Penn Avenue. Spak Bros is featured in the center of the frame. The all ages Mr. Roboto Project music venue sits directly across from Spak on the other side of Penn Avenue.
I started my walk on the western portion of the neighborhood near Allegheny Cemetery and made my way north via N Mathilda Street and then Schenley Avenue. The latter part of my walk northward was covered by trees and felt like I was walking into the woods, and not a dense Pittsburgh neighborhood. The typography of Garfield is one of relatively flat streets running west to east in the western and central portions of the neighborhood and avenues that rise in slope as traveled from south to north. In the northern most part of the neighborhood is Garfield Commons, which is a mixed income community comprised of a significant number of public housing units owned by the Housing Authority of the City of Pittsburgh and affordable, moderate and market-rate units for residents not living in public housing. A 6000 feet community center is also available for resident use. Garfield Commons is large and stretches around Schenley Avenue, Columbo Street, Mossfield Street and more. The Water Tower Homes at Garfield Commons are situated off the most northern portion of N. Atlantic Avenue and give way to a beautiful look out where one can see much of the central East End down below and even downtown in the distance. The main issue is its disconnection from the rest of Garfield and the business district below. While residents of the commons have access to the 89 which runs as a looper bus between East Liberty and Garfield, the 89 runs less frequently than the 88 on the neighborhood’s southern border. But residents of the commons have easy access to the Garfield Community Farm off Columbo and Wicklow Street.
There are northern parts of the neighborhood that feel as if you’ve entered a forest and not a dense neighborhood in the City of Pittsburgh. A cabin like house sits off a wooded Schenley Avenue.The public and mixed income housing project sits in the most northern part of Garfield.Atop a lookout at the Water Tower Homes at Garfield Commons which is located off the most northern stretch of N. Atlantic Avenue. Downtown and the now closed Fort Pitt elementary school are visible in the distance.
Hillcrest Street is situated in the northern and more traditionally residential part of the neighborhood. Modest brick and single-family homes run throughout the remainder of the neighborhood and larger homes with intricate architectural detail line the most eastern part of Garfield off of N. Fairmount Street. Hillcrest offers beautiful views of Garfield, Friendship and beyond – with the Cathedral of Learning in North Oakland nearly always visible in the distance while walking southward down Garfield’s sloping avenues. Hillcrest is also home to Most Wanted Fine Art, the Hillcrest Urban Farm and the now permanently closed Fort Pitt elementary school – which was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1986. The football field directly west of the school is home to the neighborhood’s youth football program the Garfield Gators and connects kids in the program with a structured activity and other mentor and afterschool-based programs in the neighborhood.
Most Wanted Fine Art is just one example of the growing artist population that has come to call Garfield home over the years. The art space sits off of Hillcrest Street.Garfield and beyond as viewed via gaps between single family homes on Hillcrest Street. The Cathedral of Learning looms on the horizon.
The football field is also home to the annual turkey bowl between neighborhood residents on Thanksgiving. But much like Knoxville, gun violence has plagued the neighborhood over the past few decades. From 2012-2017, and according to Public Source, there were 3 incidents of homicide by gun in 2012, 2 in 2013, 5 in 2014, 1 in 2015, 2 in 2016 and 3 in 2017 just from January to mid-august – with Garfield surpassing all other Pittsburgh neighborhoods in the first 6 months of 2017 alone regarding the total of murder by gun, shooting with injury and gun assault with no injury incidents. As just one example of Black lives lost in the neighborhood, a father of five children and a caring husband named Sidney Barlow was tragically taken after trying to break up a dispute during a turkey bowl game way back in 1999.
The now closed Fort Pitt elementary school. The field that the Garfield Gators plays in is directly west of the school. The annual Turkey Bowl is also played by neighborhood residents on the same field.
I lived in the neighborhood from the fall of 2014 to the summer of 2017 and never felt unsafe. However, we did hear bursts of gun shots and were well aware of the violence. Community violence has the tendency to be carried out by a small number of individuals who create a disproportionate amount of that crime. It also tends to concentrate in micro areas of a given neighborhood – with the northern part of Garfield tending to see the most heat. And because durable concentrated poverty, rate of single mothers and the male unemployment rate tend to play a large role in predicting violent crime, long-term residents of durably poor neighborhoods like Garfield are often the ones most exposed and subjected to that crime, not newcomers. A deeper look into the economic and structural causes of gun violence can be found in the Knoxville neighborhood profile. As mentioned in the profile, a number of urban sociologists state that gun violence tends to be a product of economic circumstance, high degrees of racial and economic segregation (and thus proximity) and prolonged in-opportunity (which is connected with drug trafficking or “Beefs” between those in various groups) and is not some moral flaw of residents in the neighborhood. A resident who I spoke to said that the gang related violence appears to be declining and mentioned that the neighborhood feels much safer more recently. Her words will be the feature of a future resident interview. However, with the exception of a dip in non-fatal shootings, gun related homicide and aggregated assault in 2015, gun related violence is still clearly and sadly an ongoing issue in the neighborhood. To highlight the divide in gun violence often found between high poverty and low poverty neighborhoods, incidents of non-fatal gun violence for Garfield and Friendship are visible in the graphs below. The graphs are vastly different despite the fact that the two neighborhoods are literally across the street from each other. For an additional divide, the median home value in Friendship is $261,400 and only $72,709 in Garfield – despite their close proximity to one another. And lastly, Garfield is a durably high poverty neighborhood while Friendship is low poverty. Data for the following graphs was gathered via Allegheny County Analytics.
Garfield is a neighborhood that has seen significant degrees of affordable housing development, mixed income and market rate housing development, investment in the Penn Avenue business corridor and more, but is one that has seen little demographic change and income related change over the past few years and beyond. And as stated, the neighborhood has seen a significant amount of gun related violence. Regarding the area of Garfield that reportedly sees the most gun related violence, Garfield’s northern most census tract has the 9th highest poverty rate among all census tracts in the City of Pittsburgh (45%) and is 89% Black per 2017 ACS estimates – when excluding college student heavy census tracts from the poverty ranking. Additionally, the northern most census tract of the neighborhood has the 16th highest rate of single mothers (20%) and the 7th highest rate of males unemployed or unattached to the labor force (47%) – when excluding student heavy census tracts in the City of Pittsburgh. When looking at the entire neighborhood in the context of all neighborhoods and neighborhood areas in the city, Garfield is the 11th poorest (36%), has the 23rd highest rate of single mothers with children (14%) and the 13th highest rate of working age males who are unemployed or unattached to the labor force (34%).
One of the many examples of work crews rehabbing homes in Garfield.A colorful assortment of row homes off of Dearborn Street on the southwestern edge of Garfield.
Regarding neighborhood change from 2012-2017, Garfield has changed on some measures but barely changed on others. Over a period of 27-years Garfield’s poverty rate declined by a mere 2% (38 to 36%) and the White and Black poverty rates have barely budged over the past 5-years. However, like found in our other neighborhood profiles, there is still a huge difference between the percent of Black versus White residents living below the FPL (40% to 23% according to 2017 ACS estimates, respectively). While the rate of working age men has declined over the past 5-years (40% to 34%), the rate of single mothers with children has seen a more significant decline (29% to 14% or a decline of 15%). The rate of those 25 and over without a bachelor’s degree or more also declined by 10% but still sits at a high 76% as of 2017 estimates. While there have been some declines in measures of need, they are still quite high compared to the rest of neighborhoods and neighborhood areas in the city and are consistent with measures of need in other high poverty areas. As a whole, median income has increased by nearly $10,000 (roughly $23,000 in 2012 to $33,000 in 2017). Median income stayed roughly the same for White residents ($37,000) and increased by roughly $7,600 for Black residents (from about $23,400 to $31,000). And there is still a difference of roughly $4,000 in median income between Black and White households. Lastly, measures of value have both increased and decreased in the neighborhood over the 5-year period. Median gross rent increased by about $135 ($699 to $834) and median home value decreased by about $600 ($73,300 to $72,700). Lastly, the neighborhood is overwhelmingly Black with a sizeable White population as of 2017 estimates (72% Black and 18% White). The small remainder of residents are biracial, Asian or Hispanic or Latino. And while White and Black demographics are changing (a 10% increase in the White Population and 11% decrease in the Black population), the neighborhood is still very much majority Black.
Single family homes at Kinkaid and N. Graham Streets on the northeastern side of Garfield.
Unlike our Manchester profile wherein all measures of need had decreased by sizeable amounts over a short period of time and all measures of income and value had increased over that same period of time (and with Manchester also seeing the second steepest decline in poverty over 27-years), Garfield is much like our Knoxville profile in that some measures of need have stayed the same, some have changed, but all are still quite high comparatively. And while some measures of income and value have increased in Garfield, others have decreased. While an increase in median gross rent of roughly $135 dollars over 5-years may not sound like a lot, it can be sizeable for poor and working-class families and those households on a fixed-income, considering the reality of stagnating wages, rising housing and utility costs and a decrease in federal funds for affordable housing programs. But regarding those last two points, the Bloomfield Garfield Corporation and the Garfield Jubilee Association have built and rehabbed a large number of affordable homes in the neighborhood that are energy-efficient and their programs have allowed a number of a low-income renters to become homeowners through rent to own and income-based home ownership programs. These are necessary strategies that aim to protect the more vulnerable residents of Garfield as the neighborhood changes.
While affordable and mixed income housing development and commercial corridor revitalization play a role in blight reduction, deconcentrating poverty and protecting longtime residents from involuntary displacement (as neighborhood investments spur greater residential demand overtime), traditional brick and mortar community and economic development will not in and of themselves contribute to meaningful poverty and gun violence reduction. Garfield is a sobering reminder of this. The neighborhood is a truly charming area with breathtaking vistas, solid brick single family homes and a neighborhood social network that often feels tight and welcoming. I loved living in this neighborhood and I once planed on attempting to purchase my first home there someday. But many long-term Black residents live in extreme poverty and those in various subsections of the neighborhood are exposed to near constant gun related non-fatal shootings and to a comparatively sizeable number of fatal and non-fatal gun violence. Although affordable housing development is a necessarily step in stabilizing low-income renters and addressing the city’s affordable housing shortage, Pittsburgh can not simply build its way out of poverty and affordable housing shortages through affordable housing development alone. As mentioned, affordable housing development is a vital strategy to protect vulnerable residents from change and address the affordable housing shortage in this city. But it’s also one that can unintentionally reinforce concentrated poverty if it is primarily targeted to high poverty areas alone, and it is a strategy that may never meet the needed affordable housing demand. And as per research I do professionally, I can firmly say that the bulk of our affordable housing programs are highly segregated in areas of concentrated poverty and disadvantage.
A spacious and intricate home on the eastern side of the neighborhood off of N. Fairmount Street.
While affordable and mixed income development can help stabilize lower-income residents, I believe that affordable housing development needs to be paired with city-wide efforts to raise the minimum wage, create and connect low-income residents to in-demand/high quality hard skill training programs that are financially accessible and place-based investments that focus on the people of neighborhoods, not just brick and mortar economic development/commercial corridor revitalization. As one resident I spoke to put it, “The art venues on Penn are interesting, but they don’t do much for me and my kids. My kids aren’t into that. And we don’t have the money to go to those new restaurants that are opening up. We can’t eat art.” You can read her full resident interview here. And lastly, perhaps the City’s shift to community policing will have a positive effect on neighborhoods like Garfield, but that remains to be seen. Because the causes of violent crime in high poverty neighborhoods are often related to economic circumstance and prolonged economic in-opportunity, raising the income of residents, connecting them with living wage opportunities and addressing the place-based factors that prime violent crime all must be pursued if the city is serious about significantly and positively impacting those living in extreme poverty; households who are exposed to the conditions that create the opportunity for community violence. And luckily, the Garfield Jubilee Association is hard at work doing market driven workforce development and education development for income eligible 16-24 year olds via its partnership with the Community College of Allegheny County and others through their Garfield YouthBuild program. Only time will tell if such measures can affect the level of disadvantage that so many low-income residents face. And typically, it takes far more than just a few local programs to curb the issues of generational poverty and violence. In that vein, citywide measures will have to compliment what community groups are already doing in neighborhoods like Garfield, if we are to see significant declines in poverty and gun violence. And policy makers must address these challenges through means that do not place vulnerable residents at risk for displacement.
A Black bride walks up the stairs of a mirrored image of a spacious home off of Penn Avenue near the intersection of Penn and N. Graham Street.
Methodology Notes
All neighborhood level statistics were gathered via census tract level data from the 2012 to 2017 5-year American Community Survey estimates. Citywide statistics were gathered via the 2017 1-year ACS estimates. The 1990 poverty rate was gathered via poverty estimates from the National Historic Geographic Information Systems. The University of Pittsburgh Library System informed which census tracts comprised a given neighborhood in a given year. 2012 dollar amounts, incomes and values were adjusted for inflation using the consumer price index. Because Garfield consists of 3 census tracts, neighborhood level estimates were calculated via a weighted average based on census to neighborhood population proportions.
ACS estimates at the census tract level have sizeable margin or error and this may impact results.
Snippets of broader Pittsburgh history were not cited because they are common knowledge. “Student heavy centers” include all those census tracts within known student heavy locations and those neighborhoods that contain a 4-year college or university.
In neighborhood profiles and data briefs, neighborhoods and neighborhood areas are considered to have a simple racial majority when a given race constitutes 51% of the total population. Otherwise, it is considered a mixed-race neighborhood.
Poverty intervals were informed by standards in neighborhood-level poverty research. Specifically, researcher Patrick Sharkey’s poverty intervals were referenced from his book Stuck in Place – regarding what constitutes an extreme, high, moderate, low or very low poverty neighborhood.
It took me two separate trips to complete my street by street walk of the racially mixed and high poverty South Hilltop neighborhood of Knoxville. In not making the greatest decision, I left my winter coat at home on a moderately temperate February day and regretted it almost immediately as the temperature began to dive. When I returned to complete my second walk of the neighborhood, I was prepared.
As mentioned in the Knoxville neighborhood profile, I have a close connection to the neighborhood. My mom grew up in the northern part of the Knoxville on Rochelle Street and my grandma lived there until she passed around 2007. I have an aunt and uncle who still live there and several cousins who I haven’t seen in at least a few years. Also, the very first rental apartment complex that I lived in with my parents and older sister is a block down the road from Knoxville in the northern-most part of Carrick.
My grandma and mom’s old house on Rochelle Street in Knoxville. My aunt, uncle and cousins live in the white Row homes next door.
For my first walk of the neighborhood, I walked southward from the northern border of Knoxville at Cedarhurst Street. And so, for my second walk of the neighborhood, I decided to start walking from Knoxville’s southern border near St. John Vianney Cemetery, which is where my grandma and other extended family members rest. As I walked northward and zigzagged through some of the winding streets and alley ways of the southern part of Knoxville, I noticed just how White the southern part of the neighborhood is – as compared to the section of Knoxville north of Suncrest Street. Knoxville is one of only 7 neighborhoods and neighborhood areas in the City of Pittsburgh with no clear simple racial majority as of 2017 American Community Survey 5-year estimates. And yet, it is still fairly segregated; something my interviewee agreed with.
In a moment of serendipity, given my realization and the conversation that was about to take place, I ran into an amicable, honest and forward Black woman named Dana as I walked eastward on Suncrest Street. She possessed character traits that I deeply appreciate. I stopped, informed her of the project and she agreed to talk, as long as it didn’t take too long given the cold. While I attempted to talk to several neighborhood residents that cold afternoon, Dana was the only one who wasn’t in a rush to get somewhere and she didn’t mind spending a few extra minutes outside in the frigid weather.
Dana has lived in several South Hilltop neighborhoods over the past 20-years. She described what it’s like to be Black in Knoxville.
Dana told me that she was originally from Philadelphia and that she had been in Pittsburgh now for roughly 20-years. Before living in Knoxville, Dana had rented in several other South Hilltop neighborhoods including Mt. Oliver, Beltzhoover and Allentown. I mentioned that my previous neighborhood profile had been on Manchester and she excitedly said that she had lived there too. Dana mentioned that she’s been in Pittsburgh for so long because of family. At one time, she had a full scholarship to Indiana University of Pennsylvania, but a set of unlucky circumstances kept her from going there. Around the time of receiving the scholarship, her dad went to jail, and she selflessly chose to stay behind and take care of one of her two sisters. She currently works in the service industry and has an affinity for good barbecue. She mentioned that I should check out the recently opened Fat Daddy’s just a few blocks down on Brownsville Road in Mount Oliver borough and I plan to.
When I asked her what her favorite part of living in Knoxville was she said, “Because it’s cheap.” Knoxville has the 5th lowest median home value in all of Pittsburgh and maintains rents that are comparatively cheaper than in demand locations on the City’s East End. For a brief time, Dana lived in Highland Park and said that she was paying upwards of $700 for a rental unit. Here in Knoxville, she was paying $400 something for the same type of unit. Her and her finance are saving up to buy a house, and Knoxville helps her save.
When I asked her about her least favorite part of Knoxville she immediately said, “Being brown and the cops. The shops on Brownsville Road don’t say “Whites only,” but as a Black person you come to understand which ones you’re welcome in and which one’s you aren’t. It’s tough being Black in Knoxville. And as a Black person you definitely avoid Carrick and you especially avoid Brentwood. And if you’re a Black person that lives in Carrick, well good luck to you.” She then asked, “Have you heard of Jonny Gammage?” And I replied, “No, I haven’t.” Dana went on to explain how Jonny was just visiting Pittsburgh back in the mid-90s and was killed by several police officers in the south suburban municipality of the very White and middle class Brentwood. All for getting stopped for his driving. When I looked up Jonny, I found a somewhat recent article in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that was published after a cop in the municipality of East Pittsburgh shot and killed an unarmed black teenager named Antwon Rose. According to the police officer, Antwon had “bolted” from a car during a traffic stop. He was only 17.
The article went on to say that Jonny had been “erratically” driving a borrowed car. Mr. Gammage was a mere 31 years old and died in the custody of the Brentwood police on route 51 in 1995. The cause of death was found to be asphyxiation, which was the result of the five police officers who tackled Jonny to the ground and held him there. Jonny was just visiting from Syracuse, NY. But to Dana, he was Black and in Brentwood. That’s the cost of being Black in the wrong place, and even in the “right” place. Three of the five officers were charged with involuntary manslaughter, but none were convicted. And in Pittsburgh the Black community arose in protest; much like they did after Antwon Rose was shot.
Dana passionately explained that she gets harassed by the police quite often in Knoxville. And even as I spoke with her at Suncrest Street and Roll way, not far from the McDonald’s on Brownsville Road, a few unmarked police vehicles and policemen had been patrolling the street for something or someone right before I started speaking with Dana. Dana mentioned a few occasions where she had been stopped by the police at night while walking home from her job in the service industry. “Sometimes after 12 hours or so on my feet I just want to smoke a cigarette on my walk back home. And I’ve been stopped just for walking and having a smoke,” said Dana. According to Dana, police officers would ask her invasive questions about what she was doing and why she was out so late, but she was just minding her own business and walking home from her job.
Looking eastward on Suncrest Street.
Being Black in Knoxville is complicated. As described in Knoxville’s neighborhood profile, in 2018 alone, 3 young men were shot and killed in Knoxville, two of whom were Black males, and many more Black men, Women and even children were the victims of gun violence in just the past few years alone. And as reported by the Pittsburgh Courier, 75 of the 109 Homicides in 2018 in Allegheny County were Black. As researcher Patrick Sharkey’s recent book Uneasy Peace details, and in a brief write-up of the book by NPR, crime is at an all time low in many American cities. And poor urban neighborhoods are significantly less violent than they once were in the 70s and 80s. However, high poverty neighborhoods like Knoxville are still disproportionately affected by gun violence as compared to low poverty areas in Pittsburgh and beyond.
And so, as described by Dana, being Black in Knoxville means that you need to keep an eye out for the police. And that’s a shame, given that the other reality facing both White and Black Knoxville residents is their exposure to the neighborhood level measures of disadvantage that are highly predictive of gun violence and the gun violence itself. Sociological research into crime shows that violent crime is often a matter of economic circumstance, systemically high rates of male unemployment and single mother households, drug trafficking and its connection to a loss of real economic opportunity and a product and reaction to the high poverty neighborhoods in which many low-income Blacks are born into. Meaning, “Black on Black” gun violence is often a result of economic circumstance, severe lack of opportunity and is simply a matter of proximity given the reality of how racially segregated high and extreme poverty neighborhoods are. “Black on Black” gun violence is not some moral failing of the residents who reside in these neighborhoods.
As urban researchers Robert Sampson and William Julius Wilson have explained, local culture may play some role in gun violence, but local culture is a reaction to the severe constraints that face the residents of durably poor and disadvantaged neighborhoods. Being harassed or even killed for the color of your skin is a matter of circumstance that is beyond a person’s control. And being born into a poor neighborhood is also beyond a person’s control. And yet, young Black lives are lost to circumstances like these every day.
View of the northern part of Knoxville from the vantage point of Knox Avenue and Brownsville Road. Dana and I were just a block or so away from this spot.
The Pittsburgh Neighborhood Project is deeply appreciative of Dana taking the time to stop and talk with me on such a cold winter day in Knoxville. Check out the full Knoxville Profile here. The views expressed in this article and all other articles of the Pittsburgh Neighborhood Project are mine alone and may not represent those of my current or former employers.
*If this is your first experience with the Pittsburgh Neighborhood Project, the Pittsburgh Neighborhood Project is a street by street exploration of all 90 neighborhoods in the City of Pittsburgh. As each neighborhood is walked they receive a neighborhood profile detailing past and recent neighborhood level indicators and analysis, photos and observations from my walks, a brief history of the neighborhood and resident interviews like this one. The secondary goal of the project is to expose the high degree of racial and economic segregation by neighborhood in Pittsburgh and lasting neighborhood poverty. Data briefs address this secondary goal and are comprehensive statistical, geospatial and research driven analyses and extrapolations. Please check out the Pittsburgh Neighborhood Project to see what I’ve analyzed and written about thus far.*
Once a thriving neighborhood home to middle managers of the Steel Mills that resided down below on the Monongahela river valley, the South Hilltop neighborhood of Knoxville is a topographically diverse area with a collection of flat streets and hilly avenues with modest slopes. The neighborhood is densely populated by brick single family homes and subdivided rentals. And no, I’m not talking about Knoxville, Tennessee; something I have to correct all too often when I speak of Knoxville to other longtime Pittsburghers (who did not grow up south of the Monongahela river). Anecdotally speaking, Knoxville is one of the many struggling Pittsburgh neighborhoods that seem to escape the attention and awareness of those Pittsburghers who don’t know the south end of the city beyond the South Side Flats. The neighborhood is bordered to the north by Cedarhurst Street, to the west by Beltzhoover Avenue and Tarragonna Street, to the east by Amanda Avenue and Brownsville Road and to the south by St. John Vianney Cemetery (the place where my grandma and cousins rest). The neighborhoods of Allentown, Beltzhoover, Bon Air, Carrick and Mt. Oliver Borough (the only suburb completely surrounded by city neighborhoods) are north, northwest, southwest, south and east of Knoxville, respectively. When atop some of Knoxville’s steeper slopes, the northern part of the neighborhood is in full view with the U.S Steel building towering over the horizon. Truly, Knoxville is a complicated place, but one that has always felt like home to me (and a neighborhood that I adore).
Knoxville is located in Pittsburgh’s South Hilltop region.
The dense neighborhood of Knoxville from the vantage point of Knox Avenue and Brownsville Road.The U.S Steel building towers in the distance.
The neighborhood of Knoxville was named after the fruit farmer Jeremiah Knox who settled there in the early 1800s and was known for his strawberries. The neighborhood was once home to Shade trees that lined the streets. Several streets were named after Knox’s extended family and others were named after the literal fruits of his labor: such as Rochelle Street, Amanda Avenue and Charles Street, and Jucunda Street and Orchard Place, respectively. The neighborhood was a desirable site for farming because of two topographical shelfs that blocked out the smoke and smut from the Steel Mill below in what is now known as the South Side Flats, and shut out smoke from other mills lining the Monongahela river. The first shelf is a feature of Allentown and the South Side Slopes and the second is a topographical slope down from Cedarhurst Street. As the neighborhood became more accessible via the Mt. Oliver incline in the 1870s and via the Knoxville and St. Clair Electric railroad in 1888, the population began to increase and drove dense residential development. Managers of the South Side steel mills preferred Knoxville because of its low level of pollution and easy access to the South Side Flats. The neighborhood was annexed by the City of Pittsburgh in 1927.
Knoxville is 1 of only 7 neighborhoods and neighborhood areas in the City of Pittsburgh with no clear simple racial majority. The neighborhood is roughly 46% black, 40% white, 6% Asian, 6% biracial and 2% Hispanic or Latino – per 2017 5-year American Community Survey estimates. And it’s important to state that this racial mixing wasn’t by design. Like many other neighborhoods and suburban boroughs along the Monongahela river valley, Knoxville began to steeply decline in population as the Steel Mills shuttered and closed in the late 70s and early 80s. Even before the decline of the mills, neighborhoods like Knoxville were subject to the same sort of depopulation trends happening throughout the city as a whole from the 1950s onward – due to increasing suburbanization and White flight. And as the population continued to decline decade after decade, neighborhood churches, schools, local institutions and businesses on the Knoxville side of Brownsville Road closed as well. While there are no longer any secondary schools that are currently open in the neighborhood, the teenagers of Knoxville feed into Carrick High School – much like my mom did when she was young.
Town style row homes in northern Knoxville.
The neighborhood is a microcosm of the consequences of de-industrialization and depopulation across the U.S. As those who were able/willing to leave the neighborhood did, the poverty rate began to steadily rise. Only those families who were left behind remained, along with those families who intended to whether the change. Racial mixing did not so much occur via some package of intentional integration policies, but instead as the result of the demolition of Public Housing projects throughout the City of Pittsburgh (such as the former St. Clair Village in the 2000s) and by way of Knoxville remaining transit accessible and having cheaper rents (comparatively) than economically similar neighborhoods in more opportunity rich parts of Pittsburgh.
Despite my existing knowledge of the neighborhood from my spending time there as a child and teenager, my street by street walk of the neighborhood revealed just how racially divided the neighborhood is; something I had never quite realized when I was younger. South Knoxville appeared to be home to many White residents. I even spotted some “Don’t Tread on Me” flags dotted throughout the southern tip of the neighborhood; a reminder of the more conservative political tendencies of working-class White residents throughout the Hilltop and south Pittsburgh – despite their economic status and position. This feature was true of my own home growing up in Brookline, although as one that was quite poor. And obviously, not all working class White residents fall into this political category. As I walked north of Suncrest Street, the residents walking the neighborhood were increasingly Black. And despite notable exceptions of integrated groups of White and Black residents in the neighborhood, some of the Black residents I spoke to on my walk reinforced the notion of how different it is to be Black in Knoxville. Their resident interview can be read here.
Sturdy brick single family homes in South Knoxville.
Remnants of the once tree-lined streets are still present in south Knoxville and the housing stock is sturdy and compact. Much like my walk throughout Manchester, while dilapidated housing was littered throughout the entire neighborhood, its concentration tended to increase as I walked northward – especially so north of Bausman Street. A number of vacant lots broke open the otherwise dense housing landscape. But beautiful housing is present throughout the whole of the neighborhood and I have my own affinity towards my mom and Grandma’s old home on Rochelle street in the northern part of Knoxville. Wide open vistas of the neighborhood can be viewed at the top of the certain alley ways and steeples of closed churches still permeate the neighborhood; including the now closed St. Canice on Orchard Place – which was the place where my sisters and I were baptized into the Catholic Church. While a small number of bars and convenience stores reside on the Knoxville side of Brownsville Road, a number of former businesses are vacant. Aprimo Pizza, Napa Auto Parts, McDonald’s and the remodeled Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh also call the Brownsville Road business corridor home. While not in Knoxville, the bars, stores and convenience shops of Mount Oliver Borough are nearby.
Tree-lined streets in South KnoxvilleAn elderly Black man smokes a cigarette and leans next to a building that is adjacent to vacant lots on all sides. The vacant lots sit north of Bausman Street and Knox Avenue.
Unlike the small portion of formerly disadvantaged and poverty-stricken Pittsburgh neighborhoods that are rapidly emerging in rent and home value and declining in poverty and other measures of disadvantage, Knoxville is like most other high and extreme poverty neighborhoods in that it has gained in poverty overall and has remained durably poor for decades. While Knoxville’s estimated poverty rate has fluctuated over the years, the rate of individuals living below the federal poverty line increased by 11 percentage points from 1990 to 2017 (19% to 30%) and the poverty rate has generally stayed upwards of 30% in recent years. High poverty Knoxville has also continued to see its population decline with a loss of 968 residents from 2012 to 2017 – with an estimated population of 4,333 in 2012 and of 3,365 in 2017. Like is found in most Pittsburgh neighborhoods that will also be profiled, steep racial divides exist between the Black and White population regarding median income and poverty rate – even in such a high poverty setting. While both the White poverty rate and Black poverty rate saw declines from 2012 to 2017 (a decline of 7.9% and 5.6%, respectively), the Black poverty rate is still 5.4 times that of the White Poverty Rate (43% for Black people and 7.9% for White as of 2017). And while the White household median income has increased from an estimated $43,757 to $45,794.00 over the 5-year period, the Black household median income has declined by a percentage change of 34% (from $27,972 to $18,537 or a difference of nearly $9,500). The White population also grew by 4% and the Black population declined by 9% over this time – with a 4% increase in the multiracial population.
Knoxville estimated measures of need and value are mixed regarding gains and declines from 2012 to 2017. Regarding measures of value, median gross rent and median home value have declined in the past 5-years (from $861 to $792 and from $46,635 to $44,300, respectively). Indicators of need such as those living below the FPL have decreased by 7% (down from 37%), single mothers with children has decreased by 14% (down from 37%), and those 25 and above with at least a bachelor’s degree or more have decreased by 4% (from 91% to 87%). However, while these declines in need may symbolize more significant change, they must be put in context. As of 2017 ACS estimates, and among all other Pittsburgh neighborhoods and neighborhood areas, Knoxville had the 8th highest rate of single mothers with children, the 7th highest rate of males who are unemployed or unattached from the labor force (when removing college student heavy neighborhoods from the rankings), the 12th highest rate of those 25 and up without a Bachelor’s degree or more, the 11th lowest median Black household income (when removing college student heavy neighborhoods from the rankings) and the 5th lowest median home value in all of Pittsburgh. And so, despite these declines in need, need levels are still quite high in both real terms and comparatively. These high measures of need come with a heavy cost on the community for such factors have contributed to the relatively high rate of gun violence found in durably poor neighborhoods like Knoxville.
Unique single family architecture on Zara Street that has seen better days, but evokes a timeless sense of charm.
In 2018 alone, 3 young men lost their lives to gun violence in Knoxville: James Loughlin (a 23-year-old white male), Tamon Hatchin (a 24-year-old Black Male) and Anthony Bullock-Fields (a 29-year-old Black male). And on Friday, February 8th 2019, a home invasion resulted in the hospitalization of a suspect and home resident due to gun fire exchange. And sadly, gun violence has been present in Knoxville for years. In 2014, 36-year-olds Jason Eubanks and Cheralynn Sabatasso were shot and killed. In 2015, 15-year-old Curtis pounds was a 9th grader at Carrick High School who was shot and killed. Curtis’s Aunt said that Pound’s father had been shot and killed 6 years ago and that her sister had also been murdered in 1993. In 2015, Police Officers shot and killed a fugitive charged with rape of a young child, assault and other crimes. According to police, the man had held what turned out to be an all-black air gun “in a manner consistent with what one would see when trained to use a handgun against officers.” In 2016, a 6-year-old Black girl named Isis Allen was tragically shot in the head by stray bullets in the summer of that year. 23-year-old Black female Shanique Sanders was shot down and found dead on McKinley Street in November of 2016. In March of 2017, a murder/suicide occurred when 46-year-old Christopher Dancy was shot and killed by 47-year-old Joseph Goldsmith before turning the gun on himself. A 9-month year old infant was injured from glass due to an exchange of fire between two men in April of 2017. In November 2017, 52-year-old Black woman Regina Beck Jordan was found shot in the head in her dining room on Rochelle Street and hospitalized. In July 2018, a man was shot at the intersection of Bausman and Brownsville Road and was taken to the hospital in stable condition. And in November of 2018, an 18-year-old man was taken to the hospital in critical condition after multiple wounds to the abdomen. This is not an exhaustive list, but a large snippet of gun violence that has occurred in Knoxville over the past few years. In being brutally honest, I cried when I read this list aloud to my younger brother – because so many of these young men and women were taken due to circumstance.
To be quite explicit, social science research shows that community level measures of concentrated poverty, percentage of men unemployed or unattached to the labor force, percentage of single mothers with children, drug trafficking and its connection to gun violence and other structural variables of disadvantage all have a hand in creating the conditions and opportunities for gun violence to disproportionately occur in high poverty areas like Knoxville. Meaning, gun violence is often a matter of economic circumstance and disadvantage, and is not some moral or cultural failing of the people who reside in durably poor communities. And often, it is carried out by a small percentage of the younger population who cause a disproportionate amount of the violent crime. And regarding the high degree of gun violence in majority Black neighborhoods (along with the fact that 69% of all victims of homicide in 2018 were Black – despite the fact that Black people make up only 13% of Allegheny County’s population), urban researchers argue that the high degree of gun violence in impoverished Black and mixed race communities is a matter of proximity and multigenerational exposure to highly disadvantaged neighborhoods. Meaning, because majority Black neighborhoods in Pittsburgh (and else where) tend to be so durably high poverty and segregated, young Black people are much more exposed and at risk to gun violence as compared to White people because of the neighborhoods and economic circumstances that they were born into. The exception of Knoxville is that it is a racially mixed neighborhood – albeit one that is still segregated. As such, both White and Black residents are exposed to both the economic and systemic conditions that cause the gun violence and the gun violence itself. Meaning, high gun violence is not an issue of race, but of the factors that create it – as described. However, the factors that create it have often been historically and systemically tied to areas of Black concentrated poverty.
The neighborhood conditions that tend to predict violence are the result of systemic and macroeconomic forces and self-reinforcing patterns of multigenerational exposure to concentrated poverty and disadvantage. Researchers Robert Sampson and Patrick Sharkey have analyzed and written on these topics extensively (see Chicago and the Enduring Neighborhood Effect and Stuck in Place). As discussed in a previous data brief, Black people are far more likely to reside in areas of concentrated poverty in Pittsburgh than White people are. As found in the analysis, an overwhelming 76% of majority Black neighborhoods are considered high or extreme poverty as of 2017 ACS estimates – compared to a mere 6% of majority White neighborhoods that are considered high or extreme poverty (with poverty rates exceeding 30% to 40% or more).
A set of green and white homes on Grimes Avenue in northern Knoxville.
In one of the most cited papers of the past few decades regarding the structural causes of violent crime in racially and economically segregated neighborhoods, renowned researchers William Julius Wilson and Robert Sampson of Harvard argued that the rate of unemployed or unattached males to the labor force and concentrated poverty tend to disrupt families and affect the rate of single mother households with children. In turn, it has been found that high rates of single mothers with children is a leading predictor of violent crime – especially so among juveniles. More recent research from Sampson shows how higher rates of incarceration among Black men have also disrupted the family and led to an increase in single female houses with children. Regarding higher rates of incarceration, Sampson found that the rates of incarceration among Black men in Chicago neighborhoods for committing the same crimes as White men is a different of kind, not degree. While both researchers don’t ignore the fact that neighborhood culture may play some role in violence, they argue that cultural primers of violence are a response to the overwhelming disadvantage of many racially and economically segregated neighborhoods and the lack of living wage job opportunities for residents. Now, violent crime is complex, but my point is that structural variables at the neighborhood level tend to be quite predictive of crime. And as discussed, Knoxville has some of the highest rates of single mothers with children and men who are unemployed or unattached to the labor force in the City of Pittsburgh.
Saint Canice is visible in the distance on Orchard Place – which is located in the most northern section of the neighborhood.
Knoxville, like many other durably poor neighborhoods in Pittsburgh, is a complicated place. While it is measurably disadvantaged as compared to low poverty neighborhoods in Pittsburgh, it is also home to residents who deeply care about their neighborhood and are doing their best to get by. And many are resilient, friendly, knowledgeable and charismatic – per my own personal experiences with family and friends in Knoxville and per my street by street walk of the neighborhood. Although not by design, Knoxville is one of the most racially diverse neighborhoods in the entire city, but it is still segregated when comparing the southern and northern sections of the neighborhood. Knoxville has access to transit via the 51, 44 and 54, but there is only one grocery store in the entire South Hilltop. Knoxville has sturdy, compact and wonderfully charming homes, but a high degree of vacancy and blight. Knoxville is the place where my mom and most of my mom’s side of the family grew up. And my grandma’s house holds a special place in my memory; whether the memory be of her neighborhood famous rigatonis or the times when my great-uncle would chase me around her house with a buzz cutter because my hair was “way too damn long.” I once received some sage advice from my Great Uncle Bill. Uncle Bill also resided with my grandma in the house with the Japanese Apple Tree out front and the dark green porch swing that my siblings and I would play on when we were younger. He told me that a boy who never ended up in the hospital from doing something reckless with his friends would never really have that great of a childhood (and my best friend and I took his advice a bit too seriously growing up).
Knoxville is home to beautiful vistas and a visibly tight social network but is plagued by community violence that is preventable. Knoxville is struggling, as are many of its most vulnerable residents, but its story doesn’t have to end that way – nor should it. While Knoxville is one of many high poverty neighborhoods that has not seen the benefit of Pittsburgh’s so-called renaissance and revitalization, there are strategies out there that aim to invest in the people of disadvantaged places and provide them with real opportunity. And there are already local non profits that deeply care about the social mobility and health of those residing in the Hilltop (such as the Brashear Association and the Hilltop Community Children’s Center). Pittsburgh’s economic growth alone will not solve the problems of durable poverty and cemented disadvantage in places like Knoxville. Intentional place-based and people centered policies, investments and strategies are needed to combat the barriers that residents have faced for generations.
My mom and grandma’s former house is featured on the right side of the photo. A Japanese Maple Tree sits in the front yard. A seedling from that same tree became a Japanese Maple Tree in my parent’s front yard in Brookline. My uncle and cousins reside in the white row houses.
Methodology Notes
All neighborhood level statistics were gathered via census tract level data from the 2012 to 2017 5-year American Community Survey estimates. Citywide statistics were gathered via the 2017 1-year ACS estimates. The 1990 poverty rate was gathered via poverty estimates from the National Historic Geographic Information Systems. The University of Pittsburgh Library System informed which census tracts comprised a given neighborhood in a given year. 2012 dollar amounts, incomes and values were adjusted for inflation using the consumer price index.
ACS estimates at the census tract level have sizeable margin or error and this may impact results.
Snippets of broader Pittsburgh history were not cited because they are common knowledge.
In neighborhood profiles and data briefs, neighborhoods and neighborhood areas are considered to have a simple racial majority when a given race constitutes 51% of the total population. Otherwise, it is considered a mixed-race neighborhood.
Poverty intervals were informed by standards in neighborhood-level poverty research. Specifically, researcher Patrick Sharkey’s poverty intervals were referenced from his book Stuck in Place – regarding what constitutes an extreme, high, moderate, low or very low poverty neighborhood.
Before we start taking an intimate look at each Pittsburgh neighborhood as this project evolves, I wanted to share some evidence regarding the other goal of this project as a whole; exploring the reality of lasting, cemented and durable concentrated poverty in Pittsburgh neighborhoods and the city’s high degree of residential segregation by race and income.
At a glance, the City of Pittsburgh is estimated to have a total population of about 302,414. Pittsburgh is a largely White city (65%) with the second largest racial group being Black people (22%). The other notable racial groups are Asian (6%) and Hispanic or Latino (roughly 3%) – with multiracial residents and very small numbers of other minority racial groups taking up the small remainder. When excluding neighborhoods in the East End that are in close proximity to the city’s universities (and have heavy concentrations of college students), Pittsburgh’s small and native Hispanic or Latino population is highly concentrated in neighborhoods like Mount Oliver Neighborhood, Crawford-Roberts, the Beltzhoover/Bon Air area and Mount Washington (in that order by percentage) and in Beechview, Greenfield, Brookline and Mount Washington (in that order by total number). Much like the Latino or Hispanic population, the Asian population is almost entirely concentrated in neighborhoods around Pittsburgh’s universities in the East End when those neighborhoods aren’t excluded – with the highest percentage concentrations in North Oakland, Shadyside, Friendship, Squirrel Hill South and Squirrel Hill North. As such, it is likely that Asian residents in these neighborhoods are largely students or graduate transplants – as is likely with the Latino or Hispanic population. The exception is a growing population of southeast Asian refugees and immigrants settling in neighborhoods like Carrick, Brookline, Banksville and the Ridgemont and Westwood area (in that order by total number) and in Banksville, the Ridgemont and Westwood area, Knoxville and the Strip District (in that order by percentage). Other than these minority racial variations, the city’s neighborhoods are largely dominated by White and Black hues. While about 1 and 5 Pittsburghers fell below the Federal Poverty Line (FPL) in 2017, roughly 13% of White individuals in Pittsburgh did and 35% of Black Pittsburghers did – despite the fact that Black people makeup only 22% of the overall population (American Community Survey or ACS 1-Year Estimates for the year 2017).
Nearly mirroring city-wide racial demographics, 68% of Pittsburgh’s neighborhoods and neighborhood areas are majority White and 23% are majority Black – with a total of 17 majority Black neighborhoods and a total of 50 majority White neighborhoods and neighborhood areas. Populations that are either 51% Black or White at the neighborhood level constitute a simple racial majority in this analysis. The remaining neighborhoods and neighborhood areas are racially mixed neighborhoods with no clear majority (9% of neighborhoods and only 7 total). As such, truly racially mixed neighborhoods are rare in Pittsburgh. And as will be discussed in future neighborhood profiles, there is little evidence that these racially mixed neighborhoods with no clear simple racial majority were integrated by intentional design. The high poverty Knoxville is one such racially mixed neighborhood with a Black population of 46% and a White population of 40% – with the remainder composed of mixed races and other minority racial groups. The collapse of the Steel Industry, relatively cheap rental units, and the displacement of Black families from the St. Clair Village Public Housing project in the 2000s may account for such a mixing in neighborhoods such as Knoxville. Those residents with means to do so often chose to leave the Knoxville neighborhood as it began to decline, according to some residents I spoke with. There’s a saying that Steelers’ fans “travel well” – given their spread throughout the U.S. However, after the collapse of the steel mills and the effect such a collapse had on the entire regional economy, many of these Steelers’ fans left for economic opportunity else where. Much like racial separation, Pittsburgh neighborhoods are highly divided by the percent of their respective populations below the Federal Poverty Line. 24% of Pittsburgh neighborhoods are high or extreme poverty, 22% are moderate poverty and the remainder are low or very low poverty (54%). And all too often, racial and economic segregation are not mutually exclusive in Pittsburgh neighborhoods. In fact, they are overwhelmingly tied together (ACS 5-Year Estimates for the year 2017).
While neighborhoods and neighborhood areas were used in the poverty and racial analysis, this map showcases defined poverty intervals by census tract. Poverty rates were adjusted for tracts that fell within neighborhood boundaries that contained a college or university or those neighborhoods that are known student heavy areas. Such areas are: Downtown, the Bluff, the Oakland neighborhoods, Squirrel Hill North and South, Southside Flats and Shadyside.
Even though Black people make up only 22% of Pittsburgh’s population, an overwhelming 76% of majority Black neighborhoods are high or extreme poverty – with high poverty defined as neighborhoods with overall poverty rates ranging from 30% to 39% and extreme poverty defined as those with at least 40% or more. And often, poverty percentages in majority Black neighborhoods considered high or extreme were far above these research-defined thresholds – with a range of 30% to 74% of individuals living below the FPL. Six percent of majority Black neighborhoods are moderate poverty and the remaining majority Black neighborhoods are low poverty (18%). As in, only 3 majority Black neighborhoods are considered low poverty: East Liberty, Manchester and the Upper Hill – which all had poverty rates between 10% and 19%. Virtually no majority Black neighborhoods are considered very low poverty – defined as those neighborhoods with poverty rates less than 10%. On the other side of the racial spectrum, White neighborhoods fair very differently regarding poverty makeup. Only 6% of majority White Neighborhoods are high poverty and none are considered extreme poverty. As such, there were only 3 high poverty areas that were majority White: the Bluff, the neighborhood area of Hays, Hazelwood and Glen Hazel – which all share a census tract(s) as of the 2010 census – and the upper Northside hilltop neighborhood of Spring Hill-City View. 26% of majority White neighborhoods were considered moderate poverty with poverty rates between 20% and 29% and the overwhelming remainder were either low or very low poverty (68%) (ACS 5-Year Estimates for the year 2017).
As presented, race and class are often closely tied together at the neighborhood level in Pittsburgh. And this phenomenon is true of cities across the nation (see researcher Robert Samson’s Chicago and the Enduring Neighborhood Effect). However, Pittsburgh’s unique topographical features, its “bus in-to-town and bus out-of-town” port authority system and its highway and busway structures make said divide even more pronounced and isolating. Of those extreme poverty neighborhoods, 0% were white and 88% were black. The only neighborhood area that was also extreme poverty and not majority Black was the racially mixed Terrace Village and West Oakland area – with each neighborhood sharing a census tract as of the most recent census. However, the bulk of the neighborhood area’s poverty comes from the largely Black Terrace Village. And so, if this neighborhood area is removed from the mix, 100% of extreme poverty neighborhoods are majority Black.
Northview Heights is a strong example of a neighborhood that is geographically isolated with limited port authority access – as compared to many neighborhoods in the city’s East End – and has a staggering 74% poverty rate. The population is not just majority Black, but overwhelmingly black (91%). And only 2% of its population is White. In fact, 54% of majority White neighborhoods are overwhelmingly White – as are 53% of black ones; meaning that in these cases at least 75% of a neighborhood’s population is a given racial group rather than just a simple racial majority of 51%. Of those neighborhoods considered high poverty, 30% are White and 60% are Black – with the remaining percentage coming from the racially mixed Knoxville. As such, only a small portion of White residents live in high or extreme poverty neighborhoods. Such White residents exist along with smaller makeups of racially mixed residents and Asian and Latino refugees and immigrants. However, the majority of White neighborhoods are low or very low poverty. The subject of White versus Black poverty for a given neighborhood or neighborhood area will be a feature of the neighborhood profiles.
Lastly, neighborhood poverty level does not tend to change over time for the majority of Pittsburgh neighborhoods. As can be seen in the figure below, there is a strong linear relationship between neighborhood poverty rate in 1990 and neighborhood poverty rate in 2017 (R=.82 with alpha set at less than .01). And neighborhood poverty rate in 1990 explains 67% of the variance around the mean regarding neighborhood poverty rate in 2017. To get around the science speak, this means that despite broad macro-economic changes at the national level and economic changes and growth at the city level over a period of 27 years, low poverty neighborhoods tend to remain low poverty, moderate poverty neighborhoods tend to remain moderate or get poorer and high poverty neighborhoods tend to remain high poverty or get poorer.
There are a few neighborhoods that have seen steep declines in poverty rate from 1990 to 2017, but most neighborhoods have remained stable. Neighborhood areas like Arlington and Arlington Heights (a 19% decline) and neighborhoods like Terrace Village (a 13% decline) most likely saw steep declines because of the removal of a substantial portion of public housing by the city from the 1990s and on through the 2000s. St. Clair Village is one example of a neighborhood that was once a public housing project and is now being developed as an Urban Farm; it was no longer assigned its own census tract due to having little to no population as of more recent ACS surveys. Neighborhoods like Manchester (22% decline), the East Allegheny and North Shore area (12% decline) and the Strip District (12% decline) may have seen steep declines due to intentional public and private investment and development – along with historic preservation efforts and an influx of higher income residents. Neighborhoods with a large share of low-income renters and limited affordable housing supply are often the most at risk regarding involuntary displacement due to intentional investment and the subsequent residential demand (and rise in rents), but most poor neighborhoods have not been the target of such investment. And often, low and fixed-income tenants face the possibility of eviction no matter where they live. Meaning, involuntary displacement is not just a possible consequence of neighborhood change and revitalization, but rather a reality for most low or fixed-income residents in even Pittsburgh’s poorest neighborhoods; neighborhoods that haven’t substantially changed for decades.
As will be discussed in future posts, such a degree of racial separation is not merely due to self-preference or selection alone. Instead, and broadly speaking, such division exists because of historical and present discrimination in housing and lending markets, urban renewal, major changes in the labor market from the 1980s onward and subsequent economic restructuring and major demographic changes and out-migration from the 1950s to the 1980s (see researcher William Julius Wilson’s the Truly Disadvantaged, Rothstein’s the Color of Law and a Coates’ the Case for Reparations to get a detailed account of these processes). And as will also be discussed in future posts, research shows that childhood development in high poverty areas is tied to a number of negative outcomes in adulthood and is strongly tied to generational poverty. And experimental research show that low-income children who primarily grow up in low poverty neighborhoods before the age of 12 have positive outcomes as compared to their peers who remain in high poverty ones (see researcher Raj Chetty’s work with the Moving to Opportunity experiment). Patrick Sharkey’s Stuck in Place also explores the effect of cumulative concentrated disadvantage on childhood development and respective adult outcomes over multiple generations (and Vox did a great write-up of Sharkey’s research here). And so, neighborhoods tend to stay the same without intentional intervention. Neighborhoods effect and shape our lives, behaviors and opportunities in a significant way. As such, it is quite troubling that such a large portion of Pittsburgh’s Black population is often living in isolated areas of lasting concentrated poverty and disadvantage. This fact will become more evident as the project continues on with resident interviews and Neighborhood Profiles.
Methodology Notes:
The analysis of Pittsburgh neighborhoods and neighborhood areas used American Community Survey (ACS) 5-Year Estimates for the year 2017 – as collected from the U.S Census. 2017 estimates are the most recent year regarding published data from the ACS. Citywide data came from 2017 ACS 1-year estimates. Because the census tracts that makeup Pittsburgh neighborhoods have changed over time the University of Pittsburgh Library System was referenced to inform which census tracts comprised a given neighborhood in both 1990 and 2017. As of the 2010 census, a number of neighborhoods shared the same census tract. In these cases, neighborhoods were combined. Neighborhoods that were combined with another neighborhood were referred to as neighborhood areas. Any time that a neighborhood was comprised of more than one census tract or was combined due to sharing a census tract(s) with another neighborhood a weighted average was used to construct neighborhoods. Weights were based on census tract population proportions.
Regarding the total population of neighborhoods and neighborhood areas used, the Chateau, St. Clair and South Shore neighborhoods were not included in the analysis because they had populations of less than 100. Neighborhoods with student heavy residential populations and neighborhoods that contained a 4-year university were included but their poverty rates were adjusted by using estimates for those ages 25 and up who were below the FPL – as to control for student heavy populations. Because the average college student is unemployed or working a minimum wage job, student heavy centers dramatically skew the real poverty rate. This is not to say that the analysis ignores the reality of low-income college students. Rather, neighborhood poverty rates were adjusted because of the difficulty in accessing the true poverty rate. In total, 74 neighborhoods and neighborhood areas (those neighborhoods that share a census tract(s) with another neighborhood) were used in the analysis. For the durability of poverty analysis from 1990 to 2017 data from the National Historic Geographic Systems was utilized to collect census level poverty estimates for the year 1990. Poverty rates were not adjusted to control for student populations in the durability of poverty regression analysis because the purpose of the analysis was to show how little poverty rate changes over time in most Pittsburgh neighborhoods; and student inflated poverty rates in 1990 are very much comparable to student inflated poverty rates in 2017.
As should be noted, ACS estimates are notorious for wide margins or error (MOE) due to smaller than optimal sample sizes. As such, MOE may impact results. That being said, the degree to which Pittsburgh neighborhoods are segregated by race and income appears to have an impact on the accuracy of estimates – despite high MOE. Meaning, because neighborhoods are often so overwhelmingly comprised of residents with similar socio-economic and racial demographics, smaller sample sizes are often more representative than they should be. As such, ACS estimates should not be disregarded because of high MOE. Rather, they should be taken with a grain of salt and checked against the working knowledge of those with professional and personal experience in a given neighborhood.
And on this note, while durability of poverty tends to be the trend in Pittsburgh neighborhoods, there are several neighborhoods that have been emerging at a steep pace regarding housing demand and subsequent rental prices. As such, 2017 estimates may not accurately portray current racial and poverty measures for the year 2019 in neighborhoods like Lower and Central Lawrenceville, East Liberty and the western portion of East Allegheny (commonly known as Deutschtown). Fixed-income and low-income renters, and even low-income home owners, are at risk of involuntary displacement without affordable housing and property tax protections, respectively.
I’d be happy to send info on which data tables I used from the census for those interested. Thanks for reading and please feel free to share or use the data as long as you cite this page as the source.
Garfield is a neighborhood that has seen significant degrees of affordable housing development, mixed income and market rate housing development, investment in the Penn Avenue business corridor and more, but is one that has seen little demographic change and income related change over the past few years and beyond. And as stated, the neighborhood has seen a significant amount of gun related violence. Regarding the area of Garfield that reportedly sees the most gun related violence, Garfield’s northern most census tract has the 9th highest poverty rate among all census tracts in the City of Pittsburgh (45%) and is 89% Black per 2017 ACS estimates – when excluding college student heavy census tracts from the poverty ranking. Additionally, the northern most census tract of the neighborhood has the 16th highest rate of single mothers (20%) and the 7th highest rate of males unemployed or unattached to the labor force (47%) – when excluding student heavy census tracts in the City of Pittsburgh. When looking at the entire neighborhood in the context of all neighborhoods and neighborhood areas in the city, Garfield is the 11th poorest (36%), has the 23rd highest rate of single mothers with children (14%) and the 13th highest rate of working age males who are unemployed or unattached to the labor force (34%).
The Pittsburgh Neighborhood Project 