Cleveland is a city of neighborhoods. These neighborhoods have unique histories, strong cultures, and distinct characteristics. The Center for Community Solutions is proud to once again release our Neighborhood Fact Sheets, which provide important information for each one of Cleveland’s 34 neighborhoods. Almost all of the data comes from the U.S. Census Bureau’s most recent American Community Survey and was analyzed by Community Solutions in partnership with The Northern Ohio Data & Information Service (NODIS), located in the Maxine Goodman Levin College of Urban Affairs at Cleveland State University. The latest data available is from 2019, before the start of the pandemic. While preparing and analyzing these Fact Sheets, we noticed a few interesting details, shared below. We hope that you will find them helpful to inform the work that you do, and strongly encourage you to explore the full set of Fact Sheets.
The Center for Community Solutions is proud to once again release our Neighborhood Fact Sheets, which provide important information for each one of Cleveland’s 34 neighborhoods.
Population
When comparing this new 2019 data to the last time Community Solutions developed these Fact Sheets in 2016, we can begin to explore how Cleveland’s neighborhoods may have changed over time. Although these changes are not statistically significant, and the time periods have a slight overlap, the data can provide a sense of where trends may be heading. While the city as a whole experienced a decline of roughly 6,800 individuals between 2016 and 2019, this decline was not uniform across Cleveland’s neighborhoods. Estimates show population growth over the past three years in a concentration of adjoining neighborhoods on the West Side - Jefferson, Cudell, West Boulevard, Clark-Fulton, Stockyards, Edgewater, Detroit Shoreway, and Brooklyn Center. These neighborhoods are joined by Downtown, Hopkins, Goodrich-Kirkland Park, University and Lee-Harvard as neighborhoods that gained residents. The neighborhoods which experienced the most population loss included Glenville, Fairfax, Union-Miles, Broadway Slavic Village, and Old-Brooklyn. See the map below for which neighborhoods grew in population (in blue) and lost population (in red).
Poverty
While the poverty rate in the City of Cleveland overall fell 8.9 percent from 2016 to 2019, the distribution of Cleveland’s impoverished population remained largely unchanged. The neighborhoods with the highest poverty rates were located primarily on the city’s east side, with over 45 percent of the population in neighborhoods such as Central, University, Kinsman, Buckeye-Woodhill and St. Clair-Superior living in poverty. The neighborhoods which experienced the highest decrease in poverty from 2016 to 2019 were Ohio City, Tremont, Lee-Seville, Buckeye-Shaker Square, and Mount Pleasant. Euclid-Green, Hopkins, Kamm’s, University, Bellaire-Puritas, and Goodrich-Kirtland Park all experienced an increase in the proportion of people living below poverty. However, the increase for most of these neighborhoods was marginal. And of course, none of these changes in poverty are statistically significant.
The neighborhoods with the highest poverty rates were located primarily on the city’s east side.
Internet and Computer Access
For the new Fact Sheets, Community Solutions added information regarding internet and computer access in households. Despite the data being collected before the Coronavirus pandemic, this information provides critical insight towards understanding how technologically connected our neighborhoods’ households are. It also highlights where families may have faced struggles, as much of the world adapted to the pandemic by relying on the virtual environment for things like work, healthcare, and education.
As seen in the chart below, not all neighborhoods had equal access to technology. Much like the city’s regional concentration in poverty, the highest proportion of unconnected households was mostly concentrated on the east side. Indeed, all neighborhoods in which roughly two in five households (around 40 percent) didn’t have internet were located on the east side in: Glenville, Goodrich-Kirtland Park, Buckeye-Woodhill, Fairfax, Kinsman, and Hough. In Central and St. Clair-Superior, that number of households without internet access was closer to 50 percent. Hopefully, these numbers have improved given the push to connect households during the pandemic, especially households with children who needed to attend school remotely. But, they also show how different neighborhoods were unequally equipped to handle this transition.
The detailed Fact Sheets contain a wealth of information, including but not limited to demographic breakdowns, income, poverty measures, educational attainment and health outcomes
These findings only represent some initial takeaways, and they cover just a few topics of interest. The detailed Fact Sheets, however, contain a wealth of information, including but not limited to demographic breakdowns, income, poverty measures, educational attainment and health outcomes. It is our hope that these Fact Sheets will help inform the work you do. We would love to hear from you if you have any questions, ideas or want to share how these Fact Sheets have been helpful.
