Many factors contribute to city's poverty numbers
By Ethan Smith
Published in News on December 6, 2015 3:05 AM
Goldsboro was recently named the fifth poorest city in the United States according to data from the United States Census Bureau's 2014 American Community Survey.
There are several factors that work against Goldsboro that make it so.
With a poverty rate of more than 25 percent, factors such as a lack of decent housing, a lack of higher-level education, a scant job market and a rash of citizens moving out of Goldsboro all contribute to Goldsboro's economic status.
"There's so many pieces of this pie that we have to put together, because those numbers are so alarming," said Community Development Administrator Shycole Simpson-Carter.
And certain areas of Goldsboro are affected by these factors worse than others.
A recent analysis of impediments to fair housing choices in Goldsboro, put together by the Equal Housing Opportunity, showed that U.S. Census tracts 18 and 20 in Goldsboro consistently had the worst poverty levels, median income levels, education levels and unemployment rates.
Federal census tracts 18 and 20 both include the downtown area of Goldsboro and the neighborhoods that lie just outside of the downtown limits.
Census tract 18 has borders formed by U.S. 117, East Ash Street, and Lionel Street and Clingman Street, with the border running along both streets and crossing where those two are divided by Royall Avenue. It has an artificially drawn border running from West Grantham Street to West Ash Street, connecting the two near Old Smithfield Road.
Census tract 20 has its borders on East Ash Street, South John Street and U.S. 581.
The next two worst-performing census tracts in the study -- tracts 15 and 19 -- include the neighborhoods immediately surrounding the downtown area. From the same study, census tracts 1.02 and 11.02, which fall both inside and out of the city limits, were shown as performing the best in all the same categories. These areas encompass the neighborhoods near Lane Tree Golf Club in tract 1.02 and the area surrounding Cherry Hospital in tract 11.02.
The median household income in the best-performing census tracts was $50,000 to $75,000, while the worst-performing census tracts -- those that encompass downtown Goldsboro -- had a median household income that was less than $20,000.
"You can bring as much infrastructure into an area that you want, but unless you're going to do a total revitalization of residential dwellings in that area you're pretty much going to stay in the same boat," Mrs. Simpson-Carter said.
According to the data from the most recent U.S. Census, 21 percent of all families in Goldsboro are in poverty.
Single mothers with children are disproportionately affected by poverty in Goldsboro.
Of that category, 41.8 percent of all single mother families with no husband present are in poverty, with those that have children under 18 clocking a poverty rate of 51.2 percent and single mothers with children under the age of 5 suffering a staggering 64.2 percent poverty rate.
"That daily life is barely having enough to feed your family, having to make a choice between paying a bill versus another one. That is also a life of definitely not having adequate household needs for your children. That's what's classified as the working poor," said Mrs. Simpson-Carter, who was raised in a single-mother household by a mother that raised her and three siblings on her own. "People fail to mention the working poor, that they fall right in between and cannot get Medicaid and other things like that.
"You might not get healthcare. You might pass on your child getting a physical this year, or your child might be very sick and you have to try to self-medicate your child because you can't afford a doctor to get them the proper care. There are so many things that a person in that situation deals with, there are so many struggles. I could just sit here and list them all day, even right down to how you're going to put gas in your car."
Also contributing to Goldsboro's poverty rate is a workforce that does not have a high education level and a job market with a lack of professional positions, causing many people to leave in search of better opportunities.
The top 10 employers in the entirety of Wayne County are the Wayne CountyBoard of Education, Wayne Memorial Hospital, the state Department of Health and Human Resources, Walmart, the County of Wayne, Case Farms, the Department of Defense, Mt. Olive Pickle Co., Cooper-Standard Automotive and Wayne Community College.
According to the study, an analysis of educational attainment in the city's population of those 25 years of age and older revealed that only 12 percent of the population had a bachelor's degree.
Only seven percent of the population had a graduate or professional degree, 28 percent had only a high school diploma or equivalency, seven percent did not make it farther than the ninth grade, nine percent had some high school education but no diploma, 11 percent had an associate's degree and 26 percent had completed some college, but did not receive a degree.
"It's fine to have technical courses like CNA's and personal care assistants, but we need to develop something that's going to enable our youth to be emerging leaders in professional settings," Mrs. Simpson-Carter said. "And that's why you'll find some shifting out of the city to other cities where there are more professional opportunities and positions because there are more outside the city of Goldsboro.
"We need to see about bringing in more businesses that have that capability of us retaining those skilled positions and people. Hopefully, with the investment that we've put in to the city that will encourage outside industries to come in and do that. But there's a lot of other pieces of the puzzle that we've got to put together for that to happen."