Lima, Ohio: A portrait of not getting by in the Rust Belt

[dead0man]

Yes, that's exactly what I said.  Those circumstances are the exact same ones everybody has.

[DrScholl]

In the 50s it was easier to move to another place, right now, not so much. Affording housing is one thing and finding it is even harder.

[Cory]

Yes, that's exactly what I said.  Those circumstances are the exact same ones everybody has.

It's just that you are falling into the "I did it therefore everybody else ever can do it" fallacy. If everybody had a job lined up and a place to stay for a few weeks then yeah, they could just up and move.

[pbrower2a]

The first paragraph has the answer.

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Poor people should move to where the jobs are.  And don't give me the BS line that people are too poor to move.

And where might those jobs be? Should the poor pack up and move to San Francisco?

Interesting article somewhere that the jobs are where the Interstates are. Being near major transportation nodes is where's it's at in general.

Lima is on Interstate 75, and it would be a reasonable point on a superhighway from Chicago to Columbus.

[Badger]

Where to begin?

I arguably know more about Lima than anyone else on the Forum. I lived there for a couple years in the late 90's while working for their City Prosecutor's Office. As much as I loved working there, I left for the Public Defender's Office (ick) in Columbus because, well, I was living in Lima. It was and is a hole. Until 3 years ago I lived in within a reasonably short drive outside Allen County (how close? My oldest son was born at St. Rita's in Lima, where I'd lived across the street from while living there). We had multiple very close friends who lived there. In that nearby rural lily community where my wife was born and raised Lima was considered the city where black people sold crack. And sadly, Lima had more gangs and crime per capita than pretty much any town in Ohio.

Lima is about 1/4 black, and the to quote one very kindly, wise and good natured defense attorney who shocked me by saying this a year or two before dying: "The problem with Lima is we didn't tell the blacks who came to town to keep on moving the way Findlay did". There was all too much of that sentiment among the white middle class denizens of Lima.

But don't associate Lima too much with West Ohio arch-conservatism. In 2004 Kerry narrowly won Lima by under 100 votes (still under 50%). By 2008 Lima was reasonably solid Democratic. Mayor Berger held off a challenge from the popular County Sheriff in the height of the Tea Party wave. The townships around Lima (except, as noted, the portion of Perry Township where the slums of southeastern Lima spill across the city limits), are a relatively prosperous area alternating between rural German farmers and McMansions. They vote OVERWHELMINGLY Republican. Remember, Allen is surrounded by the most Republican counties in Ohio. It's only the vote in Lima that keeps Allen from being merely "landslide" level Republican. A glance at the municipality maps for the last two presidential elections will show just how exceptional Lima is, economically, politically, and socially from every place else within an hour's drive.

Though as also noted, the surrounding communities are beginning to have economic collapse creep in. Still, when the major employers with good jobs in the city are an oil refinery and a tank plant, the Democrats are going to have odds stacked against them in making inroads among whites who aren't union members, on public assistance, or have graduate degrees.

It's a horrible place on so many levels, and I would never go back. But the people there, of all races, deserve much better.

[Starbucks Union Thug HokeyPuck]

Payday loans? Really?

I'd swallow a bullet first.

Seriously!  You're better off going to him. 

[memphis]

It's still amazing to me how people in Ohio think that a quarter black population constitutes some sort of negro ghetto. A quarter black here is a mass affluent McMansion suburb.

[tik 🪀✨]

It's still amazing to me how people in Ohio think that a quarter black population constitutes some sort of negro ghetto. A quarter black here is a mass affluent McMansion suburb.

People in Ohio (people in general actually) don't think about towns as "a quarter black." They think "there's way more black people than what I normally see" and connect that to run down, urban environments. I would hope most of them don't think one is a cause of the other, but they probably do.

I've only been through Lima a handful of times but it's similar to Toledo, where I grew up. NW Ohio is an unbelievably depressing place. But, like what Torie said (an excellent post by the way), your connections to family and friends can be an overwhelming force to keep you put. And isn't that kind of just fine?

dead0, Ohio is bleeding population like crazy. Texas is being overwhelmed with Midwesterners looking for work. The people who are not moving shouldn't be blamed for clinging to the lives they've already worked their asses off for just because they lost the arbitrary geography/prosperity lottery eventually (say that five times fast). Their kids will probably gtfo though. I got waay out, obviously, and my other siblings ended up in, well, Texas.

[dead0man]

Yes, that's exactly what I said.  Those circumstances are the exact same ones everybody has.

It's just that you are falling into the "I did it therefore everybody else ever can do it" fallacy. If everybody had a job lined up and a place to stay for a few weeks then yeah, they could just up and move.

Dude, follow the train backwards.  DC Al asked me what my story was, I said what it was.  I never said it was the same for everybody, I didn't even imply that it was typical.  I admitted I had some advantages.  You cherry picked a couple of those advantages and made some narrative in your head that I was saying everybody had the same situation I had.  I didn't do fall into that fallacy, you did.

dead0, Ohio is bleeding population like crazy. Texas is being overwhelmed with Midwesterners looking for work. The people who are not moving shouldn't be blamed for clinging to the lives they've already worked their asses off for just because they lost the arbitrary geography/prosperity lottery eventually (say that five times fast). Their kids will probably gtfo though. I got waay out, obviously, and my other siblings ended up in, well, Texas.

I'm not blaming anybody for not leaving.  I'm just saying if you don't want to be poor in Rustbelt OH, you're going to have to move to where there is work.  Just like people have always done.  I don't give two sh**ts if some of them chose to stay.  I even gave some valid, non lack of resources reasons why some people would stay.  And I'm really only talking about the younger people anyway.  Obviously a 54 year old isn't going to move to N.Dakota to work the oil fields, but his kids should, unless they'd rather sit at home and bitch and regret, which is fine too.

[tik 🪀✨]

We don't really disagree. I think you just came across as a little unforgiving of the older generation who complain about the jobs drying up and don't do anything about it. The great majority of my own family who have remained in Ohio have done so almost exclusively because the living matriarch is there. Otherwise they'd be in Texas and California and wherever. Nevertheless they complain about how run-down and depressing it is and how hard it is to find a good job. But they can't abandon family in good conscious like I could, being only 21 and full of beans (kidney beans). In any case, tales of the particular particles of rust in the rust belt make for good reading, especially when they voice individual opinions of political affairs and figures, especially especially when Islamophobia and ideological inconsistencies are used to paint a portrait of being salt of the earth. Hilarious stuff.

[memphis]

It's still amazing to me how people in Ohio think that a quarter black population constitutes some sort of negro ghetto. A quarter black here is a mass affluent McMansion suburb.

People in Ohio (people in general actually) don't think about towns as "a quarter black." They think "there's way more black people than what I normally see" and connect that to run down, urban environments. I would hope most of them don't think one is a cause of the other, but they probably do.

Yeah, I didn't mean to suggest that people are doing statistics in their head as they judge which neighborhoods are nice and which aren't. We all compare things to what we are accustomed to, and it's just that my own experience would lead me to see a town like Lima and think "Gosh, there certainly are a lot of white people here." Over the summer, I went to Six Flags in Saint Louis and I had that exact reaction. I wouldn't say it bothered me, but it was very noticeable and a little bit shocking. Except for some churches and their accompanying private schools, you'd be very hard pressed to find any public space like that here.

[dead0man]

Six Flags in StLouis is the whitest place in the entire area (except for some of the expensive enclaves in the west county...Chesterfield, Clayton...others).  Do black people go to amusement parks at anywhere near the same rate crackers do?

(did you enjoy the Screamin Eagle, Tom's Twister and the Highland Fling?...I've been to that Six Flags like 30 times....good times)

[memphis]

Six Flags in StLouis is the whitest place in the entire area (except for some of the expensive enclaves in the west county...Chesterfield, Clayton...others).  Do black people go to amusement parks at anywhere near the same rate crackers do?

(did you enjoy the Screamin Eagle, Tom's Twister and the Highland Fling?...I've been to that Six Flags like 30 times....good times)

Unfortunately, it's the closest amusement park to Memphis, so I've been several times as well. It's pretty fun. We used to have a small one, Libertyland, here, but it closed about 10 years ago. It opened for America's bicentennial, and, so had a Colonial America theme. It was good enough for my childhood, but it didn't really compare to a Six Flags or Duff Gardens or any of the big deal parks. There was never a shortage of blacks there, and white people like to cite the excessive numbers of them (as they do for any closed business) for the establishment's eventual demise. In any case, I have no doubt that Six Flags, especially over the summer when children are not in school, attracts white people from a very large radius. If you're bored, take a look at some Census demographic data from a few random rural counties within a few hours drive of St Louis. In rural Missouri, Illinois, Iowa, and Kentucky you'll find a lot of white people, which helps to explain the park's demographics. Standing in lines for rides, it's impossible to miss that Midwestern people are also a lot taller, blonder, and better educated than people in the South too. Thanks, Germany.

[Bandit3 the Worker]

It's still amazing to me how people in Ohio think that a quarter black population constitutes some sort of negro ghetto. A quarter black here is a mass affluent McMansion suburb.

There's people in northern Kentucky who think Newport is mostly black. It's only 8% black.

[Bandit3 the Worker]

Also, outside of Newport, Campbell County is so thoroughly white that things split more on economic lines than racial lines. If a place closes down or something bad happens, it's usually the poor (regardless of race) who are scapegoated and targeted by right-wing hate speech.

[dead0man]

If you're bored, take a look at some Census demographic data from a few random rural counties within a few hours drive of St Louis. In rural Missouri, Illinois, Iowa, and Kentucky you'll find a lot of white people, which helps to explain the park's demographics.

I've got plenty of family in those places, and yes they are very white, especially compared to the rural south.

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Hey, I'm one of those tall, blonde(ish), better educated Germans...I'm offended!  (not really)

[Indy Texas]

My only connection to Ohio comes from my paternal grandfather, who hails from the southeastern part of the state. In the '50s, he basically did what dead0man suggested. Having decided that three semesters of college was enough and grown tired of working at the local dynamite factory (yes, dynamite), he moved to Houston and became a bookkeeping clerk for the company that would later become NRG Holdings (and met my grandmother, who was working there as a typist).

It is worth pointing out the caveats of trying this today. My grandfather never completed his degree - which would make him all but unemployable today, except in jobs that aren't worth moving across the country to take. He also had no student loan debt, having attended a public university when they were absurdly cheap.

You can tell someone to move to North Dakota, but the fact is that not everyone is cut out for rig work or "driving truck." And given the way oil prices are going, North Dakota's shale boom will probably turn into a shale bust eventually. And then what? That suggestion is also not very helpful to poor Ohio women who find themselves limited in opportunity. For them, college is more or less the only way out of that life.

[pbrower2a]

It's still amazing to me how people in Ohio think that a quarter black population constitutes some sort of negro ghetto. A quarter black here is a mass affluent McMansion suburb.

People in Ohio (people in general actually) don't think about towns as "a quarter black." They think "there's way more black people than what I normally see" and connect that to run down, urban environments. I would hope most of them don't think one is a cause of the other, but they probably do.

I've only been through Lima a handful of times but it's similar to Toledo, where I grew up. NW Ohio is an unbelievably depressing place. But, like what Torie said (an excellent post by the way), your connections to family and friends can be an overwhelming force to keep you put. And isn't that kind of just fine?

dead0, Ohio is bleeding population like crazy. Texas is being overwhelmed with Midwesterners looking for work. The people who are not moving shouldn't be blamed for clinging to the lives they've already worked their asses off for just because they lost the arbitrary geography/prosperity lottery eventually (say that five times fast). Their kids will probably gtfo though. I got waay out, obviously, and my other siblings ended up in, well, Texas.

Immobility is one of the hallmarks of persistent poverty. People who can get out of depressed areas find a way to get out. Maybe they work two minimum-wage jobs that require a 20-mile commute each way, save every penny that they can, and make the move to where the jobs are.  That is a tough way to live, and one has to see two years of misery before something incrementally better. Extreme poverty culls out the competent and wrecks the marginal.

The people who stay get poorer and more helpless. They wait for a resurgence that may never come. So it is in much of coal country. The tax base erodes, and so does the infrastructure. The smart kid who attends Ohio State and gets a teaching credential may find more opportunities in Iowa than in Ohio. That may be one talented teacher that the Ohio community never gets. Roads deteriorate, schools deteriorate, drugs proliferate, criminal gangs flourish, and, well...

I have been to Toledo several times, and it in no way looks like Lima, which I have seen only once. Lima utterly creeps me out; it is basically Detroit with a 'whiter' population. I suspect that anyone who can get out of Lima for Fort Wayne, Indianapolis, or Columbus does so.

[tik 🪀✨]

Interesting to hear that comparison with Toledo. The last time I was there I had this feeling of despair, it felt so lifeless and hopeless, like everyone had given up. The only maintained buildings in the city were public. That Lima feels even worse...

[pbrower2a]

Interesting to hear that comparison with Toledo. The last time I was there I had this feeling of despair, it felt so lifeless and hopeless, like everyone had given up. The only maintained buildings in the city were public. That Lima feels even worse...

I see few people except at such an attraction as the Museum of Art (which is a great one!)... and even the suburbs seem less than lively.

There is no new construction. The newest big building is the baseball stadium for the Detroit Tigers' AAA team. I haven't been there on a Sunday morning, so I don't know whether people are at least going to church. Toledo has become a fossil.

 

[Grumpier Than Uncle Joe]

This thread is goddamn depressing.

[Person Man]

This thread is goddamn depressing.

Yeah....You know how I was saying I am not sure how to feel about this? I think we should first feel sad.

[Badger]

@ DeadO: Yes, there's something to be said for cutting the apron strings and heading out to greener pastures. But I suggest that the economic security of one's hometown family and friends retains far more people than "My Hometown" sentimentality.

The Bakkus Shale in ND may seem tempting, if not for the one of the jobs in the gas fields then at least for one of the many support jobs opening up (everything from secretarial, waiter(ess)/bartender, garbage collection, etc. But consider most of the people most needing to get out are the ones with the lowest skill levels, education, and employment strengths. Those people can HARDLY count on getting a good paying gas field job and would at best be looking at a lower skilled (and thus lower paying) job like waiter, food service, etc. Yes, the job demand is out there and wages relatively high compared to (e.g.) Lima, but so are the costs of rent and living in general. So the scenario for most people is to pack and leave and somehow absorb the upfront costs not just of moving/gas, but security deposit and first month's rent that, due to the boom, is likely substantially more expensive than what they pay back in the Midwest (and that's just for the spartan cramped temporary worker housing/trailers put up for newcomers, but we're assuming they're willing to rough it). Again, this assumes a job is readily available even in boomtown once you get there. Odds are currently good, but it's a gamble for folks living (at best) paycheck to paycheck.

That's not an automatically insurmountable hurdle for everyone (though it is for a fair portion of the underclass), but it return they have to give up the economic security of family and friends able and willing to offer/share childcare, an extra bag of groceries the fridge is empty before payday, maybe a little case when the utilities are close to being shut off, even a couch or spare room to stay in if there are troubles with the landlord or finding a new place, not to mention job referrals that might help with employment (temporary, informal under the table, or otherwise).
And that's not including the many folks who are tied to house with an underwater mortgage and see marginally better hope of waiting for better times (and real estate values) rather than default and definitely lose tens of thousands, or who are otherwise tied to family who are infirm/special needs, or otherwise in need of support; family members whom they can't support trailblazing to North Dakota but aren't willing or able to merely abandon into social services.

That's a lot to give up to swallow the not-inconsiderable costs of relocating to a boom area to hunt for a job that will probably be there and probably make up for the increased cost of living, but with questionable reliability beyond the short term and giving up the financial safety net friends and family can provide. I accordingly question how many of these people staying in their rust belt towns are simply stubborn sentimentalists rather than rational economic actors. Certainly both types exist, but I suspect there are more of the latter than people assume.

[Badger]

It's still amazing to me how people in Ohio think that a quarter black population constitutes some sort of negro ghetto. A quarter black here is a mass affluent McMansion suburb.

Well, it depends on where it Ohio. The rural small town (and indeed throughout the county) my wife came from and we lived in for several years until recently had only a fraction of a percent African-American population. It reminded me of Dave Chappelle's joke about growing up in Yellow Springs: "My house was the black neighborhood". People in communities like that, but only 30-60 minutes from Lima--not too close, but close enough--it sadly made that impression.

The black population in Lima I believe isn't nearly as segregated as say, Detroit or even Chicago. There was a considerable amount of racial permeability in neighborhoods south of Elm. The neighborhood my close friends lived in at the time would have blacks and whites sharing most blocks. But by the time one gets to south and southeastern Lima, it turns into an overwhelmingly black neighborhood with a strong reputation for crime, drugs and gangs. It's that neighborhood that most whites in the region, and even many in Lima, consider the "black ghetto", which I promise is as bad as any place in, well, maybe not Memphis, but at least Nashville.

And like most such neighborhoods, it's the tiny % of gangbangers and thugs who mess up the neighborhood and it's rep despite over 90% of the people there not being involved in any of that.

[DC Al Fine]

@ DeadO: Yes, there's something to be said for cutting the apron strings and heading out to greener pastures. But I suggest that the economic security of one's hometown family and friends retains far more people than "My Hometown" sentimentality.

The Bakkus Shale in ND may seem tempting, if not for the one of the jobs in the gas fields then at least for one of the many support jobs opening up (everything from secretarial, waiter(ess)/bartender, garbage collection, etc. But consider most of the people most needing to get out are the ones with the lowest skill levels, education, and employment strengths. Those people can HARDLY count on getting a good paying gas field job and would at best be looking at a lower skilled (and thus lower paying) job like waiter, food service, etc. Yes, the job demand is out there and wages relatively high compared to (e.g.) Lima, but so are the costs of rent and living in general. So the scenario for most people is to pack and leave and somehow absorb the upfront costs not just of moving/gas, but security deposit and first month's rent that, due to the boom, is likely substantially more expensive than what they pay back in the Midwest (and that's just for the spartan cramped temporary worker housing/trailers put up for newcomers, but we're assuming they're willing to rough it). Again, this assumes a job is readily available even in boomtown once you get there. Odds are currently good, but it's a gamble for folks living (at best) paycheck to paycheck.

That's not an automatically insurmountable hurdle for everyone (though it is for a fair portion of the underclass), but it return they have to give up the economic security of family and friends able and willing to offer/share childcare, an extra bag of groceries the fridge is empty before payday, maybe a little case when the utilities are close to being shut off, even a couch or spare room to stay in if there are troubles with the landlord or finding a new place, not to mention job referrals that might help with employment (temporary, informal under the table, or otherwise).
And that's not including the many folks who are tied to house with an underwater mortgage and see marginally better hope of waiting for better times (and real estate values) rather than default and definitely lose tens of thousands, or who are otherwise tied to family who are infirm/special needs, or otherwise in need of support; family members whom they can't support trailblazing to North Dakota but aren't willing or able to merely abandon into social services.

That's a lot to give up to swallow the not-inconsiderable costs of relocating to a boom area to hunt for a job that will probably be there and probably make up for the increased cost of living, but with questionable reliability beyond the short term and giving up the financial safety net friends and family can provide. I accordingly question how many of these people staying in their rust belt towns are simply stubborn sentimentalists rather than rational economic actors. Certainly both types exist, but I suspect there are more of the latter than people assume.

To add to what Badger said, there's also a micro-macro issue going on here. What's good advice to your 19 year old nephew isn't really a good solution for the region's unemployed as a whole.