EAST CLEVELAND: I Toured The USA's Poorest Suburb

all right everyone I am in East Cleveland Ohio one of the poorest cities in this entire country I'm driving up past the Huron Apartments was a really big apartment complex that sits empty today and it's open you can just um you can just walk right in there now I'm not going to because it is a hive [Music] of illegal activity as you can well imagine but the windows are all broken out [Music] just go in there man in this road look at this guy this is almost undrivable is that crazy thank you just trash is littered everywhere and the city simply doesn't have enough money to tear it down so there it sits and like I said as you can well imagine it is a magnet for crime [Music] the poverty rate and especially the children's poverty rate shockingly high in this town one of the highest in the entire country there's just a shocking amount of blight here you got to be really careful driving too you really have to dodge these potholes uh there's a market here United Market and um right here is a neighborhood that looks like they're finally going to clear out it's really bad it's blocked off can't drive down there anymore but it looks like they're finally going to clear that out we've got the tractor here and I've needed to do that for a long time see a lot of this here [Music] 's some of the uh the light that you see in the city not sure what these buildings were uh there's a couch if anybody needs one on the ground I'm thinking maybe these were apartment buildings not sure what do you guys think yeah those have been empty a long time there's a suitcase if anyone needs one right there hmm look at this over here yeah these have been empty a long time as well wow it's pretty rough foreign [Music] houses here um I saw something over here uh R.I.P DD Tonio I think something happened to someone there that's just amazing you can tell these houses big pothole these houses were incredible at one time look how big that one is it's just beautiful now I'm uh driving up to Euclid Street which is a historically significant Street in this area uh I'm gonna get on it and I'll tell you about it now um East Cleveland started out as a small trading Community a trading post but by the late 1800s it had become one of the uh wealthiest places in this United States this was called millionaires row this area here some of the richest people in the country lived here including the richest person in the country John D Rockefeller he had a house here you can see it in the houses I mean look at them you put these in good condition anywhere else in the U.S and these are Million Dollar Plus houses anyway John D Rockefeller like I said he lived here uh he was the wealthiest person on Earth and uh he's the wealthiest person in history his money the wealthy had in today's dollars would uh make him the richest person on Earth right now but then the economy collapsed industry declined white flight happened massive white flight with that massive population decline and loss of tax revenue and um so the city as far as money it had had to have even the simplest city services uh it didn't have it anymore the black people that were still here were left with the city that had virtually no income today I was reading that the local citizens here the people that live here actually fill in the potholes that you see all over themselves because the city doesn't have any money for potholes now with the loss of the tax base came corruption lots of it from the mayor down to Cops on the streets who would write fake tickets to generate revenue for the city and because of that the city has flirted with bankruptcy for the past 40 plus years now as you can imagine uh the the poverty it's really high here for the town overall it's 46 percent but what's really bad is children's poverty it is above 50 percent that is among the highest uh in the country and in fact I think it's the highest of a suburb in the United States because usually suburbs are prosperous uh but not this one um median home value here is forty nine thousand dollars now to give you an idea how bad that is the suburb right next door um Cleveland Heights its median home value is a hundred and two thousand right next door um there is a neighborhood on the other side right next door it's median home value is 270 000. so East Cleveland is just sandwiched in between these prosperous areas now I was reading that in 2016 there was a proposal for Cleveland to Annex East Cleveland but apparently three of the city or the three city council members wanted to stay on as special advisors and retain their six-figure incomes so um the city of Cleveland 86 did and so the city remains uh in really bad shape and with no sign of it um getting better uh anytime soon [Music] um Coming upon the fire station I was reading that the fire engines were donated from local cities or cities in the area because he's Cleveland just doesn't have enough money to buy them uh anyway here's some of the numbers population of the town in the 70s was forty thousand today there are under fourteen thousand median age is 40. to give you an idea how the town is aging and now experiencing black flight uh in the year 2000 the median age was 23 or I'm sorry 34. so the city is getting older as like I said now it is experiencing black flight these kids are growing up that live here and um you know they're moving away and who can blame them 56 of the town is female 44 male it's 89 black eight percent White one percent Hispanic one percent Asian one percent mixed you can see that these houses at one time are amazing and you come up across Lots here this is where houses have been torn down and the places many places has become is becoming Urban Prairie as they call it pothole I got a Dodge anyway some of the other numbers 19 of the town is married versus 50 of the us so that is uh that is a really low number that's single mothers on welfare and that's the reason for the high children's poverty 51 of the females that live here have never married another 19 percent are divorced so what is that that's 70 of the town or 70 percent of the women who live here are single and um 17 are married that's all interesting numbers they kind of tell the story of what's going on in this town and why children's poverty is so high here you can see it in these numbers as well the unemployment rate in East Cleveland is 19 percent in Cleveland right next door it's 4.2 percent and in the US as a whole it's 3.6 now the median household income in this town is 21 700 a year that's a little over 400 a week you break that that down over a 40 hour work week that's ten dollars an hour that's household income that's not per capita or you know individual income that's household income 400 a week that's everybody that lives in a house who's over the age of 15. that is astonishing and yet as I drive through the town I'll see a house like this it's a masterpiece so is the one next door this one's not bad either it's unreal The Unbelievable homes that are in this town you can see the former wealth there's no question about it this was a wealthy town 100 years ago now you're probably wondering about crime uh it's actually not bad last year overall crime was 27 incidents per 1000 people the U.S average is 23. violent crime was six per one thousand people U.S averages four and property crime was 21 per 1000 U.S average is 20. so those numbers are just a little bit higher than the US average but that being said from what I understand is a lot of crime here is unreported because of the do not snitch culture that is in this town [Music] yeah it's just light everywhere it's crazy [Music] East Cleveland doesn't really have like a traditional downtown or I guess if it did this is it [Music] but a lot of it is closed up you can see that the city is working on improving things though I was looking at some older pictures this area here was old blighted decaying buildings and they've made a park out of it and I still got more work to do you can see the buildings across the way there but yeah you see some Landscaping and you can see they're working here tearing down old buildings these were decade old buildings too I saw some old pictures um yeah looks like they're getting ready to tear that building down so things are happening here yeah you can see it's a nice park I'm trying to find a house for sale because keep in mind the houses here or the median home value is 49 000 and I'm looking at all these houses I'm curious what they would sell for I'm sure you guys are too oh would a house like that one right there the blue and sell for that one's got to be raised there needs to be it's got caught on fire that was some kind of house in its day so is that one now that one is sitting empty you can see the streets were once magnificent and the houses no question uh anyway um I'm going to do a minute or two just showing you the houses here that are all over this town just incredible homes in a town where the median home value is forty nine thousand dollars why would you pay for one of these I couldn't find any for sale wow well I've got myself involved in a animal crossing here something else that's interesting about the women who live here 66 percent of the businesses in this town were founded and are run by women that's a really high percentage in the rest of the us as a whole it's only 33 percent yes I am in East Cleveland there are pockets very small Pockets like this with beautiful homes but um I got to tell you the wealth disparity here in this town it's shockingly Vivid 82 percent of the town lives on under 50 000 a year household income uh one percent of the town lives on a hundred thousand or I'm sorry two hundred thousand a year so you've got very small areas like this and great great majority what I've been showing you you wonder what it's like living here in this town in homes like these you know with the incredible blight that is just a couple streets away quite frankly I'm just two three streets away from Euclid Avenue you go through you know torn up looking homes to get to this that's uh it's something unlike anything I've ever seen it's crazy all right everyone I'm going to call it a day for this video um this town is really depressing and it's really getting to me so uh I'm gonna get on out of here next up we are heading to Upstate New York so be looking for that

Channel: Joe & Nic's Road Trip

Views: 413,987

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Id: jNsBFjIlORg

Length: 22min 57sec (1377 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 05 2023