Capitol Fax: Austin is no longer the city’s largest neighborhood

I'm sharing a direct tweet to an article about Austin losing its designation as Chicago's most populous neighborhood - though remaining the largest community area geographically.

Austin's population has dropped dramatically as retaliatory gang violence persists https://t.co/fPIxIjoMeJ pic.twitter.com/b6bOfrT6uQ

— Chicago Tribune (@chicagotribune) July 17, 2017

According to the Tribune article shared over at the Capitol Fax it loses this designation to the north side Lakeview neighborhood:

Home to nearly 118,000 people in 2000, Austin has seen its population drop to 97,600, according to an average of census data collected between 2011 and 2015. It has been overtaken by the North Side's Lakeview neighborhood, whose population has remained steady since the 1980s and currently has about 98,200 residents.

Now the reasons Austin is losing population is not much different than a number of neighborhoods on the south side or even the west side. Better yet not much different than why many are leaving Chicago, period.

In a neighborhood as large as Austin, each block can be its own world.

The tree-lined ones, with restored Victorian homes or brick two-flats and kids playing in polished gardens, are what residents call good blocks. They're free of the shootings and drug deals that plague others. But those other blocks, dotted with boarded-up houses and vacant lots with overgrown weeds, are often down the street or around the corner.

Austin is the city's largest community area geographically, and was the most populated for 45 years. But as the West Side neighborhood's gun violence has increased, so too has families' realization that at any moment the shootings can creep into their blocks — even the good blocks. Austin's residents are leaving, with some saying goodbye to the place they've called home their entire lives.
...
Chicago's violence is at its highest since the drug wars of the 1990s, and Austin is center stage to many of the shootings and homicides: As of July 13, there were 258 shootings in the area in 2017 and 44 homicides, according to Tribune data. More than 1,900 people have been shot in Chicago so far this year.

The city as a whole is losing residents, and Chicago last year was the only city of the country's 10 largest to lose population. Residents who've packed up and left Chicago have cited a variety of reasons — high taxes, the state budget stalemate and the weather.

Those in Austin have a different list of concerns. More than 30 percent live in poverty. Storefronts are shuttered, and grocery stores are few and far between. The neighborhood high schools that remain open are under-resourced.

But in a neighborhood where retaliatory shootings mean unending violence, many residents say safety is the biggest issue.

Of course there is more to this story so I suggest you give this a read. And check out the video with the Trib article. If only many of us has signs like this to rep our neighborhoods. For example I <3 Chatham or I <3 Roseland or I <3 Englewood.

The decline of Black Chicago

Chicago Mag illustration Richard Mia

 Another piece courtesy of Chicago Magazine on the decline of Black Chicago:

Since the early ’80s, blacks in South and West Side neighborhoods have been steadily leaving the city, resettling at first largely in the Cook County suburbs. But over the past 15 years, more and more have been leaving the area entirely for northwest Indiana, Iowa’s Quad Cities, and Sun Belt states, says Alden Loury, the director of research and evaluation at the Metropolitan Planning Council. Today there are roughly 850,000 blacks in Chicago, down from 1.2 million in 1980.

The reasons for this are varied: The foreclosure crisis saw blacks evicted disproportionately from their rental apartments and houses; the Chicago Housing Authority leveled high-rises like the Robert Taylor Homes, scattering public housing residents; the lack of stable employment in South and West Side neighborhoods continues to force residents to look elsewhere for jobs; and school closures further disenfranchise communities. “There are not a lot of messages that Chicago cares about its black residents,” says Mary Pattillo, a sociology and African American studies professor at Northwestern University and author of the book Black Picket Fences. “When you lose the institutions that cultivate attachment, it makes it a lot easier to pick up and leave.”

How does Chicago send the message that the city cares about its Black residents?

BTW, feel free to share the article here's a tweet from @chicagomag

Today’s most-read story: The Real Problem with Chicago's Shrinking Population https://t.co/JEVokZHtIS pic.twitter.com/AXOFYvXdMn

— Chicago magazine (@ChicagoMag) May 9, 2017

 

MyBlockMyHoodMyCity: "K-Town" North Lawndale

[VIDEO] Jahmal Cole visits the west side again with a visit to the North Lawndale neighborhood. He speaks with former county board President Bobbie Steele, lead attorney at Lawndale Christian Legal Center Cliff Nellis, and Pastor Phil Jackson of the Firehouse Community Art Center.

BTW, Cole meets with Steele at an establishment called the Green Tomato Cafe. If only they were ready to expand to our part of the city. Steele breaks down why a place such as a cafe - what she terms a meeting place for everyone - is truly necessary in North Lawndale.

This episode is about 9 minutes. Enjoy.

My Block My Hood My City visits the Austin community

[VIDEO] I had been reading this write-up from Jahmal Cole's My Block, My Hood, My City about the Austin community which is the largest community area in our city. The video above is entertaining and certainly the write-up is as well.

We learn that there is good in Austin such as a restaurant MacArthur's and of course the area also has some wonderful homes and a strong community organization as Central Austin Neighborhood Association. I had to think for a second Austin has a bad repuation but there's good in Austin and then Englewood also has a bad reputation but there's good in Englewood. So we expect good to be found in all these neighborhoods which don't get good press.

In any event this is the second community Cole had visited. He also paid a visit to the southeast city community of Hegewisch. You may have seen a "regram" on our Instagram account.

Sun-Times: Feds shut down Covenant Bank on West Side

Now defunct

WOW!

Federal regulators late Friday shut down Covenant Bank on the West Side, which has been losing money since its 2008 founding by megachurch pastor Bill Winston.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. sold the bank’s assets to Liberty Bank and Trust Co. of New Orleans. Liberty will continue to operate Covenant’s only office at 1111 S. Homan.

The sale will protect account holders, who are insured up to the $250,000 per-account maximum. But it will wipe out the bank’s owners, including members of Winston’s Living Word Christian Center in Forest Park who provided cash for the purchase.

The FDIC estimated the closure will cost its insurance fund $21.8 million. It said that as of year-end 2012, Covenant had $58.4 million in assets.

Many of the bank’s owners, who provided Winston at least $1,000 each, are people of modest means. Winston did not return a call Friday.

He purchased the former Community Bank of Lawndale for a reported $3 million, preaching the need to put religious faith into practice by supporting revitalization of the West Side. But FDIC records show the bank’s losses have been heavy, especially in the last couple of years.

Liberty Bank appears to be a Black-owned bank so such an institution will be continuing to serve the West Side of Chicago. The official website for Covenant Bank is still up! Usually such websites of failed financial institutions are often shut down with a notice that it had been shut down by the FDIC.

What a man with his camera can do? Part 2

[VIDEO] In a post from 2008, I showed a video from YouTube user artistmac that show students from a neighborhood school throwing rocks onto his property. He promptly used this video to get those children in trouble with the school.

So the Woodlawn Wonder shares with us video from a YouTuber who refers to themselves as Chicago24thWard. Her post is entitled: " 'The Wire': Chicago's West Side". It's certainly an homage to the HBO series that explored urban crime (particularly drug dealing) and policing in Baltimore, Maryland.

Below we see the man behind Chicago24thWard [VIDEO]

Well, this is certainly bold activity. The question is would anyone out there be willing to do something like this to bring attention to any issue within the community?

Tuition-Free EMT Training For Working Women

The Industrial Council of Nearwest Chicago (ICNC) is now accepting applications for EMT training.

Who qualifies for this program?

To qualify, you must be a working single woman earning between $10,000 - $40,000 per year
and living in the city of Chicago. It is also important that you have a clean record, both criminal
and driving.

Additionally, you must be fluent in English, have good basic math and reading skills and be able
to work legally in the United States.

Application Process:

1. Online Applications accepted -Now
2. On-site assessment at ICNC - late January to mid February
3. On-site interviews at ICNC - February
4. Pre-class starts - March 2012

The link for the on-line application is:

http://www.icnctraining.org/index.html