Is Albany less ‘inclusive’ than other cities?
AAlbany nyone who knows Albany and its surroundings is aware of the region’s stark inequities and the obvious gaps between those who have and those who don’t. When I first arrived here years ago, it was a drive down Route 9 from Loudonville into Arbor Hill that opened my eyes to the region’s blatant divisions. The two places sit nearly sideby-side, separated by railroad tracks and a highway, yet are different worlds — Loudonville synonymous with suburban wealth and plenty, Arbor Hill with urban poverty and despair.
So given that and other obvious divisions, a recent study from the Urban Institute was perhaps unsurprising with its claim that Albany is among the most unequal of American cities, a place that, more than most, struggles to include minority populations in economic prosperity.
Of the 274 cities measured by the study for inclusion, Albany ranked in the bottom quarter at 234. Worse, the report claimed that Albany has been growing less inclusive in recent years.
“People have repeatedly pointed out to our local government officials that we’re a deeply unequal city,” Alice Green, executive director of The Center for Law and Justice, told my colleague Eduardo Medina, who reported on the Urban Institute study.
It’s impossible to argue with that. Of course Albany is deeply unequal. To deny it would be to deny our lying eyes.
But a separate study by the Brookings Institution is much more sanguine about how we’re doing at including disadvantaged populations in economic growth. In fact, the Metro Monitor 2020 report, as it’s called, ranked the Albany region first among 56 similarly sized metro areas for closing the employment gap between the white population and people of color
from 2017 to 2018.
Over a 10-year period, Brookings ranked the region in the top quartile for closing income and employment gaps between its wealthiest and poorest neighborhoods. It also said the Albany area was tops for overall productivity and standard-of-living gains.
How do we account for the differences between what Brookings and the Urban Institute found? (Both, by the way, are left-leaning think tanks based in Washington, D.C.)
That’s easy. Brookings looked at the region — the entire metropolitan area — while the Urban Institute examined only the city of Albany, which, with about 97,000 residents, accounts for less than 15 percent of the region’s population.
That gets us to a significant flaw in the UI report: It compares smallish eastern cities like Albany, with limited geographic territory and fixed borders, to expansive western cities that often have the ability to annex suburban growth and the wealth it includes.
“It isn’t even an apples-tooranges comparison,” said Albany Mayor Kathy Sheehan. “It’s like comparing apples to zebras.”
Sheehan pointed to examples of progress, including Albany ’s falling poverty rate.
But she also noted that minority and immigrant families often move to suburbia as they climb the economic ladder, just as white families have done for generations.
“I’ll be blunt about it,” Sheehan said. “These are people who want their kids in a different
school district.”
Such shifts are reflected in the growing diversity of school districts beyond city lines. The student population in Menands schools, for example, is now 74 percent non-white, according to the most recent state enrollment data, up from 17 percent in
the mid-1990s.
The South Colonie district, meanwhile, is 34 percent nonwhite, up from 7 percent two decades ago. The highly regarded North Colonie district, which includes Loudonville, is 35 percent non-white, compared to 8 percent 25 years ago.
That wealthier suburban schools are becoming dramatically more diverse would seem to be evidence of a region that is growing more inclusive.
Those suburban districts are all relatively close to downtown Albany, and in other parts of the country they ’d fall within the city limits. But in Albany, where the city ’s northern border is just three miles from City Hall, they don’t — a clear reason it looks poorer and less inclusive by comparison. (Other parts of the country frequently have countywide school districts, another complicating factor.)
None of this is meant to ignore the distressing concentration of poverty in Albany and all the ills that come with it. Nor is it meant to suggest that Albany (along with Schenectady and Troy) doesn’t have difficult, intractable problems that need to be addressed, as the recent months of violence have shown.
The great worry, I think, is that the coronavirus and its economic aftershocks may set those neighborhoods back, deepening their poverty and despair.
Still, I’d argue that the overall picture is more complicated (and optimistic) than the Urban Institute study suggests. While this region continues to have yawning gaps between the rich and the poor, as much of America does, it is also a place where progress is real. In that, we can take solace.