A long trek in quest to move up
Man’s commute to school points to city’s need to bridge income gap
Jerome Edmond trudges through the damp grass along the shoulder of the North Freeway, gripping the strap of his backpack. He’s ridden three buses from his home in the Third Ward and now he’s in the homestretch, a mile away from a north Houston technical college where he’s training to be a wind energy and power plant operator.
He walks the last leg, wishing he had a car, past a long row of car dealerships.
Edmond, 34, a former Army sergeant, is emblematic of income inequality in Houston, one of those Americans for whom “inequality has deep- ened” and “upward mobility has stalled,” as President Barack Obama said last month in his State of the Union address.
“Today, after four years of economic growth, corporate profits and stock prices have rarely been higher, and those at the top have never done better,” the president said. But “the cold, hard fact is that even in the midst of recovery, too many Americans are working more than ever just to get by — let alone get ahead.”
By several measures, Houston ranks high among cities with the worst income inequality and income segregation. But it overperformed in a recent study by Harvard Univer-
sity and University of California at Berkley economists in what they called “equality of opportunity,” or mobility, at least in part because of the city’s booming economy.
Edmond may be the face of income inequality, but he also represents the promise some local experts believe Houston holds for bridging the income gap, given its mix of demographic diversity and robust energy sector.
“It’s an absolutely fascinating place where the American future is going to be worked out,” said Stephen Klineberg, a Rice University sociology professor who closely follows economic and demographic trends in Houston and Harris County.
The key to success, he and other experts believe, is investment in education in a city where more than 70 percent of the population under 20 is either black or Hispanic — communities disproportionately living in poverty.
“If Houston’s African-American and Latino young people are unprepared to succeed in the knowledge economy of the 21st century, then it’s hard to envision a prosperous future for Houston,” Klineberg said. “And those inequalities will deepen.”
A widening income gap
Edmond grew up in the Third Ward, where the median household income is around $32,000, according to the latest data from the U.S. Census Bureau. In some parts of the neighborhood, less than 10 percent of the population older than 25 years old has more than a high school diploma.
For Edmond, college wasn’t even something he considered.
“It’s hard for people around here to think about four years of college when most people don’t even know what’s going to happen in the next four minutes,” said Edmond as he walks to his first bus, shortly before noon for a 3:30 p.m. class.
A few well-to-do white residents have begun moving into the primarily black neighborhood, which is still defined by generational poverty. Most people there, like Edmond, who provides for himself as well as his 64-year-old mother, are struggling to make ends meet.
His mantra, during his long daily trek to vocational training and what he hopes someday soon will be a job in the emerging wind industry: “You got to do what you got to do if you want something better.”
Just west of the Third Ward, toward the Museum District, the median household income more than doubles to $69,000. Another few miles west, in River Oaks, one of the wealthiest communities in America, the median income is $250,000.
Income disparities began widening in Houston as jobs that require middle-level skill sets began to decrease, Klineberg said. Houston was once a city where the bluecollar worker without much education could succeed and prosper, Klineberg said. He noted that in the 1970s the city’s largest employers were manufacturing companies Hughes Tool and Cameron Iron Works. Many of those jobs have disappeared, taken over by technology or outsourced to developing countries.
The forces behind much of the growing income inequality in America — the global economy, the federal tax code, disruptive technologies, corporate compensation trends, Wall Street and more — are beyond the reach of any one city.
But if Houston is to thrive and stand out as one of the American cities that provides true upward economic mobility, Klineberg said, there must be an emphasis on educating people for skilled trade jobs, like the high-skilled one Edmond wants in wind power, so they can be competitive in what he called the new “knowledge economy.”
“It’s a city coming to grips and reinventing itself,” he said. “It’s realizing that the strategies that worked so well for Houston 30 years ago need to be rethought in the 21st century.”
Those new midlevel types of jobs do exist in the city, said Bob Harvey, president and CEO of the Greater Houston Partnership, one of the city’s leading business organizations. While the work doesn’t always require a bachelor’s degree, it does entail some type of technical training in addition to a high school diploma.
“We used to say kind of tongue-and-cheek way, with a strong back you could earn a decent wage,” Harvey said. “It is true today that to earn any kind of decent wage or decent income that you have to have skills that take you into that higher class of work.”
‘Every dollar counts’
Edmond can’t remember a time that he didn’t feel like he or his family was not struggling. His mother worked as a checker at a local grocery store his entire life, raising Edmond and his older brother alone.
Getting a high school diploma mattered to Edmond. But by the time he turned 16, he needed a job more. He dropped out of high school and went to work at a nearby McDonald’s for minimum wage to help supplement his mother’s income.
“Every dollar counts in a household,” said Edmond. “When you have to make a choice between going to school and paying the light bill and eating, you have to pay the bills and eat.”
Eventually, he received a high school equivalency certificate at 19 and found a job at a manufacturing company, and did landscape work on the weekends to bring in additional money.
By the time he was 27, tired of working so hard for so little, he joined the Army. It was in Germany that he first saw a landscape lined with wind turbines, a sight that has, years later, put him on the 86 Metro bus, the last bus he takes before walking the final mile past the car dealerships to the Michigan Institute of Aviation and Technology’s Houston campus.
Last year, the Greater Houston Partnership created a workforce initiative designed to connect prospective employees with industries that depend on trained workers. “If we can get this right, Houston will have a tremendous leg up on competing with the rest of the country,” Harvey said. “But we’ve got to address this issue to do that.”
One goal of the initiative is to create what he called “industry clusters,” which would connect potential employers in particular industry sectors, such as energy, with educators, such as the local community colleges, Harvey said.
An important piece of the equation is convincing employers that they have to create internships and provide financial assistance for students. “At the end of the day,” Harvey said, “where communities have done this successfully, they’ve gotten industry to take on more ownership further upstream.”
Obama spoke of this in his State of the Union address, saying he had asked Vice President Joe Biden to lead an overhaul of America’s job training programs “to make sure they have one mission: train Americans with the skills employers need, and match them to good jobs that need to be filled right now.
“That means more on-the-job-training, and more apprenticeships that set a young worker on an upward trajectory for life,” Obama said. “It means connecting companies to community colleges that can help design training to fill their specific needs.”
Embracing the positive
For the first 12 days he attended the Michigan Institute of Aviation and Technology, Edmond survived on cups of microwave noodles the school staff provided students. His money usually runs out by the end of most months. Starting school had to await the arrival of his military benefits, which were slow in coming. Having no car compounds the stress of life in the Third Ward.
“If you see hopelessness around you, then you feel hopeless,” he said. “If you see negativity, then you’ll be negative.”
Edmond prevailed on the strength of an idea: that going back to school was the only solution.
“Without an education, you’re always going to be working for somebody else for less than you are worth,” he said.
Last year, with help from instructors at St. Michael’s Learning Academy, he received his high school diploma, accomplishing his longtime goal.
His other motivating thought is Christmas.
This year would be different from those that have come before, with very little cheer. Come December, he will be finished with classes at the technical school and, he hopes, working in wind energy. He dreams of bringing his extended family together for a big meal, with his home festively decorated and piles of gifts beneath the Christmas tree.
“It won’t be like the last one,” he said, arriving at school shortly before 3 p.m. “It won’t be just another day that comes and goes.”
anita.hassan@chron.com