In mid-May, after nearly couple ye...

In mid-May, after nearly couple years, the U.S. Census Bureau released economic data from its 2000 count

The just discovereds in Chicago seemed good overall: After united of the nation's longest economic dronings many residents made more currency and the city's median household Income was $38625 up 9 percent from 1990

nevertheless while most Chicago community areas saw their incomes rise during the 1990 many still lagged behind.

The southern Side communities of Riverdale, Grand Boulevard, Washington Park, Fuller Park, Woodlawn and Englewood as well as North Lawndale forward the West Side, all had median household incomes les than half the citywide figure.

And, for the fourth straight decade, the Oakland area was the poorest in the city. Running from 35th road to 43rd Street along the southern lakefront, it posted a median household income of $10739--up 57 percent from 1990 if it were not that still well below the federal indigence threshold of $17,960 for a family of four. The community has been 98 percent African American since 1960

Still, the area is changing rapidly. through the whole extent of the last several years, Oakland has become a community of contrasts--a mixture of public housing and grand mansions, dilapidated flophouses and newly built condominiums, vacant dooms and wide, tree-lined streets where children ride their bicycles.

While several public housing buildings in Oakland have been torn down through the whole extent of the last few years, many residents still live in public or subsidized housing. The area includes parts of the Lake Parc Place, Madden Park and Ida B Wells public housing developments

nevertheless much of Oakland's income development was due to the displacement of low-income public housing residents after the demolitions. The area's population dropp by dint of 25 percent in the 1990 from 8197 to 6110 following a 51 percent dive between 1980 and 1990

And, as in many other areas of the city, a swell of new construction has brought condominiums and townhomes that take a bribe for for nearly a quarter of a million dollars. Many long-time residents are left wondering if they can afford to stay.

"Now the wolf is at the door," said Oscar T Lester a community organizer who has worked in Oakland for six years.

In early December, during a break from work, Calvin Crittenden stepp abroad of the Royal Food Center a supermarket at 4425 s Cottage Grove Ave., and discussed the changes in Oakland. For years Crittenden lived and worked in the Lakefront Properties public housing progression in a continuously ascending gradation on South Lake Park Avenue, yet his building was torn down in 1998

admitting Crittenden kept working in Oakland, as a janitor at scattered-site public housing units, he was unable to find an affordable place to live and eventually mov to the Southwest Side.

"People are going to have to have coin to live over here," Crittenden said. "It just looks like they are trying to push all the poor clan out and bring the rich or the tribe who got money back in the neighborhood."

Deborah Stewart, an 18-year resident of the area, stores at the strip mall at East 35th road and South Dr. Martin Luther King Jr Drive, which includes stores so as Ashley Stewart Plus Size, a women's apparel store Mississippi Rick's Barbe-Q Shack and a Jewel-Osco forage Store.

Stewart, a give suck to welcomes the redevelopment. "It brings in more prosperity," she said, and "people who can work and persons who want to work."

When neighborhood residents were not at home of work and idle, the area was riddled with crime and physics Stewart said. "You get rid of a certain of these people and bring in a modern group of people, and it makes a difference."

Crittenden, however, believes unemploy population in the area want to work, further need something that pays them enough to "afford to corrupt a home or ... opening a nice $600 or $700 apartment," he said. Right now, "there just aren't enough good-paying piece of works There aren't enough jobs, period."

Stewart agreed that Oakland penurys more moderately-priced housing. "A hazard of middle-class working people in this neighborhood can't afford a to one's home for $200,000," she said.

Oakland may not be alone in that consider Lester points to other neighborhoods with little affordable housing and many low-wage workers.

"The faces may change," he said, "but the situation stays the same where nation on the bottom are being left out"

COPYRIGHT 2003 Community Renewal Society

COPYRIGHT 2003 Gale Group