CLEVELAND, Ohio - There's a new story to tell about poverty in Cleveland that is far different than what has been written, and rewritten.

Fewer Cleveland residents are living in poverty, new census estimates say. This in a city that has been maligned for years as having one of the highest poverty rates in the country.

Numbers

behind

the news

The reversal of the trend is not simply because the city has been shrinking. The percentage of people in poverty is also down.

I looked back over 10 years of poverty data after the U.S. Census Bureau last week released estimates for 2015 that show the poverty rate in just one year dropped from 39.2 percent to 34.7 percent. I found:

Fewer Clevelanders are living in poverty than at any time since 2008.

The city's poverty rate dropped more sharply last year than at any other time during the last decade.

Suburbs now account for a higher share of the countywide population in poverty (41.4 percent) than at any time in five years.

While Cleveland's population in poverty shrunk by 17,616 in 2015, the number of suburban residents in poverty increased by 2,163. Which suburbs are home to the increasing numbers of poor people is not known from this latest census bureau information, released only for large places.

Poverty is down in all three of Ohio's big cities, but Cleveland's drop is the sharpest. Poverty fell in Cincinnati from 30 percent to 27.4 percent, and in Columbus from 21.5 percent to 20.7 percent.

Don't read too much into the precise numbers. They are estimates. But the trends are clear.

John Corlett, head of the Center for Community Solutions think tank, watches such things closely as part of the organization's work on health, social and economic issues, and as a Cleveland resident.

"I have lived in the Detroit-Shoreway neighborhood for almost 25 years. I can see it in my neighborhood," Corlett said of improved economic conditions, perhaps due in part to higher income people moving into pockets of the city.



"But I could also guess, based on what I know, that poverty has spread into surrounding communities. It has has spread into Lakewood. It has spread in Parma, Maple Heights and other places," Corlett said. "I know that from my volunteer work in the food bank and other charities. I know there is more need in other communities."

One in three remain in poverty



Though the direction is positive for Cleveland, poverty is a problem that is a long way from being solved.

One in three Clevelanders remain in poverty, or more than 130,000 in total. The rate is worse for children. Half of the city's young people are in poverty.

Here are the poverty rates for the last 10 years in Cleveland, Columbus and Cincinnati.

And, overall, Cleveland's poverty rate of 34.7 percent is the 11th highest in the country among cities of at least 65,000 people. Cleveland is no Detroit (39.8 percent) or even Youngstown (35.7 percent), but it isn't far behind.

It is a bigger problem among Cleveland's minorities - 40 percent of Hispanics and 43 percent of blacks. Yet one out of every five white residents in the city also is in poverty.

Life in poverty

According to the Census Bureau, living in poverty for a single person means having less than $12,331 in income. For a family of four, the threshold is $24,257.

"People can't imagine what it would be like to live on that," said Claudia Coulton, founder and co-director of the Center on Urban Poverty and Community Development at Case Western Reserve University.

Coulton said far fewer parents receive welfare checks because there are now time limits for how long they can receive money, and although many people do qualify for food stamps, studies show they often don't last the entire month for the poorest families.

"The hardest thing poor families face is putting a roof over their head," Coulton said. She said public programs meet the need of only about a fifth of the people who would qualify. So the rest are left to compete for the "substandard housing" they are able to afford.

"The good news," Coulton said, "is that the poverty rate both in Cleveland and in our region declined. ... Poverty has finally achieved a significant decrease."

That, at least, is a start.

Rich Exner, data analysis editor for cleveland.com, writes about numbers on a variety of topics. Follow on Twitter @RichExner or see previous stories at cleveland.com/datacentral.