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Preparing for Investments Along the University Corridor
The maps and charts in this section relate to the demographics of the University Corridor residents. They cover the relative household incomes across the neighborhoods, the racial makeup of the Corridor, and the relative family sizes and ages across the area. The maps and charts can be viewed or downloaded by scrolling to the bottom of this screen.
Income: The highest incomes in the University Corridor are generally clustered where some of the finest housing in the Twin Cities is located, namely along East River Road in Minneapolis and St. Paul, in sections of Prospect Park and St. Anthony Park, and south of Summit Avenue in the St. Paul neighborhoods. In large part, these high-income enclaves are the furthest from University Avenue, and will not be directly influenced by future investments in commercial developments and potential light-rail installment along University Avenue. Meanwhile, the areas closest to University Avenue are home to residents with the lowest incomes throughout the Corridor. Areas such as a stretch along Marshall Avenue between Lexington Avenue and Dale St. have the lowest household incomes in the area, roughly between $8,400 and under $25,000 a year per household, well below the Corridor’s average of about $40,000 in household income. A long stretch of housing in the Thomas-Dale area is also in this lowest-income bracket; it covers the area south of University Avenue to I-94, and from Dale St. on the west to Rice St. on the east, encompassing the Central Village Park and Western Park areas. The eastern edge of Thomas-Dale, found just west of I-35E, is also very low income. An additional area is worth noting: the high-rises located between University Avenue and I-94 and Syndicate and Lexington (Skyline Tower, for one), is also found to be very low-income. (Please see the “Median Household Income” map for reference.)
Poverty: In addition to collecting data on household income, the U.S. Census Bureau provides a finer analysis of where people are living in poverty. This figure accounts for family size in relation to a household’s income. The Census Bureau considers tracts that have more than 20 percent of households in poverty as “poverty tracts.” Social scientist Paul Jargowsky considers 40 percent and above of people in poverty in one tract to be “very high poverty.” With those figures in mind, it is worth taking a look at IRP’s map of the “Percentage of Persons Below the Poverty Line.” The area east of Lexington Ave. and north of University Avenue, stretching east through Thomas-Dale to I-35E, is entirely a mix of poverty and very high poverty areas. The planning literature raises concern for the residents of such places of “concentrated poverty,” where poverty is so prevalent that there are few middle-class residents in the area and opportunities are few.
On IRP’s maps, additional areas show up as very high poverty, such as Dinkytown and the University of St. Thomas area. The poverty in these areas is of a different scale, however, because students register in the Census as residents who make very little income, but this is not an indication that they are living in poverty because many of them have family support as they attend college. Attaining a college degree also relates to potential for high earnings than high-school graduates, making these areas of less concern when considering areas of concentrated poverty in the University Corridor. (Please see the “Percentage of Persons Below Poverty Line” map for reference.)
Race: The racial mix in the University Corridor varies significantly by neighborhood. Overall, about two-thirds of all the residents of the Corridor, as IRP has defined it for this project, are white. The next largest group is African American, accounting for 15 percent of the residents in the Corridor. About 12 percent of the residents are Asian, and about 5 percent are Hispanic (and may be another race, since “Hispanic” is an ethnicity, not a race). But the racial mix is not consistent across the Corridor. The majority of people of color reside north of Selby Ave., between Lexington Avenue and I-35E, largely in the Summit-University and Thomas-Dale neighborhoods. The Census blocks with the highest percentages of people of color correlate closely with the places where people are living in poverty. (Please see the “Percentage of Persons of Color” map and the “Race & Ethnicity” chart for reference.)
Family Structure: Size of households matters when it varies substantially from neighborhood to neighborhood. In the University Corridor, the places with the most people of color and the highest percentage of people living in poverty, are also the places with the largest families. Families with more children or more dependents living with them require larger residences to accommodate them. Larger affordable housing units can be hard to locate, since fewer of them are available than 1- and 2-bedroom apartments, and the rents are higher for larger apartments. The average household size for whites is about 2.11 people, while Black households average 2.76 people per household, and Asian households are notably higher at 4.37 persons per household. Given the racial concentrations of sections of the University Corridor, family size is generally larger in the same areas that have the most people of color and lowest incomes. Larger households require larger housing units, higher rents, and greater monthly costs for food, clothing and other necessary goods, putting further strains on household incomes. (Please see the “Family Size” map and the “Average family and household size by race” chart for reference.)
Dependency ratio: The Dependency Ratio is a planning term used to assess the relative social need in a community. The ratio takes the total number of persons under the age of 18 and over the age of 64, divided by the total number of working-age adults, aged 18-64. The idea is to be able to compare across Census blocks the relative number of children and retirement-age persons vs. the working-age population. The approximation of workers vs. nonworkers is a rough one at best, since some teenagers hold jobs, and some seniors continue to work past the age at which they may be eligible to retire. But as a tool for comparing across the geography of a few neighborhoods such as we have in the University Corridor, a pattern nonetheless becomes clear. The dependency ratio is highest in the same areas that have the highest numbers of people of color, lowest incomes, and largest family sizes. In the area east of Lexington Ave. to the Capitol, primarily north of I-94, the dependency ratio approaches 1:1, meaning there is one nonworker for every worker in each Census block, which is quite a different picture from much of the rest of the Corridor, where most Census blocks have about 3 workers for every one nonworker. (Please see the “Dependency Ratio” map for reference.)
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