What the Hell Happened to Ohio? Episode 2 - Youngstown, OH

Where did everybody go???

One of our former great cities. Now I'm sure you've heard this story before you know, former steel town goes kaput, but you haven't heard it quite like the way we’re going to talk about it here. It’s insightful, eye-opening and might make you feel betrayed by our government.

This is what much of Youngstown looks like today. This is the north end of town, which used to be a bustling neighborhood on the fringes of corn fields and open land. Now, today, it IS open land and is on the fringe of society. Yes, much of this area was once filled with homes, where kids played in the street, where family barbecues were held, where church bells rang out on Sunday. But those times passed a long time ago. A lot of people left Youngstown ages ago, off for better opportunities and safer cities to raise their kids. And the reason for that is our own damn fault.

Now if you know Ohio, you’d know that if this was winter, this place would be all gray and brown and look very post modern. It would look far worse than it does here. On this day, it's nice and sunny so Youngstown looks about as spruced up as you'd ever see it - like when grandma puts on her best face for church.

Youngstown is one of many former steel towns in the rust belt that have lost their way. Back in the 50s and 60s, this was a bustling community where steel mills ran at all hours of the day and where people could make a good life. But then in the 1970s, steel mills began to shut down, resulting in a catastrophic loss of jobs. The BIG blow came on what locals called Black Monday, when in 1977, Youngstown Sheet and Tube shut down, immediately putting 5,000 people out of work. The ripple effect was severe, and by 1983, Youngstown had lost 40,000 manufacturing jobs

Since 1959, Youngstown has lost 60% of its population. At one point there were 160,000 people here. Today, there’s less than 65,000.

All the new vacant buildings brought blight, and depressed property values, but for years, officials hoped the problem would just go away. They tried to being in new jobs like a blimp plant and car manufacturing plants. None materialized, repelled, in part, by corruption.

In its heyday in the 1930s, Youngstown called itself the City of Homes, a place where a working-class man could be master of his own castle.

In those years, people dealt with the vacant houses by burning them down.

But you can’t do that forever. So a new plan was unveiled that would demolish the abandoned structures. So far, Youngstown has razed more than 2,000 vacant homes, but more than 5,000 vacant structures remain. Can you imagine that? 5,000 empty buildings in a small city like this? Today, Youngstown’s vacancy rate is 10 times above the national average.

Homes here average $38,000 each, which is just about as low as you’d find in America today. A lot of the vacant structures here are owned by out of state folks or even international investors like those in China.

The education system is broken, The schools are just...bad. Good jobs are hard to come by, but you knew that already.

Youngstown has been called the poorest place in the USA for communities above 65,000 people. The average household here makes under $25,000 a year, and 4 in 10 people live at or below the poverty line. 6 in 10 kids here live in poverty. The healthcare system is terrible, and drug use is rampant.

#ohio #moving

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Видео What the Hell Happened to Ohio? Episode 2 - Youngstown, OH канала Nick Johnson