It's Official! Norfolk is the Poorest City on the Southside!

So if I understand this correctly the median income of people in Norfolk is the lowest of any city on the Southside of Hampton Roads! Even lower than Portsmouth, and I was certain they would walk away with that distinction! I can't say that I am surprised; after all there are a lot of poor people in Norfolk. But this leaves me with a few unanswered questions; who is paying for those expensive apartments in downtown Norfolk? What is the city going to do about the poor that do stay there; if no other city will have them what does this mean for the future of Norfolk? Does this mean that a greater number of military personnel stay in Virginia Beach, Chesapeake and Suffolk, where household income are higher, because we all know that if you are not in the military you might work for the city, own a small business, or work in the medical field, because how else is someone supposed to earn enough to actually own a home in Hampton Roads?

These findings by the Census Bureau present as many questions, if not more, than answers to questions. Norfolk is what comes to mind when you think about an urban setting in Hampton Roads and you certainly pay for it. If apartments downtown go for $2,500, which is the same as what you will pay in downtown Virginia Beach, and the median income is $22,000 a year less than what it is in Virginia Beach someone is working two jobs or you might find two or three people in one apartment. If your rent is a quarter of your income, you should be bringing in $10,000 a month in order to cover a $2,500 a month apartment. I doubt the people in those apartments are bringing in $120,000 a year.

Norfolk has a larger population than Portsmouth, which is the second poorest city in Hampton Roads. Close to 2 and one half times the population of Portsmouth as of the last census; so if anything there are simply more people in Norfolk to bring down that median income. Norfolk is not in a position to "price out" their poor, in order to bring down their crime and make themselves look better, as has been the case in cities like New York. There aren't any suburbs for the poor to go to; Chesapeake absorbed a few into South Norfolk and Virginia Beach has a few here and there but I do not see those cities building any new complexes to house the poor.

As I mentioned before it seems clear that Norfolk is going to attempt to remove the poor from the housing projects that exist downtown, but again, where will those poor people go? Everyone wants to build high rise condominiums for the rich and the upper class but no one is going to make the mistake of doing the same for the poor again. You couldn't even build a high density development for those on Section 8 in this day and age. All these numbers tell me is that Norfolk "is more of a city" than other areas of the Southside, with the same inequalities and the same indifference towards varying levels of wealth; you might see the poor walking around downtown and you take the good with the bad, which is the same thing you would see in any other city in this country. In Virginia Beach, their downtown is located in a good neighborhood, same with the Oceanfront. There are plenty of places available to live on Ocean View in Norfolk, but the poor are no where to be found on the Oceanfront in Virginia Beach. The difference is night and day.

It could be worse in Norfolk. In New York City the highest median income is $188, 697 and the lowest is $9,320 (this is in Manhattan). You have 1.5 million people in New York that live below the poverty line. That is almost as many people that are in Hampton Roads in general; I would not want to live below the poverty line anywhere in the United States. According to Wikipedia, 19.4% of the population in Norfolk is underneath the poverty line. In Chesapeake, VA, which has the highest median income in Hampton Roads, only 7.3% of the population is underneath the poverty line. I did say that it could be worse in Norfolk in contrast to New York City; well it depends on which borough you are looking at. Three boroughs, Queens, Staten Island and Manhattan, actually fare better with respect to the percentage of people that are in poverty than Norfolk while the Bronx and Brooklyn are actually worse off. But I doubt you will see the obscene wealth in Norfolk that you do in Manhattan, then again, considering those high prices downtown you might ...