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AN ANALYSIS: African American Employment, Population & Housing Trends in Washington, D.C. Submitted to The Commission on African American Affairs District of Columbia Government 2017 Edited and with an introduction, summary, recommendations, and conclusion by Maurice Jackson, Ph.D. Georgetown University, Department of History Inaugural Chair, D.C. Commission on African American Affairs (2013–16) 1 Acknowledgments 1 Editor’s Note 2 Editor’s Introduction 3 Summary 4 Economic Inequality and Mobility 6 Migration Trends and Opportunities 8 D.C. Labor Market and Qualifications 12 The Economy and Housing 17 Workforce Development Efforts TABLE OF 20 Recommendations CONTENTS 24 Conclusion 25 Notes Cover photo: Frederick Douglass National Historic Site, Anacostia, Washington, D.C. (courtesy of National Park Service) © 2017 Georgetown University Report edited and with an introduction, summary, recommendations, and conclusion by Maurice Jackson, Ph.D.,Georgetown University, Department of History; Inaugural Chair, D.C. Commission on African American Affairs (2013–16). For more information about this report, please contact: Maurice Jackson, Ph.D. Department of History Georgetown University 37th & O Streets NW Washington, D.C. 20057 202-687-1619 [email protected] This report has been adapted from the research of master’s students in the Georgetown University McCourt School of Public Policy. Allison Beer, Jessica Bonilla, Renita Marcellin, and Megan Miraglia focused on issues related to employment, while Nikki Edson, Junxiao Liang, Ryan Meyer, and Ben Tingle focused on issues related to housing. Prof. Micah Jensen and Prof. Maurice Jackson served as project advisors. McCourt School staff and professors, including Mike Barber, Eric Gardner, Jeff Mayer, and Prof. Alice Rivlin, offered needed support. Special appreciation goes to Prof. Rivlin and Martha Ross of the Brookings Institution, and to Ed Lazere, Executive Director of the D.C. Fiscal Policy Institute. Prof. Jonathan Jackson of the University of Maryland and personnel from the D.C. Department of Housing and Community Development offered helpful advice on research, quantitative analysis, and writing. As the first appointed Chair to the D.C. Commission on African American Affairs, Maurice Jackson wishes to express gratitude to the McCourt teams and others for their hard work, dedication, and contributions. He thanks Georgetown University President Dr. John J. DeGioia for his unwavering support during his tenure as Commission chair; Dr. Joseph Ferrara, Chief of Staff to the President, and his office for assistance in producing the report; and Dr. James Benton, the Slavery, Memory, and Reconciliation Fellow, for offering insightful perspectives on the nature of the African American workforce. He also wishes to thank Christopher Murphy, Vice President for Government Relations and Community Engagement, for his advice and keen insight into the D.C. government and its agencies; Heidi Tseu, Director of Local Government Affairs, for her support; and Samuel Dejoie, a student in the College class of 2019, for his assistance. Prof. Rohan ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Williamson of the McDonough School of Business provided insight on tracking black business development. Finally, he thanks Provost Robert Groves and members of his staff who helped arrange for Jackson to find time to collect data and organize this report. Maurice Jackson has edited and unified the reports on employment trends and housing, added to them, and updated data, and accepts responsibility for any remaining errors or mistakes. When I agreed to become the first appointed Chair of the newly established EDITOR’S NOTE Commission on African American Affairs, I did so with certain reservations. Key among them was the extent of support the committee would receive from city officials and agencies. There were no office, supplies, or staff. With certain assurances, I accepted the volunteer position and made several pledges. The first was that the commission would begin by establishing its rules, by-laws, and mission statement,a and forming a committee structure. The second pledge was to establish a permanent office; in the second year of the new commission, the Office of the Mayor appointed a full-time Executive Director, albeit with no staff. These goals were met. The third pledge was to publish several reports on the status of African Americans in Washington. To research and publish these reports, I found it necessary to seek the support of my home institution Georgetown University. The first of these reports, “The Health of the African American Community in the District of Columbia: Disparities and Recommendations,” was published in the fall of 2016. Prepared by faculty leader Prof. Christopher J. King and eight student contributorsb with the active support of Dr. Patricia Cloonan, Dean of the School of Nursing & Health Studies, this report has been widely distributed, studied, and discussed. The present report is the second in the series. I hope that it contributes to the discussion and offers meaningful ideas to help find ways to halt the flow of African Americans out of D.C. and to help make life for those who remain a bit better. Maurice Jackson, Georgetown University, Department of History; Inaugural Chair, D.C. Commission on African American Affairs (2013–16) a The mission statement reads: “The goal of the Commission on African American Affairs of the District of Columbia is to address the concerns and needs of African American communities with low and moderate incomes: to gather economic, education, health, housing and other social indicators and to review and analyze the decline in the population of African American residents of the District, as indicated by the 2010 United States Census. The Commission will seek input from D.C. residents, social service agencies and concerned experts, hold fact-finding hearings, and submit definitive reports and policy recommendations to the Mayor and Council of the District of Columbia.” b The student contributors are: Taylor Brown, Stefanie Kurgatt, Eileen Marino, Ogechi Nwodim, Erik Schimmel, Jordan Smith, Jaclyn Tatge, and John A. Davis. An Analysis: African American Employment, Population & Housing Trends in Washington, D.C. 1 African Americans have made extraordinary contributions to the rich cultural, social, and civic heritage of Washington, D.C. since the city’s founding. However, over the past few decades, an alarming trend has developed:1 the city’s African American population has declined significantly—a trend expected to continue. In 1957, Washington became the first large city with a black majority population, and in 1960, the city reported an African American population at 53.9 percent. This rose to its height at 71.1 percent in 1970. However, by 2015, it dipped below 50 percent for the first time in nearly 60 years to 48.3 percent.2 Much of the population loss can be attributed to the economy. Simply put, African Americans, some D.C. born and raised, have been priced out of the housing market and pushed out of the job market due to the lack of available jobs, lack of skills training, and a lag in educational attainment. Shifts in the federal workforce and the creation of some higher-paying private employer jobs outside of the city, along with high housing costs and the notion that affordable housing near quality schools are more accessible in the suburbs, have also caused middle- to higher-income African Americans to leave the city. Photo courtesy of washington.org This report seeks to analyze those trends and to offer ideas about how to halt the flow of African Americans out of Washington, D.C., the stated mission of the D.C. Commission EDITOR’S on African American Affairs. INTRODUCTION African Americans, some D.C. born and raised, have been priced out of the housing market and pushed out of the job market due to the lack of available jobs, lack of skills training, and a lag in educational attainment. Photo courtesy of washington.org 2 © 2017 Georgetown University The African American population in U.S. cities, such as Chicago, Cleveland, Oakland, and St. Louis, has also been in decline, the result of economic factors, including increasing income inequality and a dearth of equal economic opportunities for African American residents. In D.C., especially for at least three decades, African Americans have experienced consistent patterns of declining income gains, higher unemployment, and lower educational attainment than white residents.c The predicted growth of the D.C. labor market is alarmingly mismatched with the educational attainment trends of the city’s African American residents.d By 2020, 50 percent of all new jobs will require at least a bachelor’s degree or above, and nearly 60 percent will require at least some form of education and training beyond high school. However, 60,000 adult African American D.C. residents have not finished high school;3 a full 50 percent have no formal education past high school, compared to 5 percent of white residents; and 12.3 percent of African Americans have a bachelor’s degree, while 37.1 percent of white residents do. According to the U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics, 19 percent of adults in the city do not have the reading proficiency to read a daily newspaper. The Washington Literacy Center estimates that 90,000 adults in D.C. (13.4 percent of city residents) are functionally illiterate. This shows a major gap between the qualifications employers are seeking and those acquired by SUMMARY disproportionately