Nearly 500 abandoned buildings stand within half a square mile. Crack and marijuana are sold in quick deals on open corners. Someone is raped, robbed or assaulted every 18 hours.

        Over-the-Rhine — once a proud, working-class neighborhood — is today Cincinnati's foremost symbol of three decades of failed policy on how and where to house the poor.

        It's not alone.

        Decisions to cluster thousands of poor people in housing owned or subsidized by the government have bred crime, blight and social problems in parts of the West End, Newport and other near-downtown neighborhoods, too.

Residents skeptical of another new plan

Mistrust of government is a dominant legacy of concentrated poverty.     Residents have heard the pledge of better schools, jobs and health care before. They don't believe it anymore.     That's why many long-time residents of near-downtown communities are skeptical about current ideas of dispersing the poor throughout the region.     Other plans aim to create stable, mixed-income neighborhoods by developing new housing for wealthier people in Over-the- Rhine, West End, Newport and other areas overloaded with low-income housing.     The theory is that mixed-income communities can recapture the businesses, jobs and hope that left these areas decades ago.     “The middle income aren't a silver bullet for the problems, but there is an upward pull rather than downward,” says John McIlwain, senior resident fellow at Washington D.C.-based Urban Land Institute.     In West End, there remains deep skepticism over the federal government's program to dismantle Laurel Homes and Lincoln Court and turn them into mixed-income communities.     Similar plans to demolish most of the 956-unit public housing complex in English Woods, and build 400 owner-occupied homes with sweeping downtown views, were announced earlier this month.(feb. 13)     Residents now fear they'll be shoved out of their territory of decades to free up prime real estate for redevelopment.     “Most of the people here don't want to move,” says Ed Ziegler, a Laurel Homes resident. “They want to stay here.”     In Newport, public housing tenants are bracing for a housing overhaul that will eliminate some low-income units within three to five years. They warn that changes, unless crafted carefully, will repeat mistakes of the past.     Ms. Giles, the public housing tenant, is impressed with Newport projects such as the Aquarium, Newport on the Levee and new restaurants and theaters.     There's just one problem, she says:     “They built the Levee, and it costs too much to see a movie there.”

        Now, as city officials pursue new ideas to break up the slums, they must undo 30 years of old ideas that brought decay to the same neighborhoods they deem so important to remake.

        An Enquirer review of 30 years of housing and demographic data shows that a domino effect began with government programs that clustered thousands of poor people in a few, small areas:

        • Since 1974, when the federal Section 8 program began paying private landlords to rent to the poor, more than 28 percent of Hamilton County's subsidized housing was concentrated in just two of 92 communities: Over-the-Rhine and the West End.

        • As poor people clustered there, middle-income residents fled and populations plummeted. Only 7,638 people live in Over-the-Rhine today, compared to 15,025 in 1970.

        • As people left the old neighborhoods, incomes and jobs were lost, too. Since 1970, more than 200 businesses have left or failed and were never replaced in Over-the-Rhine.

        • Essential services were the next to go. The West End hasn't had a grocery store since Kroger left in the early 1970s.

        People who work with the poor say city officials have a huge job ahead in remaking the neighborhoods into thriving residential and commercial centers.

        Breaking up 30 years of poverty is just one problem. Lack of education, loss of personal responsibility and a deep mistrust of government are others.

        Section 8 and other government housing “trained people to accept a way of life that is substandard,” says Marge Hammelrath, director of Over-the-Rhine Foundation, a group dedicated to improving the neighborhood.

        “It is a system that doesn't teach people any kind of self-sufficiency.”

        Here's what happened in three communities:

Over-the-Rhine

               Over-the-Rhine wasn't always the drug capital of the city and most violent part of town.

        Once, it was Cincinnati's most unique and lively neighborhood.

        Its population peaked at more than 44,000 in 1900, fueled by an influx of German immigrants. They established churches, theaters and German-language newspapers.

        More than 50 saloons and five theaters made Vine Street a national tourist attraction from Central Parkway to McMicken Street.

        But the neighborhood's popularity subsided during the '20s and '30s. Prohibition closed prized saloons, which were converted to warehouses or other uses. Many residents wary of living next to factories moved elsewhere.

        After World War II, new government mortgage programs lured middle-income families out of the city and into the suburbs. A government highway-building boom aided the exodus.

        Yet Over-the-Rhine remained a welcoming port in the 1950s and 1960s, this time for Appalachians escaping the poverty of West Virginia and Kentucky.

        Appalachians mixed with African-Americans, who were displaced from the adjacent West End by construction of Interstate 75 and slum clearance there.

        Linda Duff remembers Over-the-Rhine of the early '60s as a place that still welcomed families. Her home at Vine and McMicken streets was close to school, shopping and entertainment.

        She says she never felt unsafe. She remembers the inviting lights of the Empire Theater on Vine, where she'd trade a dime for an afternoon of movie watching before walking home.

        “People looked after you,” Ms. Duff says. “It's not like it is today.”

        Then came Section 8.

        After long ignoring inner cities, the federal government zeroed in on communities like Over-the-Rhine in the 1970s.

        HUD paid landlords millions of dollars to convert old buildings into low-income apartments and gave Cincinnati special status that hastened the buildup.

        Any developer interested in Section 8 housing was welcome, says Tom Denhart, Cincinnati's largest Section 8 landlord, who once controlled nearly 1,600 subsidized units near downtown.

        “It was only available for a short time, and we got into it,” Mr. Denhart said. “HUD and the city of Cincinnati wanted to rebuild Over-the-Rhine.”

        That didn't happen.

        By the late '70s, Over-the-Rhine buildings renowned for Italianate design sported a new look — bars over windows.

        Residents jammed into cramped apartments, and by the 1980s, the illegal drug trade ruled the neighborhood.

        Today, more than 25 apartment buildings reserved exclusively for Section 8 families are clustered in Over-the-Rhine —— the largest concentration in Greater Cincinnati.

        Most of the other Section 8 buildings are in nearby West End, Mount Auburn, Walnut Hills and Avondale. A few are scattered in parts of Covington and Lockland.

        Fewer than 8,000 people live in Over-the-Rhine today. They earn a median income of just $7,620 a year — 18 percent below the poverty level. Home ownership is a paltry 3 percent. And more than 30 social service agencies for drug addicts, alcoholics, mental health patients, the poor and others are anchored there.

        Some say to blame Over-the-Rhine's decline solely on housing policies would be incomplete. The neighborhood already was battling population loss and poverty by the time the Department of Housing and Urban Development adopted Section 8.

        But there's no doubt that the federal policy of concentrating poverty hastened the decline in many ways.

        Roxanne Qualls, Cincinnati mayor from 1993 to 1999, when project-based Section 8 began winding down, says the federal program was devastating.

        “The legacy of concentrating Section 8 so heavily in communities like Over-the-Rhine and West End was to accelerate their decline and deterioration,” says Ms. Qualls, now a graduate student at Harvard University.

        “It has pretty obviously caused services and institutions to leave those neighborhoods, depriving people of the access to work.”

West End

               Before the city and the federal government adopted a policy of huddling the poor in neighborhoods close to downtown, the West End already had weathered its share of government-funded disasters.

        The Interstate 75 extension sliced the neighborhood in half. Industrial development gobbled blocks of homes. And the city's 1948 comprehensive plan served as a de facto segregation policy by steering black families to West End, Avondale, Walnut Hills and nearby neighborhoods.

        “West End was really the first large, inner-city ghetto,” says Zane Miller, a retired University of Cincinnati professor of history. “There's no need to romanticize those old ghettos. They were crummy.”

        Two public housing projects — Lincoln Court and Laurel Homes — anchored Cincinnati's West End as a place for the city's poorest.

        The World War II-era complexes with more than 2,000 apartments were considered then as state-of-the-art units and the answer to a housing crunch for working families.

        But the projects fell into disrepair, the working families moved out and poorer residents moved in.

        The area declined further in the 1950s and 1960s as middle-income blacks left for next-rung neighborhoods.

        Once a mixed-income neighborhood before the government's involvement, West End became a reservation of poverty in the '70s and '80s. Small shops and grocery stores left and sought more lucrative business in the suburbs.

        “There used to be hairdressers, confectionary stores and all kinds of businesses,” says Shirley Colbert, president of the Laurel Homes Residents Council. “All of the stuff we were used to having, they moved out of the inner city.”

        The A&P grocery store at Linn and Clark streets burned in the 1950s and never reopened. Kroger vacated its Linn Street location in the early 1970s.

        Today, the only nearby grocery store is Kroger on Vine Street in Over-the-Rhine — a store the Cincinnati-based grocer admits is inadequate by modern standards.

        If residents want a larger selection of groceries, they must drive up Vine Street to Kroger in Corryville or northeast of downtown to Walnut Hills.

        More often, residents take the bus.

        A Kroger spokesman says the grocer continues to search for a suitable location to build a downtown store.

        Yet West End residents are skeptical. And there are only 8,100 of them today, compared to 42,000 in 1960.

        “We were promised long ago by city fathers that there would be another chain grocery store in the West End,” Ms. Colbert says. “It hasn't happened.”

Newport

               Newport never declined as much as some Cincinnati neighborhoods, but the effect of concentrated poverty is still evident.

        The city is home to scattered, low-income apartments and a 202-unit public housing project built during the 1950s on Fourth Street.

        Newport's bigger strain, according to Mayor Tom Guidugli, has been the loss of middle-income residents who left for modern, suburban homes on bigger lots. As the city's tax base dwindled, demand for police, fire and city services for the poor has increased, he says.

        Newport's home ownership rate of 44 percent is one of the lowest rates in Kentucky, but still higher than Cincinnati's 38 percent.

        Renters and low-income residents “don't want to do the same things that people did before,” Mr. Guidugli says. “People don't sweep the sidewalks and curbs. We need more services like firefighters and public works” to provide emergency medical service and clean streets.

        Kristina Giles, a resident of the Fourth Street public housing, is anxious to get a government housing voucher so she can move her children out of Northern Kentucky's largest public housing complex and into a suburban home.

        “It's crazy out here,” Ms. Giles says. “Your kids don't even have a place to play. People hang out in the playground, smoking weed and drinking beer.”

        Ms. Giles worries about things that suburbanites take for granted. Her apartment has been broken into twice in the past year.

        Trash and broken glass are strewn across nearby apartment properties. Few pizza shops are willing to deliver to her home, and those that do refuse to arrive past 8 p.m.

        She realizes the Newport complex hasn't deteriorated to the same degree as West End and Over-the-Rhine. But she yearns for her own home with a clean yard in a quiet, safe neighborhood.

        “I don't even have grass at my front step,” she says, pointing to dirt and a few patches of yellowed grass. “It's just mud.”

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