Toledo's population loss fifth highest in country.

No surprise to me. My daughters, who graduated from college in 1978 and 1988 left this area because of the job situation If you did not want to be in the auto related industry field your scope was limited even back then.

My daughter who is an EE said jobs were west of the Mississippi or on east coast. She chose to go west. My oldest decided to go south as her field was in medicine.

I believe the rate would even be higher if recent graduates from college could find jobs in their fields. Instead they are moving back home.

Which is even more reason why we need to diversify our economy to add more professional and technological jobs. There are good things going on around here, but we could really use some more.

Toledo got lucky the automotive industry rebounded lately. But it is dangerous to continue to rely solely on one market segment for your sustainability. The situation will worsen again if there is not diversification.

Our local economy is more than just Auto, thanks to some lessons learned in the 70's I am thinking we didn't keep all our eggs in one basket this time. Still it's no picnic but at least we aren't solely dependent on the automotive industry for all our chickens for our pots.

Add me and my family to the list. After we had 2 short sale offers turned down by the bank we told them if they didn't take the third one we would just walk and they would get a foreclosure. So I'm out about 60k in my down payment and improvements but my neighborhood becoming more gangstalicious by the day was the final straw. It was not the inept government, horrid schools, or the pitiful job market, it was the crime. I didn't grow up in a town where murder was a everyday fact of life and my kids deserve the same.

I quit this bitch.

60K is a lot of dough to leave in the front yard. I'm trying not to get personal, but leaving that much behind I'm really wondering which area you left and where you ended up.

Twenty years ago I packed up my family and moved to Florida. We lived in the north end.I had a good job and our "shack" was paid for. But my old ethnic neighborhood was now just "da hood". We moved to a rural area outside of Tampa. Horses, cattle and orange groves. Twenty years later our area is now "da hood".We have at least six major gangs including a huge MS 13 set within 4 miles of our house. There is at least one murder a day in our area. My house is an armed fortress. With only a couple of years to retirement moving is out of the question. But my wife who swore she would never return to Ohio is actually talking about returning to Toledo or at least the area. Folks it's everywhere. Our whole country is going down the crapper. I won't be alive that much longer but I feel sorry for my kids and grand children. I would run but I would only die tired so I will stand and fight.

I believe dbw was in the Library Village area.

(Stuck out in my mind, because I had a friend who sold a house there in 2003. She thought the neighborhood was going downhill even then...sounds like she's lucky she got out when she did.)

Library Village is going downhill like a lot of previously decent neighborhoods, but I think theres at least a glimmer of hope for the future. Unlike those trying to escape, I just moved to Library Village this past year, my motivation being wanting a nice older home I can afford (were in our mid-20s, first time homeowners). Its understandable why people feel like they need to leave though. Im seeing an increasing amount of sketchy and trashy people in the neighborhood. Luckily, theres still a solid base of people that care about revitalization. We have a pretty active block watch, and another group called the Overland Project concerning the development of the old Willys Overland/Jeep site, as well as neighborhood revitalization and redevelopment, specifically the Sylvania Ave business corridor, into a "urban village". So theres still positives about the neighborhood.

I will concede though, that were just a young couple with no children, so were able to function here much easier. I feel like a lot of these Toledo neighborhoods have great potential that will be eventually realized, as theres a growing movement of people, especially young people, desiring to move into the more dense, urban neighborhoods of rust belt cities. Its just a question of how bad does it get, before it turns around.

This is really an interesting thread, especially with the mix of TT'ers who obviously have enough stake in the city that they follow information here.

My wife and I live in the Sylvania/Secor area and have lived here for about twenty years and have lived on the Westside of Toledo for 43 years total so we have seen the evolution of the area and changes – good and bad. We are not on any form of assistance nor required the police to come to our home for any disturbances. I would think this is the type of citizen that a city would wish to attract - people who do not cause problems, are self-sufficient and pay taxes. As a couple in retirement who have been contemplating relocating these are the things that concern us and nudge us toward leaving:

1) The area we live in continues to have more and more drifters walking up and down the street - panhandlers, vagrants and unkempt people during the day who I can’t fathom are actually working. Drive up and down our neighborhood streets and you’ll see more cars with missing hub caps – laugh if you want but that’s a good indicator of renters and people who are not concerned about the appearance of the neighborhood nor it’s upkeep. My wife and I play a game - If you only have one car with a missing hubcap on your block you live in a pretty secure neighborhood. Two means you should be concerned. Three means it is time to move. Check Cashing, Stop and Go’s and other similar businesses prying on poor folks are another indicator that your neighborhood is on a downswing. I think we have five check cashing places in a ½ mile radius of our house now. We might have had one three years ago.
2) We no longer shop at the Kroger on Secor, a place we shopped at religiously for ten years or more. If you live in this area you know why. The clientele has degenerated as much as the store. Do they need to post a guard at the Kroger’s Sylvania locations? I’m not sure.
3) The neighbors who are secure on our block are all getting up in age, many widowed. When they transition out their does not seem to be a good deal of young, hard working couples moving in. More renters. The prospect of leaving before the neighborhood really folds is tempting. Sell our house for what we can get and go… tempting.
4) We really have been developing a distaste for the way the city is marketing itself as a “service” city for things such as Tarta and Tarps and any other services that cost tax payers money and increase debt and attract people who do not pay taxes. We drive by the bus stop near McDonald’s on Monroe and Talmadge by the Nutrition supplement store and it is FILTHY. Empty cups and bags litter the ground left there by Tarta passengers who’s fares are subsidized. Then… when we see buses they are swooping around the city with one passenger and a bus driver with that ridiculous contradiction written on the extravagantly painted bus that reads “Restore Planet Earth!” What a joke! What… 6-8 miles a gallon for two passengers? That’s good for the planet??? Joke! Meanwhile my wife and I are carpooling in a Prius. (oops, going on a Tarta rant…sorry) But, it’s that marketing toward subsidization that bothers us and Tarta seems to be a microcosm of that phenomenon for us. Perrysburg and Sylvania – Get rid of Tarta!
5) Non-essential services continually asking for levies and a dwindling number of actual homeowners who will be able to strike those down.
6) Anti-business attitude, anti-success attitude despite some of Toledo’s key attractions like the Toledo Museum and Wildwood having been generously donated by the Libbey’s and Stranahans.
7) Crime, Murder, serious and violent crime. Some may say that it is centered around gangs and specific gang areas but that’s not respectful for the people in the city in these areas. Violent crime is violent crime.
8) Climate – not that great 6 months of the year but that obviously is not the city’s fault but it is a reason many people may relocate away in their Golden Years.
9) A vote that rarely means anything.
10) A very sincere concern that Westfield Mall and the surrounding area we live in will become Southwyck in five years.

Ok… That’s the stuff that aggravates us. But we’re still here and have never had an address outside Toledo so there must be some reason we have stayed so far. We are not totally down on the city. Here are some things that keep us here (sometimes by a thread):

1) Costco on Central Avenue. The membership seems to keep the riff raff out, the value is good. The Westgate transition to what it is now was brilliant. Starbucks, 5 Guys, Costco… I seem to recall Finkbeiner and some other leaders against Costco coming to town though I could be wrong – I think it had to do with competition against Kroger which was union. Anyone remember? Seriously, if Costco was not built and we were forced to spend more time at Kroger or Wal-Mart we would be much more agitated – that might actually have been a tipping point.
2) One hour from Ann Arbor – the Michigan Theater, roaming the streets, good food. Probably a town we would enjoy living if we could afford it and the climate was better.
3) Toledo/the Mid-West in general is relatively inexpensive – it’s not like living on the East or West Coast.
4) Within one hour drive of Detroit Metro Airport which is nice for a couple who travels since they have many direct flights to major destinations.
5) Relatively good dining options and if you need something different there are places within 90 minutes that are nice short road trips.
6) Familiarity – we know the city my wife and I have invested time and money in our home to get it comfortable – the thought of moving and learning the ins and outs of a new city is a bit scary. This could be a problem for Toledo – the people who have been here for a long time might stick around but many of the generation below them are not or are dependent on subsidized services.
7) Toledo.. Being a Toledo’an. You can try but you can’t easily break that mold. Even if we move we know that despite all things that frustrate us we are Toledo’ans.

Section 8 ruins neighborhoods. It has helped steal more home equity from the working middle-class than any other program.

dbw8906, I'm sorry to read about your monetary losses, and I don't at all blame you for bailing. The negatives clearly outweigh the positives. The odds are slim that the area will witness a significant bounce.

A good friend of mine who is a 25 year tpd veteran, told me 3 years ago that in his opinion, the Willys Pkwy/Sylvania Avenue area was the area of Toledo with the highest crime increase.

I love the comments on Krogers at Secor and Monroe. It is so bad there that I open carry my Glock whenever I have to go in that place. If there is a cop at the door he usually smiles and nods. Hoods, bangers, welfare mamas, the place is literally a zoo.

2) We no longer shop at the Kroger on Secor, a place we shopped at religiously for ten years or more. If you live in this area you know why. The clientele has degenerated as much as the store. Do they need to post a guard at the Kroger’s Sylvania locations? I’m not sure.

I've always thought that if they need to hire an off-duty cop to stand at the front of a grocery store, it's probably a sign that I don't want/need to be shopping at said grocery store.

I've stopped in at that particular Kroger before, and there's definitely a difference in the clientele from many other local Kroger stores. (I'm not talking about race either.)

P.S. To answer your other question, no...I've never seen a guard posted at either of the Sylvania Kroger stores.

history mike - ordinarily i am in complete agreement with you and find your posts among the best here at TT. that is why i find it puzzling that you seem to squelch discussion on the role our politicians have had in the problems our fair city continues to face.

i think there is plenty of evidence from over the years that our politicians have greatly contributed if not are largely responsible for the problems... however, those same politicians are in place because we continue to elect the same people time and time again to one office or another. i am a democrat who blames democrats... our officials have focused their "service" on getting re-elected and making retirement yeasr rather than making sound decisions that benefit the city.

the crime we are experiencing today is a direct and logical result of the bad contracts that our politicians negotiated 20 years ago that bancrupted our city over the last 8 years. we over indulged our fire and police with layers of command structure, PERS pick-up, etc giving them the power over tax-paying law-abiding citizens rather than the other way around. when the economy went bad and we all took pay cuts, lost our benefits, etc the police and fire bit the hands that feed them... we cut officers rather than maintain the force we needed... rather than they share the pain we all are experiencing, the police and fire fought against rational pay and benefit cuts to the bitter end. we have lost many other services that lead to a good quality of life that makes people want to live in our city...

this lack of safety and services leads to people wishing to get out - our population loss leads to the inability to get a decent price for a house for sale, all further hurting our tax revenue and ability to recover.

dbw's decision to leave is totally rational from his personal point of view; i regret his loss and his leaving both for his being a positive force and in the larger collective sense.

but i do blame the largely same group of people empowered in our city. think of toledo as the titanic going down at sea and the crew of the ship are the first ones in the lifeboat.

That would be the Costa Concordia, not the Titanic. All is well, stay calm, its just a electrical problem, all the while the captain is seeing to his own safety and the crew is walking around in circles unsure of what to do, until it became so obvious as the ship tilts further and further. ABANDON SHIP!!!

Hey Mike. Just to make your weekend. It's Bush's fault.

I'd leave if I could. Home values dropped to the point where it's a dream that I could ever get enough to cover what I owe unless things change dramatically.
At my part time job I deliver all over town. It seems like damn near all the neighborhoods have gone down hill, except the very exclusive, like Corey woods, Ottawa Hills.

DBW
Please don't take my "it's everywhere" statement the wrong way. I'm not trying to say that people should just throw up their hands and accept it. I sure don't. But there is little one person can do outnumbered literally hundreds to one. Back when we still lived in Toledo the law was such that you could not even risk defending your home against an intruder.You might be the one sitting behind bars. It got so bad that I said "to hell with the law" and started packing heat illegally. Things are different now. At least you can defend yourself. As I said our street is surrounded by an army of gang bangers. But not one house has ever been
burglarized and not one car broken into. We live on a Cul de Sac and every house on the block is armed.Most have security cameras that catch even a stray dog walking up the street. And most important, the neighbors know each other and though we have no formal "block watch",we watch out for each other. But my point was how we moved from a toilet into a rural, peaceful, Florida setting and over a period of 20 yrs the whole area turned into "little LA". One of the differences between Toledo and here is that the cops are all over the gangs. Even with the economy in the tank our gang task forces are still robust and very active. But then again in defense of the Toledo police, there is more money flowing here than there. Stories like yours break my heart. Toledo is my home and I still love my home town.We are coming back in a couple of weeks for vacation mainly for my wife's high school reunion. We will be well armed but not walking in fear. Just a little more aware of our surroundings.

3 years ago we stopped going on vacation, going out to dinner and pinched every penny we could find to make a "get out of Dodge" fund.

Man, that's takes some serious work. My hat's off to you, DBW8906.

After reading the posts about the Monroe/Secor Kroger, I'm going to visit there today or tomorrow. I shopped there for years, but about 5 years ago, switched to Holland/Bancroft, since I was already shopping at House of Meats and Monettes. I'm sure the changes posted here quickly will be noticed.

I agree with DBW that using the phrase "crime is everywhere" is an exaggeration. Face it, Toledo still has some (less every year) desirable neighborhoods, but today, the overall city pretty much is a dump.

It's easy to remember what an area "used to be" and assume it remained that way.

Had the information about the Willys area not been provided by a cop, I probably wouldn't have believed it. At least not without seeing it with my own eyes a few times.

I have an uncle in his 70's and he still says the Polish Village is a nice neighborhood. Of course, that's an extreme example, and he probably hasn't seen that area in 30 years, but he still believes it.

Last week, I'm sure many residents across the city were shocked to read about that robbery and shooting in the Berdan/Upton neighborhood. However, reality is that Berdan/Upton at best currently is a sketchy area and will be another ghetto in 10 years.

Kroger's anytime of the day will reveal a distinct change from 5 years ago. More so if you venture in there when the sun goes down.

We lived in the Hampton Park (Syl/Secor/Monroe) area from 2000-2006. We used to shop at that apparently now infamous Kroger. During our brief time in that neighborhood, us and many of our neighbors started calling it "Ghetto Kroger" and stopped shopping there.

We left in 2006 to move to Sylvania along with many other neighbors--all in our 30's with young kids. We got out right before the housing values plummeted and I thank God every day that we did. I truly do feel for those trapped in Toledo. I know that sounds pretentious and maybe a little snobby, but I would not move back to Toledo now for anything, and I grew up in West Toledo, loved it and up to 2006 never wanted to leave.

yeah, but you're in sylvania. right next to toledo. not much of an improvement if you hate t-town so much. if toledo continues to crumble as many here think it will, sylvania property values won't hold steady.

As a Sylvania city resident I have pondered the possibility that the degeneration will spread from the east and the decay will encroach on this tiny city.

This is a possibility but hopefully things like high property tax, water costs, strong police presence, distance from hillbilly east side and inner city Ho land will hold back the barbarians.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kUplt0FjB5M&list=FLUGvAftpIaIPliJCpo62QwA&feature=mh_lolz

DBW, on the bright side, ^ is what you avoided by leaving now instead of waiting around for the inevitable.

Nits, I agree, the burbs are not insulated from Toledo's issues. I am hoping they can hold out until some miraculous recovery in Toledo, or until my kids are out of school, whichever comes first. I want to raise my kids here, but will get out after that.

Are there success stories of rust belt cities turning themselves around?

Absolutely. Look at grand rapids Michigan for inspiration.

So, what can we do? I'm serious. Like Dannes, my family lives in the Sylvania Secor area as well. I grew up near Sylvania/Douglas. I work near Sylvania/Bennett (our company moved here in '89 from Belmont and Hoag-talk about Da Hood...)Prior to their deaths in the '80's, I had grandparents that lived near Lagrange and Manhattan and grandparents that lived near Parkside & Nebraska. As a child in the 1970's I can remember visting both sets of grandparents and walking to neighborhood stores, bakeries, etc. These were both predominant Polish neighborhoods. I can remember in the late 70's my Parkside grandma being robbed at night. My dad was held up near his work at Detroit and Nebraska around the same time. That was the beginning of the end for that neighborhood. Same thing goes for the Lagrange St. grandparents. As riff-raff slowly moved in, the "good" folks started moving out. I remember when our company moved to Bennett from Belmont. Whoa, we were so happy to be out of the ghetto. Now, I am starting to feel that we're almost back in. I noticed the start of the Sylvania/Willys demise 3-4 years ago. More ghetto folks walking down Sylvania Ave. On the way home from work I used to count how many ghetto folk I saw vs. the non ghetto, and everytime the ghetto count was higher. A few weeks ago, driving home down Sylvania I had to stop at a light near where Happy's Pizza (a business that caters to ghetto folk); there is also a corner store near there, which now always has a group of guys hanging around out front. It was a nice day and I had all the windows down and I glance over and all eyes are staring toward my car. I'm thinking of my purse sitting right next to me and the open window. With the contstruction going on, I would have nowhere to go if they made a move toward my car. Luckily they did not, but I now realize I cannot let my guard down. Last week, we had new neighbors (looks like they came from an inner city area) move in behind the house next door to us. I don't care what color they are, as long as they take care of the property. Well, they put up a privacy fence. Not only is the fence facing the wrong way, but they totally rigged it, by connecting two different fence panels (2 different styles, colors, and heighth's). Looks TERRIBLE. The neighbor next door is calling the city on them today, after his dad told him that's probably how they'll leave it, as that is probably the norm in their old neighborhood. Last night, same people, suspicious flashlight activity going on in their backyard around 11 pm. (You could see through the ill-put together fence). Our next door neighbor flagged a patrol car going down our street and both officers went over there and searched the area. Don't know what the end result was, but wondering if this is just the start? I like Toledo. A lot. I like how close we are to Detroit/Chicago. I like that you can get just about anywhere in the city in 15-20 mins. But I hate that we don't make businesses like Walgreens and Rite Aid, build nicer looking building like they do in other communities. I hate that we don't/can't make businesses take care of their properties (even 10 years ago before the neighborhood got so bad the businesses on Sylvania did not sweep their sidewalks, pull the grass from the cracks). It's the little things too that make the area look nice, and keep customers coming back.
So, having experinced the negative transformation of 2 neighborhoods already, WHAT can we/I do?

You'll know the ghetto has truly come to you when you start seeing tagging/graffiti. Liz, you ask what can you do, the biggest little thing you can do besides taking care of your own (and elderly neighbor's) plots is to obliterate any tagging you see as quickly as possible whenever it pops up.

Quite often the first place you'll see it is on the backside of road signs, on the delivery side of stores, and on dumpsters. If you can get an effort together to photograph and repair tagging whenever it occurs in your area, you muddle the territory claims that the gangs and punks make, prove that you will resist them and would rather spend resources to fight them than passively allow them to lurk and deface, which is gateway to worse things.

Also, those photos can be collected and reported to TPD's Gang Unit, who keep tabs on gang activity. Same for photos of any groups of young hoodlums wearing 'colors' (All wearing the same color shirts, hats, or bandannas. Most often Red or Blue for the two most popular gangs.) Intelligence is always what brings the brutes down in the end.

what is it like, living in fear of black people? must be stressful.

Not much here for college graduates, and I don't blame them for leaving town to find jobs. That's the number one problem in losing population, in my opinion. I agree that diversification of the economy must be a priority.

From the Blade story used in the post that started this thread:

Cleveland and Detroit together yet again.

I've posted the following multiple times, but it's still worth repeating.

... in recent years, when some kind of dregs ranking is released, Cleveland and Detroit are at or near the top. Highest poverty. America's fastest-dying cities. Coldest job markets. Lowest median household income. Both cities continue to lose population. Cleveland's public school system has consistently ranked lower than TPS.

The following venues have opened in those two cities in the past [18] years:

Cleveland

• New NBA arena
• New Major League Baseball stadium
• New NFL stadium
• Rock n Roll Hall of Fame
• Great Lakes Science Center

Detroit

• One or two new casinos
• New NFL stadium
• New Major League Baseball stadium

The downtown [venues] are simply massive beautification projects that only affect a tiny portion of the city. They do not improve the entire city.

Or, more likely, they improve them, but not enough to offset the other reasons for decline.