[VGF]

Someone told me that but I cannot find the data. CT is definitely on of the richest states but New Haven and Hartford don't rate near the poorest in the country. Maybe he was talking about income disparity? Can anyone shed light on this?

[Silli]

Probably talking about income inequality, although the 2 sources I checked both listed New York as the least equal state with CT in 2nd place.
SeeState GINI map
The last time I looked at the GINI coefficients by county I thought that there were a couple of CA counties worse than CT but I just checked the 2007 census estimates and they list Fairfield County with the highest GINI coefficient, followed by Washington DC, 1 county each in FL and LA, Manhattan, a TX county, and 4 counties in Puerto Rico as the top ten.

[JViello]

Originally Posted by VGF

Someone told me that but I cannot find the data. CT is definitely on of the richest states but New Haven and Hartford don't rate near the poorest in the country. Maybe he was talking about income disparity? Can anyone shed light on this?

Statistics change all the time, but Hartford I believe took the honor of being the "poorest" city in the nation at one time.

But either way, it's like this. You can be in clapped out ghetto in Hartford, drive about 1/2 mile and you are passing multi-million dollar homes.

The rich drive through the ghetto to get to DT to make their big dollars, and back home through the ghetto to their 7 figure houses. Of course, most of these folks are bleeding heart types that think the "government" should do "something" but they in fact, do nothing on their own and do whatever they can to pay less taxes.

I have customer in Avon who lives on a 125 acre retreat in a 7500sf home worth millions. Nice people. Their "college age" son came home one day and pulled in with the back of his car full of stickers like "change" "hope" "diversity" "1.20.09" etc etc. I *almost* walked over and asked him if he was so concerned about all this, why doesn't he randomly sponser a child in ghetto he just drove through for school or something. But, sometimes you just keep your mouth shut. The property au pair told me the kid never worked a day in his life and is basically a spoiled monster. But I guess it makes him "cool" to have all the "progressive" stickers on his car so long as he doesn't have to do any lifting.

You almost have to laugh at the contrast and hypocrisy.

[JayCT]

I am not sure that Hartford was ever the "poorest" city. Maybe if you limited the list to the 100 largest metropolitan areas or something like that. This is because Hartford itself just covers 17 square miles of the metropolitan area and includes most of the poorest neighborhoods.

JViello's discription is true if you drive up Albany Avenue. It passes through Hartford's northend which is poor and then enters the west end and then West Hartford's country club neighborhood which is very wealthy. It can be a pretty drastic change but you don't see quite as much of a difference in other partsof the city.

As for his comments on the rich "brat" he mentions, I think you find this everywhere. Jay

[Rich Cabeza]

Originally Posted by JViello

Statistics change all the time, but Hartford I believe took the honor of being the "poorest" city in the nation at one time.

But either way, it's like this. You can be in clapped out ghetto in Hartford, drive about 1/2 mile and you are passing multi-million dollar homes.

The rich drive through the ghetto to get to DT to make their big dollars, and back home through the ghetto to their 7 figure houses. Of course, most of these folks are bleeding heart types that think the "government" should do "something" but they in fact, do nothing on their own and do whatever they can to pay less taxes.

I have customer in Avon who lives on a 125 acre retreat in a 7500sf home worth millions. Nice people. Their "college age" son came home one day and pulled in with the back of his car full of stickers like "change" "hope" "diversity" "1.20.09" etc etc. I *almost* walked over and asked him if he was so concerned about all this, why doesn't he randomly sponser a child in ghetto he just drove through for school or something. But, sometimes you just keep your mouth shut. The property au pair told me the kid never worked a day in his life and is basically a spoiled monster. But I guess it makes him "cool" to have all the "progressive" stickers on his car so long as he doesn't have to do any lifting.

You almost have to laugh at the contrast and hypocrisy.

I would have asked him if he still had his "Get out of Racist free" card, lol.

[JViello]

Originally Posted by JayCT

I am not sure that Hartford was ever the "poorest" city. Maybe if you limited the list to the 100 largest metropolitan areas or something like that. This is because Hartford itself just covers 17 square miles of the metropolitan area and includes most of the poorest neighborhoods.

JViello's discription is true if you drive up Albany Avenue. It passes through Hartford's northend which is poor and then enters the west end and then West Hartford's country club neighborhood which is very wealthy. It can be a pretty drastic change but you don't see quite as much of a difference in other partsof the city.

As for his comments on the rich "brat" he mentions, I think you find this everywhere. Jay

Yea I forgot to mention "why" the city is "poor" regarding size. As a metro the Hartford area is very affluent.

But you do see a chasm between poor and rich. I'm not against being rich, but what bothers me is seeing some of these people support certain social policies such as "tax and spend" but then do their best to get out of paying said taxes. The kid was just an example of that, not so much saying it's a Hartford only thing.

[MrGompers]

I don't have the link to the data, but I'm pretty sure Hartford is or was the countries poorest Capital city. I have also read somewhere that Connecticut has 3 of the poorest cities in the country, Hartford, New Haven, Bridgeport.

[NewHaventranist]

I dont know much about Hartford, but I can see New Haven being one of the poorest. I mean just look outside of the yale parts...DA-VILLE, Winchester Ave,..so forth. I remember reading somewhere, Yale at one point wanted to move its campus more into Hamden or Northford cant remember (night of procrastination from studying), and New Haven begged and made deals for it not to do so.
Also New Haven is a city where detention centers frequnetly drop off there newly released prisoners..wow talk about one end of the spectrum to another! Also i know when new haven went threw its "modernization phaze" which i personally think destroyed New Haven as a big City, they added a whole bunch of low income houses, and projects, which in turn maybe why were on the poorest side.

[inetlom]

Originally Posted by NewHaventranist

I dont know much about Hartford, but I can see New Haven being one of the poorest. I mean just look outside of the yale parts...DA-VILLE, Winchester Ave,..so forth. I remember reading somewhere, Yale at one point wanted to move its campus more into Hamden or Northford cant remember (night of procrastination from studying), and New Haven begged and made deals for it not to do so.

Where did you find this information? Considering that Yale moved into New Haven from Old Saybrook over 200 years ago, I would be very surprised if it was true. The current state of the city is by all accounts considerably better than it was ten or twenty years ago.

There are still serious income disparities between downtown, Westville, and especially East Rock and other parts of New Haven (Newhallville, the Hill, etc.). I went to school in Fairfield and had many classmates who refused to set foot in Bridgeport because they were afraid they would be instantly robbed or shot.

New Haven has serious problems in its schools, which also contributes to the disparities between cities and towns. Most people don't put their children in New Haven public schools unless they have no other choice.

[wanderintonc]

Originally Posted by MrGompers

I don't have the link to the data, but I'm pretty sure Hartford is or was the countries poorest Capital city. I have also read somewhere that Connecticut has 3 of the poorest cities in the country, Hartford, New Haven, Bridgeport.

I've read that also. I don't think I realized just how rough Hartford was until I had seen some other similar capital cities-Albany and Raleigh-and was shocked when they were actually nice. I assumed they would be like Hartford.