College Station...40% of people in poverty?? (Lubbock, Waco: neighborhoods, schools, live)

[debzkidz]

Originally Posted by hoffdano

And the data is garbage. College station whites between 18-24 are not living in poverty. They may have income level below poverty, but they are students, generally well fed, and sustained by their parents.

THIS!

As a parent of one of those kids, I attest to this fact. Plenty of them working part time at minimum wage, driving nice cars, wearing nice clothes and eating well!

[tstone]

Originally Posted by hoffdano

Who holds the "sucky" jobs anywhere (not just universities)?

High school dropouts? Ex-cons?

The 40% poverty rate has always been displayed for CS. I went to school there, got my first job after graduation there. Good wages are hard to come by. A "good" wage is something like $12/hr. Benefits are also hard to come by. Why? The previous comment about kids being subsidized by their parents is spot on, and the businesses know this. A&M (for undergrad) was basically an extension of white suburbia. There is almost no real poverty in that town. Just gobs and gobs of underemployment.

One thing about CS though-- it was really easy to find a cheap, quiet, low-crime apartment. About 10 years ago you could get a decent 2/2 for $550, and I went back to my old apartment last year and the price only went up $20 after all that time. It is very easy to get complacent on crap wages, but also very easy to get trapped there. It seems like better jobs are being created there vs 10 years ago, but if I had to do it all over again I would've left there after graduating. Sticking around afterwards to see how things really are outside of the school kinda spoils the magic (for lack of a better word).

[CptnRn]

Originally Posted by hoffdano

And the data is garbage. College station whites between 18-24 are not living in poverty. They may have income level below poverty, but they are students, generally well fed, and sustained by their parents.

You are misinterpreting what "poverty level" means, especially when it is applied to college towns.

From the wiki: Poverty threshold - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Overstating poverty

In-kind gifts, whether from public or private sources, are not counted when calculating a poverty threshold. For example, if a parent pays the rent on an apartment for an adult son directly to the apartment owner, instead of giving the money to the son to pay the rent, then that money does not count as income to the son. If a church or non-profit organization gives food to an elderly person, the value of the food is not counted as income to the elderly person. Rea Hederman, a senior policy analyst in the Center for Data Analysis at the Heritage Foundation, said

The official poverty measure counts only monetary income. It considers antipoverty programs such as food stamps, housing assistance, the Earned Income Tax Credit, Medicaid and school lunches, among others, "in-kind benefits" – and hence not income. So, despite everything these programs do to relieve poverty, they aren't counted as income when Washington measures the poverty rate.[16]

[hoffdano]

Maybe that's what the definition says.

But anyone who has spent a day or two in CS, went to school there, or has a child in college at A&M would know that there is no way 40% of the people living in CS are in poverty.

I think the measurement method, whatever it is, has a critical flaw when applied to College Station. Based on the 40% number it should look more like Detroit.

A somewhat dated article below, questions this also. The demographics of CS probably have not changed much since 2007.

College Station – One of America's poorest cities? | Urban Planning Blog

[triwing]

Originally Posted by tstone

High school dropouts? Ex-cons?

The 40% poverty rate has always been displayed for CS. I went to school there, got my first job after graduation there. Good wages are hard to come by. A "good" wage is something like $12/hr. Benefits are also hard to come by. Why? The previous comment about kids being subsidized by their parents is spot on, and the businesses know this. A&M (for undergrad) was basically an extension of white suburbia. There is almost no real poverty in that town. Just gobs and gobs of underemployment.

One thing about CS though-- it was really easy to find a cheap, quiet, low-crime apartment. About 10 years ago you could get a decent 2/2 for $550, and I went back to my old apartment last year and the price only went up $20 after all that time. It is very easy to get complacent on crap wages, but also very easy to get trapped there. It seems like better jobs are being created there vs 10 years ago, but if I had to do it all over again I would've left there after graduating. Sticking around afterwards to see how things really are outside of the school kinda spoils the magic (for lack of a better word).

This post really hit close to home for me. I also graduated from A&M and stayed in College Station for a while because I had a full-time gig.

Because of the economy at the time, I only had a handful of interviews and there were only like 50-60 job openings that were remotely applicable to me. It made much more sense financially for me to stay there, make some money, and figure out what I wanted to do instead of trying to move to DFW or whatever and try to find a job.

In all honesty, I didn't really like A&M all that much... way too homogeneous for me. I'm saying this because, as your post indicates, College Station doesn't really have a lot going for it. There's about three types of groups I've met in College Station: 1) Students 2) Married couples who don't want to move to the big city for various reasons, usually with kids 3) Hood rats and other undesirables

Like you said, College Station is definitely somewhere you want to get out of once you graduate, if you can. Because A&M is so homogeneous, you're pretty much going to meet the same type of people over and over again. The last year I was there, I pretty much stopped going out of my way to meet new people and just focused on figuring out the next chapter of my life. Plus you're not in college anymore and, well, the word "college" is in College Station. Not much else to do there unless you're in college.

Fortunately for me, the majority of my friends at A&M graduated after me, so I still knew people in town after I graduated. A lot of them couldn't get jobs immediately the way the job market was so they just did whatever they could in CS for the time being.

I definitely agree with A&M being an extension of white suburbia. I think I probably would have been a better fit at UT (as I have more diverse hobbies and interests) but UT didn't have the major I wanted and the equivalent had too many bull**** classes. A&M was more practical for me in terms of tuition and graduating sooner. I did move to Austin after College Station and I met a much wider range of people the first three months I was in Austin than the last couple of years I was in CS. Granted, Austin is an actual big city, not a college town like CS, but I'm drawing a comparison because, like I said before, the crowd at A&M was just too homogeneous.

Rent is cheap in College Station, that's still true. I had an older but nice townhome there that was probably the best bang for the buck I'll ever pay in rent. Problem is, some of the crime from Bryan is starting to spill over, so you'll have a nice block in CS and a crappy block next. Muggings aren't unheard of in CS anymore.

So, yeah, I definitely agree with the underemployment issue, the "parent subsidy" and that CS isn't all that attractive post-graduation.

[loves2read]

and logically many of the students are not considered RESIDENTS of College Station--they are transients--registered as citizens of their home towns--
so students are not likely considered when calculating who is in/out of the poverty line at CS
they are looking at people who are applying for food stamps, families that have kids in school on the free/reduced lunch programs
the students who might qualify for those programs are married students with children who are part-time/full time workers and STILL can't make ends meet...

frankly I think all of TX probably qualifies for 40 of population close to poverty line
lots of part-time working poor with children who can't support their families with what they make working two part time min/wage jobs...

[amexicano]

Originally Posted by kdogg817

One thing that was disturbing to me when I first came to Texas A&M was most of the minorities that worked for University had sucky jobs including the black aggies. It was like a bunch of negroes & mexicans catering to white folks.

I think the preferred terms are "African American or Black" and "Hispanics"...just in case you are interested..

[debzkidz]

Originally Posted by loves2read

and logically many of the students are not considered RESIDENTS of College Station--they are transients--registered as citizens of their home towns--
so students are not likely considered when calculating who is in/out of the poverty line at CS
they are looking at people who are applying for food stamps, families that have kids in school on the free/reduced lunch programs
the students who might qualify for those programs are married students with children who are part-time/full time workers and STILL can't make ends meet...

frankly I think all of TX probably qualifies for 40 of population close to poverty line
lots of part-time working poor with children who can't support their families with what they make working two part time min/wage jobs...

I don't know about all students, but I know my kid who's a student there, as well as my other kid, at another university, both completed their census forms at school along with their roommates. We didn't count them on ours. According to my Aggie, he and his 3 roommates completed their form for their apartment and sent it in. He said it had been a topic of discussion amongst all of their friends. No one was sure what to do. I don't remember the specifics, but I remember reading to instructions and taking from it that it wasn't about who supported you but where you slept.

Yes, they still list us as their permanent residence. Vote here. Have drivers license here. Cars registered here (because they are in our names).

[hoffdano]

Originally Posted by debzkidz

I don't know about all students, but I know my kid who's a student there, as well as my other kid, at another university, both completed their census forms at school along with their roommates. We didn't count them on ours. According to my Aggie, he and his 3 roommates completed their form for their apartment and sent it in. He said it had been a topic of discussion amongst all of their friends. No one was sure what to do. I don't remember the specifics, but I remember reading to instructions and taking from it that it wasn't about who supported you but where you slept.

Yes, they still list us as their permanent residence. Vote here. Have drivers license here. Cars registered here (because they are in our names).

I agree. It would not be difficult to drive through every College Station neighborhood in a day or long afternoon. There is no way 40% of its residents are living in poverty. The 40% number is a result of a flawed data collection process.

[blkgiraffe]

College students living away from their parental home while attending college in the U.S. (living either on-campus or off-campus) - Counted at the on-campus or off-campus residence where they live and sleep most of the time.
College students living away from their parental home while attending college in the U.S. (living either on-campus or off-campus) but staying at their parental home while on break or vacation - Counted at the on-campus or off-campus residence where they live and sleep most of the time.

How We Count America - 2010 Census (http://2010.census.gov/2010census/about/how-we-count.php - broken link)

Either way; College Station outside of A&M isn't exactly high class living.