It’s been another busy year in the world of Cincinnati news. The city started the year off with a new mayor and City Council, then got busy in earnest laying down streetcar tracks without fear of the new administration digging them back up. The twists and turns in the Music Hall/Union Terminal saga eventually concluded with the last-minute booting of Music Hall from a sales tax plan that was later approved by voters. Local bike projects have been debated, manipulated, paused and updated. Development deals continue to reshape city neighborhoods as big groups get big incentives from the city while neighborhood advocates cry foul.
Statewide, the GOP has continued its crusade against abortion access, gay marriage and its attempts to privatize public education through the state’s charter schools. Activists here and around the country have demonstrated against the police shooting of John Crawford III in Beavercreek, Mike Brown in Ferguson, Mo., and other examples of police brutality and grand juries’ refusal to indict officers.
While we covered these issues (and many others) on a week-to-week basis, we also enjoyed the freedom that only a weekly cover story space can offer, digging deep into issues and stories around Cincinnati that begged for more context and nuance. These complex stories take time and space for exhaustive research and explanation, often crossing categorical boundaries.
In 2014, we found ourselves delving into some particularly unique topics. Some were news stories, yes, but this past year of work also happened to include explorations of the strange world of reality TV, the questionable practices of a group of for-profit art show promoters and the wide world of ridesharing, along with more straightforward examinations of complicated urban issues.
We’ll recap six here in case you missed ’em.
Putting a face on Cincinnatians struggling to break free from the cycle of poverty
It’s no secret, at least now, that Cincinnati has a poverty problem. A full third of the city lives below the poverty line; more than half of its children do, a fact that means Cincinnati has the second-highest child poverty rate in the country.
Behind those numbers are real people across the city struggling with part-time jobs, ambitions to go back to school to better themselves and the challenges of raising children on little income. CityBeat’s cover story on poverty in the city (“Road to Nowhere,” issue of Feb. 12) detailed what it means to be poor in places like Lower Price Hill, South Fairmont and other communities across Cincinnati where life expectancy and median family income can be 10 years and thousands of dollars below city averages. The story introduced us to Cincinnatians like Amber Brown, who lives in subsidized housing near Mount Airy.
Brown, who was working to raise two children, says she felt her dead-end job was keeping her from moving ahead.
“I was like, ‘I’m not getting anywhere,’ ” Brown told CityBeat. “This is a dead-end job. I’m ready for my career, for my daughter. My boss just wasn’t having it. I had been there for four years, and I thought that would count for something. … He told me to pick school or work.”
For Brown, and many across the city like her, such hard choices are common. Despite stereotypes that cast those mired in poverty as lazy and solely responsible for their situations, it’s clear that larger systemic issues keep Cincinnati’s poorest residents from finding social mobility and bettering their lives.
A study by the Equality of Opportunity Project released in January found Cincinnati ranked 82nd out of 100 regions across the country when it came to opportunity for social mobility.
Though continued efforts by social service agencies and new initiatives by city officials from Mayor John Cranley to Councilman P.G. Sittenfeld and Councilwoman Yvette Simpson have made a start in taking on the issue, it’s clear Cincinnati has a long way to go.
L.A.-based arts organization set its sights on local creatives’ work — and wallets
When you’re a striving, maybe starving, artist, exposure is the name of the game. And in a crowded field of people looking to be the next Damien Hirst, Wes Anderson or Anne Geddes, any opportunity to showcase your work may look attractive, especially when that opportunity is presented to you by a national organization that puts on exhibitions in major cities across the country.
But what if you have to pay for that opportunity? And what if the people who end up viewing your work are mostly the other artists who also paid to be in the exhibition? CityBeat’s story on RAW:natural born artists (“Your Name Here,” issue of March 12) explored this conundrum. RAW, founded in L.A. by a young entrepreneur named Heidi Luerra, presents itself as a support network for artists of all stripes — from painters to filmmakers to musicians — as they look to further their careers. But much like that battle of the bands you played in high school, you have to sell some tickets to get your work in the door.
RAW’s events, like the one held in Cincinnati at Bogart’s in January, require artists to pay a $300 entry fee, which the group claims artists can recoup by selling tickets. Whether artists get a good deal for that money is far from certain. Artists get their names and their work hyped on stage and online, and they get to network with like-minded folks. But questions remain about whether the model really helps anyone but RAW, and many have drawn comparisons between the approach and so-called multi-level marketing companies. Those sometimes go by another name — pyramid schemes — and they’re often against the law.
Local artists and curators were skeptical of RAW, as were more than a dozen artists who either participated in a RAW showcase or declined to do so after learning more about the company.
“It’s so hard to talk about this without sounding mean,” Chris Reeves, former member of alternative art spaces Third Party Gallery and Museum Gallery/Gallery Museum, told CityBeat. “Someone really naïve is going to look at this show and say, ‘Hey I’m on my way to making it.’ ”
Luerra, who has been accused of intimidating critics across the land, felt compelled to copy her lawyer on the email interview response she provided CityBeat while demanding that documents in our possession be handed over. Luerra said RAW had never turned a profit to date, though she still found the means to finance an employee retreat to a lavish Mexican resort in January.
In August, the RAW Artists Cincinnati Facebook page announced a temporary hiatus in Cincinnati, the second time it shut down the Cincinnati chapter in less than a year.
Uber and Lyft made getting a ride easy, but the politics of ridesharing are complicated
When rideshare companies Uber and Lyft popped up in Cincinnati with fancy apps and sleek new cars, sometimes bearing pink mustaches, many were overjoyed. Finally, Cincinnatians could make their way home from gourmet taco and craft beer binges in Over-the-Rhine with dignity. Finally, residents could be squired about town in a late-model Kia instead of some conspicuous, oh-so-gauche yellow cab.
Oh, yeah, about those cabs. Drivers and cab company owners in the city, as elsewhere, weren’t too happy that Uber and Lyft drivers were able to operate with zero licensing from the city, while cabbies had to abide by rules that told them when they could wear shorts and dictated that those shorts be solid colors only. Because who trusts a driver in Bermuda trunks?
CityBeat took a long look into the fight (“Whose Gonna Drive You Home?” issue of July 30), including controversy in other cities over the company’s insurance coverage (or lack thereof in some situations) and safety measures. Officials for both companies say their service isn’t the same as a cab company’s and, therefore, they shouldn’t have to play by the same rules. Cab companies, as well as some watchdog groups, say that’s bunk. They point to incidents like one in San Francisco where Uber’s insurance refused to pay after a woman was hit and killed by a driver rushing between rides the company’s app facilitated.
We also tested Uber and Lyft, as well as area cab companies, to gain a first-hand look at catching a ride in Cincinnati. We found all three services to be somewhat reliable, though each had its downside. Uber and Lyft were generally quick, tidy rides, but sometimes the services’ pricing schemes were confusing. Our experiences with the dependability of cab companies ranged from good to just so-so, depending on the driver and company. However, their pricing was upfront and clear.
During the months after our story, Cincinnati City Council passed some requirements over insurance, safety inspections and driver background checks for ride share companies, but they remain controversial in cities around the world.
Locally filmed reality show Rowhouse Showdown was a hot mess. But did it help Price Hill?
What can we even say to encapsulate our cover story on A&E’s Rowhouse Showdown? The piece (“Stranger than Fiction,” issue of Sept. 3) has all the good stuff: Fake dead cats. Fake interior designers. A movie called Lesbian Cops. Sewage in basements. Tenants with no heat. Landlords who don’t like Section 8 tenants but rack up municipal code violations. The mortgage crisis. Gentrification.
Our reporting escalated quickly, but it started simply enough. While other media in town were celebrating A&E’s home renovation program Rowhouse Showdown coming to East Price Hill, we were skeptical. When we heard that a tenant in one of the houses set to be renovated was possibly muscled out by her landlord during the days before the show started filming, we knew we had to look into the situation. We just didn’t know how far down the rabbit hole our questions would take us.
The reality show held itself up as a way to help Price Hill recover from years of blight and poverty by pouring hundreds of thousands of dollars into three houses in the neighborhood. But bringing film crews and “designers” who are actually actors, wrecking a house to make it look more like a “crack den” and rehabbing houses owned by a guy with dozens of violations for owning buildings without heat and water don’t necessarily help revitalize a neighborhood. What’s more, experts say the intense focus on luring upper-income buyers for those houses and others in the neighborhood would do little for the area’s predominantly low-income residents. But hey, it’s the thought that counts, right?
The hard road out of sex work, addiction and poverty in Cincinnati
Just a few days into 2014, Cincinnati police found 24-year-old Jessica Revelee shot to death in the middle of West McMicken Street. Just six years before, Revelee had been a promising student. Friends remembered her as generous soul. But she also had more than 50 arrests on her police record and struggled mightily with poverty and addiction to heroin. During the days before her death, she sought help for those struggles from a number of sources.
CityBeat’s cover story on sex work in Cincinnati (“Battling Barriers,” issue of Nov. 5)explored the factors — poverty; mental, physical and sexual abuse; addiction — that make it hard for those like Revelee to get the help they need. We talked to current and former sex workers, social service providers and researchers to gain insight into a dark, stubbornly secretive world. We investigated why places like West McMicken see so much traffic around sex work and how Cincinnati fits into the larger, shadowy world of sex trafficking in the United States.
There are many dangers facing people like Revelee and the sex workers with whom CityBeat spoke. Those selling sex to survive face abuse from pimps and johns, hate killings of transgender sex workers like two killed in Walnut Hills this year and the risk of contracting HIV and other deadly diseases.
But there is hope. The story detailed programs that help those caught up in the violent world of coerced sex for money. The efforts of programs like Lighthouse Youth Services’ Sheakley Center and Cincinnati Union Bethel’s Off the Streets program can help people caught up in a dangerous lifestyle they’ve found themselves in by circumstances beyond their control.
Time is running out for Hamilton County to upgrade its critically outdated morgue and crime lab
Budget fights are often dry affairs packed with two of the most boring things imaginable: raw numbers and disingenuous politicking. But when the fate of the county’s only public crime lab and morgue hangs in the balance, things get a lot more interesting. And terrifying.
In our cover story that just left newsstands the day this current issue was delivered (“Pileup at the Morgue,” issue of Dec. 17), CityBeat explored the long list of challenges facing the county’s forensic labs. Three drug chemists perform a monthly workload that takes 10 technicians in other labs. But even if the county approved more money to hire more employees in the labs, there is no more space to expand lab services even as caseloads go up. Autopsy waste clogs the pipes at the morgue. Ventilation hoods shut off in the labs, forcing temporary evacuation. Sophisticated DNA testing equipment overloads the aging building’s electrical circuits if other equipment isn’t unplugged first.
Perhaps most surprising about the situation is how close, and yet so far away, a fix for the problem is. This year, Mercy Hospital offered to donate a vacant 500,000-square-foot former hospital in Mount Airy to the county. It’s enough space for the coroner, crime lab and a number of other county offices. But Hamilton County Commissioners Greg Hartmann and Chris Monzel blocked a ballot initiative that would have let voters decide to increase sales taxes to pay for the building’s estimated $100 million renovation.
That’s left the county’s coroner and crime lab at a loss. Hamilton County Coroner Lakshmi Sammarco says her office and the crime lab do top-notch work, but she claims the current situation leaves both at a breaking point. Other similar departments in major urban areas like Columbus and Cleveland are getting multi-million dollar upgrades or entirely new labs. Meanwhile, cases needing forensic evidence in Hamilton County keep going up and its facilities get stretched to the limit. With scientific evidence consistently exonerating suspects and putting away criminals, the sad state of the crime lab and morgue is a precarious situation indeed. ©
This article appears in Dec 17-23, 2014.