Society
The poorest town in the USA is an hour away from Cinncinati: the median home price is $109k
This seemingly unassuming town has been left to languish some five decades after it rose to prominence. Now, it is the nation’s poorest.
Lincoln Heights, Ohio is a small town just an hour away from Cincinnati on Route 75. It was once the centre of the African American community north of the Mason-Dixie line, but has been left to rot by decades of administrative failure.
It holds the unfortunate distinction of being the poorest communities in the United States.
It’s astonishing poverty rate of 62.9% puts it in the lowest 10% of US towns. The average household income is just $14,676, nearly $50,000 less than the national average
The history of the USA’s poorest town
The roots of Lincoln Heights’ poverty can be traced back to its founding as one of the first African American-owned communities in the United States. Despite initial promise, the town has struggled with systemic issues that have hindered its growth and prosperity.
It was established in the late 19th century as a haven for Black families seeking homeownership opportunities. Today it is the US’s city with the highest concentration of African Americans at 95.9%.
However, from its inception, the community faced obstacles. The town was unincorporated for 50 years, meaning it belonged to no county. This meant had no paved roads or public services. When it was formed into a town, it was zoned so that it had no real businesses and no factories.
The ‘White Flight’ of the following three decades further deprived cities like Lincoln of much needed tax revenue, and more importantly the eye of authorities. Instead, it was left to languish. From more than 6,000 residents in its 1970s heydey, the faltering polis has just over half of that in 2024: 3,144.
Its public services today are outsourced and it has no regular police force.
“The notion of suburbanization, of neighborhood opportunities, all of that is embedded in that fantasy that black people can move to freedom, and we can’t,” said Henry Louis Taylor, a professor of urban and regional planning at the University at Buffalo, who wrote his dissertation on Lincoln Heights.
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