Census data released Tuesday that showed rising poverty rates in the District even as the city’s median income rose provides insight into the forces that tossed Mayor Adrian Fenty from office by putting D.C. Council Chairman Vince Gray over the top in the Democratic primary.
Voting data shows that Gray handily won the city’s black and poorer neighborhoods east of the Anacostia River and Fenty found large margins of victory in the white, wealthy neighborhoods in Northwest. In the build-up to the primary, it became clear that the majority of black voters felt they had been disenfranchised by the Fenty administration. They believed Fenty had favored white neighborhoods over black as longtime residents were pushed out of the city by property values pushed higher by an influx of mostly white, affluent residents.
The census data backs up their concerns.
Median income in a census-defined areas that includes parts of the city’s whiter neighborhoods in wards 1, 2 and 6 rose from $60,000 in 2007 to $74,000 in 2009, according to an analysis of newly released census information by D.C. Fiscal Policy Institute.
By contrast, median household income east of the Anacostia River, in the city’s majority black neighborhoods, dropped from $32,100 in 2007 to $30,700 in 2009. In those wards — 7 and 8, Gray’s base — the poverty level rose from 27 percent of residents in 2007 to 34 percent 2009.
