For the past four years, the City of Hartford has been polling citizens about quality of life issues. Although the demographics of the survey seem a little skewed (disproportionate number of elderly, caucasians, and downtown residents are represented), it is difficult to get people to respond at all to phone surveys, so at a certain point, I think you have to take what you can get. Some of the answers are not terribly surprising to me (especially regarding computer [40.8% do not have working computers in their homes] and home ownership[67.8% polled rent. The actual demographic of renters is even higher.]), and I would venture to guess that if the surveys more carefully reflected the city’s demographics, these categories would shed even more light on certain disparities. So, why would some groups be more represented in the survey? My guess would be time. The elderly have more time. People in higher income brackets with no/smaller families (downtown) are likely to have more time than those who are working class and/or have larger families.
There were 600 people polled for the survey. Of these 51.7% said they thought that Hartford was going in the right direction. The remaining people seemed to be nearly evenly split between uncertainty, and thinking it was heading in the wrong direction. The biggest problems in Hartford? Unaffordable housing, lack of homeownership, and speeding. This shows that residents have quite a different perception of the city than the local (and now national) media and people in surrounding towns do.
Of the people polled, 52.5% said they did not believe that affordable rental housing was available in Hartford. This question is a bit vague, as we know what is affordable to someone making $90,000/year is not affordable to someone in the $20,000/year range. When asked how Hartford could be best improved, over half responded to matters involving housing (111 wanted more home ownership and 223 said more affordable housing). A solid 30% wanted more visable police. I’m wondering who the ten people were who said that the best improvement made could be to maintain parks. Yes, we should maintain parks, but I think it might be more important for people to have a place to call home.
More than half of those polled (55.3%) rated public safety as average, and the exact percentage found the quality of public safety to be remaining the same. People in Hartford tend to feel safe, according to the results of the survey. At least, they feel safe if the crimes are specifically burglary, robbery, and auto theft– 131 said they felt very safe and 266 said they felt somewhat safe. Since these are the most common types of crime, it’s a good sign that the minority (12.2%) felt very unsafe. It would be interesting to see the results if people were asked about their feelings of safety regarding rape, murder, and assault–the less frequent, but more reported on crimes.
Judging by the numbers, residents were far more dissatisfied with education than with feelings of personal safety. The majority ranked education in Hartford as average (49%) or worse (30.3%). Only 7.2% said they found Hartford’s public education to be “excellent.” People were also unsatisfied with the condition of roads and sidewalks-44.2% ranked them as poor, and 40.3% ranked them as average. Although the details were not included for why they were poor, I can take a few guesses–there are potholes that can swallow cars and blow-out tires; sidewalks are covered with debris (broken glass, junk, oh, and there’s been a broken fence under the train bridge on Capitol Avenue which lays across half the sidewalk. I imagine someone in a wheelchair might have a hell of a time navigating this.) and are often broken.
What were Hartford residents most in agreement on? The library. Only 4.7% rated the Hartford Public Library as poor. 29.2% rated them as average, 47% as very good, and 19.2% as excellent.
The information from this survey expresses desire for improvements in certain areas (education, home ownership, reduction of speeding and noise), and the area that is receiving the most attention, it seems, is that of law enforcement. Is this really what is going on, or is it that the media still lives by “if it bleeds, it leads” (as proven by the gratuitous and tasteless footage of the hit-and-run), and ignores most of everything else (unless it has to do with the “threat” of busing students in from the suburbs)? If you notice, in the linked Google Search of “education” and “Hartford Public Schools,” very few of the very few results even are related to Hartford. Although, the press release section of the HPS website has not been updated since January, isn’t it the media’s job to investigate?