South Columbus

When we compare infant mortality rates, we see that infant mortality rates look a lot like the neighborhoods that were redlined in the 1930s.

And if you can create a mental model of a map of Columbus in your head with me, what I want to suggest to you is there's a backwards L that's going to run from Linden down through Milo Grogan, the near east side and the near south side.

It's going to leap over German Village in downtown, and then it's going to run out Sullivan Avenue and West Broad Street.

This reversed L is really the map of social conditions of our city.

When we look at youth gun violence, both the perpetrator and the victim, who was a youth with gun violence, follows that same trajectory of Linden through Milo Grogan, leaping through the near east side, south, or I should say west of Parsons, but through the south side, and then leaping over German Village through West Broad and Sullivan.

We see it with Legal Aid Society heat map of where they're working on eviction cases.

We see it with incarceration rates.

but lost 254 school-aged children.

We sold off quite a few in other areas.

And I really focused on the South side of Columbus.

Hmm.

We have nationwide children's hospitals, one of the premier children's hospitals in the country.

A nearby neighborhood called German Village is a really nice area here with million-dollar homes.

And so I was buying houses right around the children's hospital, which is east of Parsons Avenue, which is kind of a dividing line here on the south side.

And at the time, a lot of people said, don't touch the south side.

A lot of crime, a lot of gangs.