Friday, September 13, 2024

Springfield, Ohio and adjusting to a population increase

One thing most of the nation found out that they didn't know Tuesday night (debate) is that Biden/Harris has imported 20-30,000 Haitian immigrants to Springfield, OH, a town of under 58,000. I looked back a bit to flesh that out, and the city fathers and the community welcomed this several years ago because they needed some growth and more workers. But that's a lot of non-English speaking people, especially during a lockdown, to resettle, house, feed, an acculturate. It was a big blow to the tax base, although the churches and non-profits initially received government grants. Some homes were sold at really great prices and turned into sort of group homes or dorms. But that depressed the values of other homes in the area, and the neighborhoods splintered. OK. It still looks like (if you can trust the mayor and npr's reporting) they were coping nicely.

Let's take race and immigration status out of the mix. We have home grown Americans and Canadians who also expand in groups. Anabaptists--or more familiarly, The Amish. The Hutterites. The Mennonites. What if real estate scouts from 2 northern Indiana Amish counties decided to purchase land in central Ohio because their tradition of dividing property among their large families had become too difficult and they needed to spread out. How does an influx of maybe 15 Amish families with 6-10 children who own thousands of acres in a school district or taxing district and who have a different set of values about education or health, or technology impact a near-by small town of 5-10,000 Lutherans, Baptists and Catholics? Small Ohio cities are dealing with something like this when the government and its allies in the non-profit world move in and revise all the unspoken traditions of the community.

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