Alms, Shelton, & Reid: Not a Law Firm, Nor the Mob…

Cincinnati NoondayMay 1, 2019Alice Skirtz520 Comments

Disclaimer for Noonday paper

“Alms, Shelton, & Reid: Not a Law Firm, Nor the Mob…”

With this paper I make no claim to expertise in several bodies of knowledge

it touches – history, political science, urban planning, historic preservation –

some scholars in those disciplines are with Noonday this date. Instead I claim only

to know something about housing as it plays out with poor people, on the ground, in the ‘hood. I welcome corrections and cherish what I have learned about ways it touches my social history including Noonday.

Alice Skirtz

February 2, 2019

Alms, Shelton, & Reid: Not a Law Firm, Nor the Mob…

This paper began as an examination and review of a recent victory in the battle to preserve affordable housing seen through the lens of cases pertaining to the portfolio of seven housing developments owned by PE Alms Hill Realty, LLC (a New Jersey investment company). The cases and popular discourse that named the case with the shorthand term “Alms Hill Apartments” reveal a story of empowering low income tenants to go up against powerful owners and the Federal Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) culminating in a big win that preserved 750 units of affordable rental housing. To my surprise, telling this remarkable story evolved into a journey through Cincinnati’s storied history of housing poor people, fighting for and against housing discrimination, reforming City governance and planning…and, a brief intersection with my social history and the serendipity of finding historic Noonday connections.

Background for this story rests in ways themes of affordable housing in Cincinnati emerge on a continuum of resources for profit and perceived deviant behaviors of tenants with low incomes. Historians remind us

By reliable accounts the history of Cincinnati’s housing for those of low income in economic poverty and disproportionately black, lies on a continuum between profitable return on investment in property and tenements – the former a “business creed” that pays a proper return on investments for developers and [the latter] tenements that encouraged bad morale, poor health, congestion, and unsanitary buildings…any philanthropic efforts to save tenements and redeem tenants are “detrimental to both the market place and the tenant ” and clearly limited by the color line and business creed.” (Philpot in Fairbanks, 194 -195). ‘

Historians also describe the turn of the Century philanthropic initiatives to reform

housing in Cincinnati, while endorsed by unions and workingmen, “it was the city’s prosperous businessmen, professionals, and their wives working through philanthropic organizations that provided the main initiative for the movement.” At the other end of the continuum were those in poverty in the tenements, deemed to be undesirable, dependant, disposable, and disproportionately minority black.

The Alms Hill Apartments Case aka “the Puretz Case”

The Alms Hill Apartments case concerns the portfolio of properties owned by the Puretz Family investors consisting of 750 units of affordable, subsidized housing acquired with HUD mortgages for seven developments. Two well-publicized legal cases adjudicated foreclosure and receivership of these HUD subsidized mortgages, and subsequent legal motions by HUD sought to abate rental assistance pertaining to 200 units in the Alms Apartments development. Cases were heard in 2017 in State and Federal Courts eventually leading to new ownership, preservation of all units, and continued project-based subsidies.

Ownership and operation of this portfolio of the seven subsidized developments were acquired in 2013, all with HUD mortgages carried forward from original developments, some for new, others for rehabbed structures dating from the early 1970’s when “project-based” subsidies were first available. Although the well known Alms development named one building, two other developments Shelton Gardens and Reid’s Valley View Manor were a significant part of the investment portfolio also named after recognizable prominent and historic City leaders, each leader representing significant milestones in our local history of affordable housing. The other four developments were Entowne Manor, Burton Manor, Founders Home, and Georgia Morris Apartments located in Avondale.

At the time of the Alms Hill/Puretz cases, many of us working on affordable

housing saw it as the latest episode of corporate-driven for profit maneuvers to remove low income people from locations sought for economic development. We were still reeling from the recent corporate removal of the Anna Louise Inn from its legacy location adjacent to the Taft Museum of Art; and, the earlier hostile takeover and removal of the community-owned DropInn Center from Over-the-Rhine. In addition, the Alms Hill/Puretz cases had uncanny familiarity with the dismantling of the City’s prestigious Planning Department and appointment of Cincinnati Center City Development Corporation (3CDC) in 2003, supplying that new private entity with the portfolio of properties that reverted to the City in the bankruptcy of the Denhart Properties – a portfolio of 1,034 affordable, HUD subsidized rental units most in Over-the-Rhine. HUD subsidies for Tom Denhart’s portfolio housed economically eligible households were abated with the bankruptcy; the properties reverted to the City and “bankrolled” the new 3CDC with a real estate inventory ripe for redevelopment, empowered by removal of remaining tenants and their alleged criminal behaviors and “bad morals” …perpetuating our legacy of “slum removal” now named gentrification.

Earlier initiatives included removal of the vibrant West End community in the 1950’s – 60’s in the name of Urban Renewal for development of I-75 and an adjacent business corridor known to many as “Negro Removal”; vigorous resistance to Federal funding of local public housing authorities (CMHA) in the 1930’s – 40’s; and, legal exclusion of blacks from rent and home ownership in the City in the 1920’s – 30’s. Continuing throughout these decades were repeated episodes of NIMBYism (Not In My Back Yard) when locations for public housing, shelters, or group homes are announced that continue to date.

The near loss of 750 units of housing owned by the out-of-state corporation operating as the PE Alms Hill Realty, LLC paralleled our “business creed to tenement” continuum legacy. The properties were acquired by the Puretz family of New Jersey in 2013, financed with mortgages carried by US Bank, comprising seven developments of HUD subsidized rental units in the communities of Walnut Hills, Avondale and East Westwood. By 2015 PE Alms Hill Realty, LLC management had so completely neglected maintenance and upkeep that unsafe, unsanitary, and hazardous conditions in the Alms building were so severe that when the City was finally able to gain access, building inspectors found more than 1,800 violations. The 29 pages of violations were an astonishing increase of 4,900% over the previous owners’ inspections only two years earlier. These did not include the additional violations incurred after the foreclosure case was filed when the roof of the 25-unit Burton Manor collapsed in a rainstorm, flooding the upper floor with ankle-deep water and debris. Code violations previously issued had been ignored by the owners, enforcement by the City thwarted by Puretz management.

With extraordinary leadership, the City rose to the incredibly difficult work of saving the 750 units of affordable housing, collaborating with residents, the Greater Cincinnati Homeless Coalition, and the Legal Aid Society to respond to horrendous conditions. Alarms were initially raised by District 4 Cincinnati Police Department (responses to shots fired, unsafe building conditions, instances of criminal behavior of management, not the tenants). City Building and Safety Departments served notice of violations of building, fire, health, sanitary codes; the Police Department executed citations and arrests. The City Law Department began the legal work clearly and vigorously representing the tenants and the City rather than corporate ownership. Council made it official with a unanimous Resolution (#2015-00351, March 18, 2015) that read in part:

WHEREAS, City Council herein expresses its support for the tenants at the Alms, and hereby authorizes the City Manager to take all necessary steps within his jurisdiction to ensure that such tenants are protected in their ability to organize, to bring problems to management’s attention, to reside in their homes free from retaliation, and to ensure that the tenants can continue to reside at the Alms as affordable housing for families with children by virtue of the valuable subsidy from HUD;

And

WHEREAS, City Council supports the City Administration’s efforts as the City continues to pursue the pending civil nuisance litigation in this matter to enforce an outcome that protects the tenants and the community;

Wow! The City put this Resolution into action filing the foreclosure, receivership, and public nuisance cases against PE Alms Hill Realty, LLC and began public hearings at which Tenants Councils organized by the Homeless Coalition were recognized by both the City, and by state and federal Courts; the Legal Aid Society represented the Tenants Association, working with the Solicitor to obtain Plaintiff status for the Tenants Association in the HUD abatement case; and several City Departments under the City Manager provided documentation of both the citations and monitoring the owners’ failures to make “corrective actions.” It is important to note that it was behaviors of the owners/management called to question that precipitated this case – an onsite manager who intimidated tenants who reported problems was found to be a felon carrying arms under disability; dismissal of onsite security as reported by District #4; boarded over plumbing in preparation for City Inspectors’ visits; non-working fire alarms, locked fire exit doors, inoperable sinks, mold and mildew everywhere, etc. The City’s recognition of the low income tenants was extraordinary and defied our Cincinnati legacy of affordable housing by emerging on the tenants’ side of the “business creed” to “tenement” continuum affirming tenants’ rights to safe, sanitary, affordable housing as a priority over economic proceeds, as well as protections of tenants rights to organize without intimidation.

Located in residential neighborhoods, the named buildings in the Puretz portfolio – the Alms, Shelton Gardens, and Reids Valley View Manor – were saved with all tenants intact. Knowing that ‘the Alms’ holds a sentimental place in the hearts and minds of Cincinnatians – the Alms Hotel, the Alms & Doepke building that had been the Alms & Doepke Department store, Alms Place, and Alms Park – as I prepared for this paper I queried Noonday members for memories or vignettes reminiscent of the Alms. Responses included stories of friends and relatives who lived in the Alms Residential Hotel then permanent residences for affluent tenants; high school (Withrow) sorority dances in the Alms fancy Marie Antoinette Ballroom; interviews for radio broadcast on both WKRC radio (a charter member of the CBS radio network later sold to Taft Broadcasting) and more recently alternative radio WAIF; childhood dancing lessons (ballroom and ballet) and piano lessons (master classes for piano teachers by the famous teacher Olga Prigge); Labor Union Council’s dances (live swing band, lots of beer, held at the Alms as it was a union hotel, door prizes by the Bakers Union); links to historic preservation of several Alms buildings citing the “fall of the wonderful building to present sorry state by absentee landlords;” and, several remembered that their mothers and aunts patronized the Alms Beauty Shop ever faithful to their own “personal hairdresser.” These memories and the story of the Alms Hill Apartments are embedded in the remaining Alms building once known as the Alms Hotel built in 1925 at Victory Parkway and Taft Road by the family of Frederick Alms, across the street from his home.

Two other named developments in the PE Puretz portfolio in addition to the Alms have places in our local history and importance in work for racial justice from the Underground Railway to the Civil Rights Movement on to Fair Housing Act: Shelton Gardens, 138 units named for the Revered Wallace Shelton (organizer of Zion Baptist Church in 1842), and Reid’s Valley View Manor, 114 units named for the Reverend B.F. Reid (pastor Zion Baptist Church, 1927-1951). Both are located on Westwood Northern Boulevard in East Westwood, built and operated by Zion Baptist Church in the 1970’s when Federal funds were first available to private, non-profit landlords, each dedicated in the names of beloved leaders. Zion Baptist Church also developed the Founders Home in the Puretz portfolio. Zion Baptist Church has a notable history beginning in the West End as a station on the Underground Railway in 1842, decades later providing substantial leadership in resisting Urban Renewal of the 1950’s that displaced the vibrant West End (“Urban Renewal, Negro Removal”) for I-75, the Church building was also displaced relocating to Glenwood Avenue in Avondale. Zion is notably the congregation that led the dramatic break from the National Baptist Convention in 1961.This break from the denomination was led by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and one of our favorite activists the Rev. L. Venchael Booth to form the Progressive Baptist Convention. This split from the denomination of Martin Luther King’s father “Daddy King” was both deliberate and strategic to become politically active in civil rights work, notably the Civil Rights Act 1964 (PL.88-352. July 2, 1964) and Fair Housing Act 1968 (TVIII Pub. L 88-352,78 Stat.241. April 11, 1968).

About those tenements…

In 1925 when the Alms Hotel building was built, Cincinnati was reputed to rank behind only New York as the most congested city in the United States co-incident with decades of graft and corruption in city governance and politics that led to reformed governance with adoption of the Charter (1924). Vigorous housing reform, social work reform, both with formidable links to new concepts of municipal planning and community development co-incident with City government reform emerged to address major problems of slums and tenements. Cincinnati’s “slums” were then defined by some sociologists as being the “undesirable parts of the city, with foul back streets, and degraded and vicious populations”

The tenements of the time were located mostly in the “Basin” between the river and the hillsides, many were apartment buildings of three stories in which water was supplied from a single tap, toilets were located in the hallway or outside in courtyards. These crowded buildings had unventilated rooms and were described by a Health Department officer as grossly unsanitary, housing those “vicious” poor people living in squalor ripe for epidemics. The geographical reach of these tenements extended across the “Basin” between the Ohio River on the south, East and West Fourth Street to the north, west through the West End to the Mill Creek, and east wrapped around the Lytle Park area on to the flat land below Mt. Adams extending nearly to Delta Avenue. Estimates of population of the area are difficult to measure other than by count of tenement houses reported to be 5,616 – some occupied by as many as 10 people, one converted building of ninety-five single rooms housed 300 white tenants, another in the West End of twelve rooms housed ninety-four blacks, many units were SRO’s (single room occupancy). Tenement dwellers lived in segregated areas – predominantly black in the West End, and predominantly white Appalachian in the east, all in economic poverty.

Reform Era Movements in areas of governance, social work, and housing led the way for Cincinnati’s responses to “slum” removal, and development of affordable housing with social service responses to better the lives of those living in the tenements in the slums. In 1915, philanthropist Jacob G. Schmidlapp organized the housing corporation known as the Model Community Homes Company, a limited return investment company. He raised $500,000 from his elite business colleagues William G. Alms, Barney Kroger, Sidney Pritz, Max Senior, Frederick Geier to clear slums for reconstruction of housing for low-wage workers. Schmidlapp’s goal was to build housing for both black and white workers to occupy with low rents providing a return on investment of 5% and rent rates set at one day of worker’s pay for one week of rent, or a purchase option of 10 years comparable to rental rates. Model Community Homes came to hold 118 buildings with 453units located in Walnut Hills, Avondale, Oakley, and Norwood. This portfolio was liquidated in 1977, acquired by Art Reckman and Steve Smith in 1978 as Model Management, Inc. now the Model Group. [Note: in 2018 Model sold a portfolio of more than 800 of its subsidized units to the Boston-based non-profit corporation Preservation of Affordable Housing, Inc. (POAH).]

The development of Schmidlapp’s Model Community Homes was co-incident with reforms in city governance led by City Solicitor Alfred Bettman for Charter reform and the development of municipal and community planning that expanded to federal and state Planning law and Municipal Planning Commissions (locally the Planning Commission and the 1925 Master Plan). While Schmidlapp’s Model Community Homes worked to house the tenants of the slums, and City Solicitor Alfred Bettman began work with the new City Manager Clarence Dykstra on reforming governance and planning, activists Setty Kuhn along with Louise Pollak and Mary Campbell, her fellow members of the Woman’s City Club (1915), formed assertive Club committees to tackle housing, city planning, and public health problems. At the same time, social work reformers brought agencies together in the United Jewish Charities led by Max Senior; the Associated Charities led by Clarence M. Bookman coordinated dozens of “relief” groups and character development initiatives that later became the Community Chest. The first of the housing charities was the Better Housing League (BHL)(1916) organized by Setty Kuhn and the Woman’s City Club committees, with assistance from United Jewish Charities and Courtney Dinwiddie superintendant of the Anti-tuberculosis League (1912), both to attend to those poorly socialized tenement dwellers who were subject to illness and depravity of the slum-living. [The initial minutes of BHL note the League’s first Board of Directors consisted of businessmen, professionals, and their wives. Setty Kuhn was appointed as the “temporary chairman,” Max Senior (United Jewish Charities) was subsequently elected Chairman.] Politically, removal of slums and tenants that began in the 1920’s continue d with these organizations primed for extraordinary challenges of incorporation of Cincinnati Metropolitan Authority (CMHA) housing in the 1930’s – the ring leaders were Alfred Bettman and activist Setty Kuhn who organized her co-conspirators Bleecker Marquette, Stanley Rowe (Shepard Elevator), Alexander Thompson (Champion Paper), and William Procter Matthews (P&G).

Setty Kuhn’s appointment to the first CMHA Board, a nomination initially contested as she was not one of the 12 men so nominated, brought such robust leadership that Stanley Rowe (first chairman of the Charter Party) remembered her as “the most idealistic, always placing the tenants interests first, while the others were not very committed but were willing to go along.”

CMHA was authorized by and funded through Federal Housing Acts of 1935 and 1937, and immediately initiated the clearance of slums in the West End to build the Laurel Homes, followed soon by the Lincoln Court and English Woods. Substantial removal of vast portions of the West End begun to eliminate the slums continued into the 1950-60’s to build I-75, co-incident with slum clearance of the downtown “basin” for I-71 and the Fort Washington Way continuing into the1960’s. Expansion of the Federal Housing Acts added provision for funding (mortgages) project-based private developments and vouchers for eligible tenants – the same legislation that subsequently brought us Denhart Properties, Wesley Chapel’s Asbury Management, Franciscan Home Development, Inc. in Over-the-Rhine; Shelton Gardens, Reids Valley View Manor, some Model Management properties, the balance of the portfolio of developments in the PE Alms Hill Apartments, and many more…note that removal of ‘slums’ in the West End continues with plans for the FC soccer stadium.

My acquaintance with this Cincinnati story of “slum” removal begins in 4th grade when the Ohio Conference of the Methodist Church appointed my Dad to pastor historic Wesley Chapel Methodist Church then located Downtown at 322 East 5th Street across from the Taft Auditorium. The huge Wesley Chapel church was built in 1831 with a sanctuary seating 1,200 with a huge Methodist Church sanctuary where President William Henry Harrison’s Ohio memorial/funeral was held in 1841 and a 10 room parsonage adjacent to the church facing 5th Street. By 1950 the parsonage was not available for the pastor’s family as it was leased to the Cincinnati Board of Education as an annex to the over-crowded Guilford Elementary School but two blocks away on 4th Street at Lytle Park across the park from the Anna Louise Inn and the Taft Museum. The students who “over crowded” the school lived Downtown, some from the East End to the near West End, in the slums and tenements that had not yet been removed.

My family had previously lived in Lima, Ohio (population 50,000) so coming to Cincinnati (population 504,000) and Wesley Chapel was a big deal – a much larger city and a larger, more diverse church. Of a Sunday am, Wesley Chapel held proper Methodist formal worship complete with a large choir with paid soloists from the College of Music – and a congregation that included families who lived in Basin “slums” between the Church and the Ohio River as well as those from nearby City neighborhoods who valued downtown church membership. They were joined by a number of adults who lived in downtown residential hotels. These working folks (singles and couples) who lived in several dozen SRO hotels (the Dennison, the Princeton, the Pettit, the Browne, the Belmont, the Bristol, the Ft. Washington, the Milner, Metropole, etc.) worshiped at Wesley Chapel with fellow church member Helen Steiner Rice, the Gibson Art Company’s author/artist known as “the poet laureate of greeting cards.” Mrs. Rice lived at the nearby prestigious Gibson Hotel as did a few other affluent professionals who were lifelong Downtown residential hotel dwellers and lifelong members of Wesley Chapel.

Sunday morning worship and Sunday School classes at Wesley Chapel were followed by evening worship when the congregants came from those dense tenements between the Ohio River and 4th Street extending from the East End to the West End, including those mostly poor families whose children were “overcrowding” Guilford School, and several dozen women who lived at the Anna Louise Inn. Many of these evening congregants held a place in the city but in their hearts longed to go home to the mountains. They came of an evening for a less formal worship style of preaching and singing that reflected their mostly Appalachian heritage. Instead of music of paid conservatory soloists, they turned off the pipe organ and tuned stringed and acoustical instruments for “pickin’ and singin’ ” good old country hymns reminiscent of home with church members who were musicians from the WLW radio show “Midwestern Hayride” – I can still hear those haunting harmonies of country gospel song in that enormous sanctuary.

At the same time, Christ Episcopal Church two blocks away at 4th and Sycamore called the Reverend Morris Arnold to be the Rector in early 1951. The Christ Church history reports through the eyes of Cincinnati Post columnist Alfred Segal and church historian J. Wesley Morris on the circumstances Rector Arnold found:

He stands facing the dividing line of poverty and riches. Christ Church on one side and the slums on the other. Most of the real wealth had disappeared from the Lytle Park area. Less than five percent of Christ Church’s parishioners lived in the whole Basin. Tenements as described by the Rector were everywhere. Negroes were just beginning to move in to the neighborhood. Gangs of white boys, generally less apt pupils than the Negroes in Guilford School, physically enforced the unwritten law that no Negro would set foot in Lytle Park.

The new Rector found himself a member of the Board of the Better Housing League at an early date.

Later when social work practice took me to Over-the-Rhine, there they were! – displacees removed from the West End to the East End moved uptown from the ‘Basin’ – families whose now grown children had overcrowded Guilford School and West End neighbors, and adults who miraculously found SRO housing in Over-the-Rhine – it was a wonderful mix of kinfolk and cousins, white and black, blue grass and the blues that morphed into rock and rap, grits and greens, frequent trips down home to Appalachia and the Deep South, humble lifestyle and rage at racism and discrimination, episodes of being housed or homeless matching episodes of income, and throughout astonishing economic poverty.

And back to Noonday…and slum removal

On the philanthropy side of slum removal, Cincinnati’s response emerged in the public sector through Charter Reform and the good government movement (a topic for another Noonday paper) with precedent-setting work on Municipal Planning that gained both local substantial state, federal, and academic recognition. On the public side of slum removal, the complex rollout of affordable housing was implemented through the Federal Housing Acts followed nearly 30 years later by the Civil Rights Act and the Fair Housing Acts. The list of those who held key positions in this Reform Era, mostly men, includes City Solicitor Alfred Bettman; Charter Party Chair Stanley Rowe; City Manager Clarence Dykstra; Better Housing League Chairman Bleecker Marquette; United Jewish Charities Investor/organizer Max Senior; Superintendant of the Anti-tuberculosis League Courtney Dinwiddie; Setty Kuhn and Louise Pollak Co-founders of the Woman’s City Club and radicals who organized the Club’s Housing Committee later to lead the fights for BHL and CMHA. Setty Kuhn and Louise Pollak were charter members of Noonday who saved Noonday after four of the five founding members grew up and moved away leaving Gertrude Friedlander to organize a group of charter members to carry on.

Master organizer Setty Kuhn played several activist roles in Reform, along with Louise Pollak and Noonday members who were some of those “wives of those businessmen, professionals, and philanthropists” strategically placed in several Reform Movements: Susan Dinwiddie – Mrs. Courtney (Anti-tuberculosis League); Lillian Dykstra – Mrs. Clarence (City Manager); Frances Marquette – Mrs. Bleecker (BHL, CMHA); and Emma Senior – Mrs. Max (United Jewish Fund) – Ethel Bookman – Mrs. C.M. (Associated Charities). The Noonday legacy also drives the story of the Reform Movement that intersects with the saga of affordable housing in Cincinnati that evolved along a continuum of housing for profit with related philanthropic initiatives to provide services to those deviant, immoral tenant slum dwellers. Noonday was clearly and firmly on the side of the tenants. Stanley Rowe, Charter Party Chair and first CMHA Chair, who had earlier described Setty Kuhn as “the most dedicated” of Board members who always placed the tenants first, when interviewed in 1972 reflected on the work of CMHA that Setty Kuhn and Noonday members facilitated:

…one great mistake had been made; a family couldn’t live in this housing with an income over a very low amount, now all of the occupants are on relief…the ones who said “let’s keep this place clean” were the very ones who got raises and had to move out

Too bad Mr. Rowe did not live to see that the Alms Hill Apartments case reveals corrections to that “one great mistake” by empowering tenants, holding ‘limited return’ investors to compliance with safety and health standards redirecting the proceeds of rent to include investment in diverse communities… Setty Kuhn and her Noonday and Reform sisters must be smiling…

Baptist history finally has his say. Christianity Today, March 11, 2002.

Goldman, Karla. 2007. Setty Swartz Kuhn: Making a Difference. Cincinnati’s American Israelites, http://americanisraelites.blogspot.com/2007/07/settie-kuhn-making.html.

Kornbluh, Andrea Tuttle. 1992. “The Bowl of Promise: Civic Culture, Cultural Pluralism, in Social Welfare Work.” In Ethnic diversity and civic identity: patterns of conflict and cohesion in Cincinnati since 1820, edited by Henry D. and Johnathan D. Sarna. Shapiro. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.

Kornbluh, Andrea Tuttle. 1986. “Woman’s City Club: A Pioneer in Race Relations.” Queen City Heritage no. 44 (Summer 2):21- 38

Morris, J. Wesley. 1967. Christ Church Cincinnati 1817 – 1967. Cincinnati: Ohio Press, Inc.

Noonday Club. 2000. “Noonday Centennial Celebration” Cincinnati: self-published by Noonday December 2, 2000.

Philpott, Thomas. 1978. The slum and the ghetto: neighborhood deterioration and middle-class reform, Chicago 1880-1930. New York: Oxford University Press.

Shapiro, Henry D. and Jonathan D. Sarna. 1992. Ethnic diversity and civic identity: patterns of conflict and cohesion in Cincinnati since 1820. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.

Skirtz, Alice. 2012. Econocide: elimination of the urban poor. Washington, DC: National Association of Social Workers Press.

UC Internet Business and Economics Library. 2018. Stanley M. Rowe. https://www.libraries.uc.edu/business/research/bios/stanley-m-rowe.html.

WPA. 1943. Cincinnati: a guide to the queen city and its neighborhoods. 1987 ed. Cincinnati, OH: The Cincinnati Historical Society. Reprint, 1987 reprint edition.