Is southeast Iowa City's negative image overblown?

Last Monday afternoon, with the temperature in the mid-80s, about 20 children played in the water at the splash pad in Wetherby Park in southeast Iowa City.

The day before, a woman told police her apartment a few blocks away on Broadway Street had been shot up when no one was home.

It's incidents like the latter that have contributed to southeast Iowa City's reputation as an crime-ridden side of town.

But it's features like the former that frustrated residents point to as what they want the neighborhood to be known for. The Wetherby splash pad, which opened in May, is the only one in the city and has brought people from across the community to a part of town they normally wouldn't visit.

“There are a lot of good things that have always been there,” said Cindy Roberts, who has lived on Grantwood Street for 20 years. “It's just got a little bit clouded.”

Residents like Roberts, community service agencies and the city are trying to clear that cover of negativity with things like the splash pad and programs for youth and adults alike.

Their efforts are aimed at helping out a side of town that has become like a loaded term. Saying “southeast Iowa City” conjures up strong images, and for many people they're negative ones.

That has been around for at least a couple of decades, but it has intensified of late. That's partly due to some high-profile incidents in southeast Iowa City last year, including the infamous “Mother's Day brawl,” a shooting that shut down a troubled nightclub and the daytime killing of a landlord.

Many residents and city officials, however, believe that, while the area does have its problems, the supposed dangers are overblown.

“I'm not trying to discount the serious nature of some things that have happened on the southeast side,” said City Council member Ross Wilburn, who has lived on Taylor Drive, “but (I'm) trying to remind folks that those things have happened all over Iowa City and Coralville and North Liberty, and wherever those things happen, it's unacceptable.”

Police call volume

In 2009, the Iowa City neighborhoods south of Highway 6 and east of the Iowa River accounted for 410 of the 1,805 calls for service to the police for fights, assaults, robberies, armed subject, domestic fights and sexual assaults in the city. That's 23 percent.

But the majority of the calls in the southeast side occurred in two neighborhoods: Grant Wood and Wetherby. That means about one in every five calls citywide for those offenses in 2009 were from two neighborhoods.

“They've had issues of crime, to include violent crime, that other areas of the city have not,” Police Chief Sam Hargadine said. “But I also think that some of the perceptions are blown out of proportion.”

Jorey Bailey, who as the Police Department's crime prevention officer spends the majority of his time in southeast Iowa City, said most of the residents there are good people and the area is safe.

“I'd say the southeast side as a whole takes a bad rap for the smaller portions of it” where there is trouble, he said. “There are areas where call-for-service volume is higher, and unfortunately the entire southeast side gets that stigma.”

Officials say they aren't quite sure why that is.

Social class, race issues

One issue that gets a lot of attention is housing. There's a lot of low-income housing in southeast Iowa City, and when there is a news story about a crime there, some online commentators suggest people lured to Iowa City from places like Chicago by easily obtained subsidized housing are to blame.

Housing officials say that simply isn't true.

As of January, 83 percent of the people in the Section 8 and Public Housing programs lived in Johnson County prior to their admission, with 9 percent coming from out of state, mostly from Illinois.

Also, the Iowa City Housing Authority reports that 314, or 4.5 percent, of the 6,907 criminal charges issued by the Iowa City and Coralville police departments between July 1, 2009, and May 31, 2010, involved people receiving housing assistance.

Some City Council members and members of the public have called on the city to stop allowing more subsidized housing in southeast Iowa City, saying such a concentration can lead to more crime and problems for neighborhood schools that have too many low-income students.

At the same time, southeast Iowa City consists of several neighborhoods and is more diverse socio-economically than some may think. For example, Wetherby Park sits at the end of Taylor Drive, a street lined with rentals and low-priced homes. Yet directly east of the park is a new development with homes valued at $225,000.

Race seems to play some factor in all this. In the anonymity offered on news media websites, race often comes up on message boards on stories about crimes in southeast Iowa City.

Southeast Iowa City was 78.5 percent white, according to the 2000 U.S. Census, versus 85.8 percent for the city as a whole.

A more recent indication of the area's racial makeup may be found in the neighborhood schools. Twain and Wood elementary schools went from 36 percent and 28 percent minority student enrollment at the start of the decade, respectively, to 62 percent and 65 percent this past school year, according to Iowa City school district data.

Bailey said he thought housing, and therefore social class, played a larger role than race in how the area is viewed. Wilburn said he thought race may be a factor for a small number of people.

Mix of solutions so far

Also complex is the fine line between assertions that southeast Iowa City's problems are overstated and actions that suggest that is not completely the case.

A police substation will soon open off Broadway Street, and it has been welcomed by many nearby residents and businesses as a chance to improve public safety in the neighborhood. Bailey, the crime prevention officer, is going to be based there.

The juvenile curfew approved by the City Council last year was more controversial, but the proposal came after some southeast Iowa City residents complained about youths causing problems.

“I'd like to ask them, how many have heard gunfire while lying in bed?” resident Brandi Mastain, addressing the council last fall, said of those who opposed the curfew.

The housing situation is complicated too. City officials say they'd like a better scattering of affordable housing throughout town to alleviate some of the pressure on southeast Iowa City, but council members are split on how to make that happen.

So far, a better year

What is clear is that a concerted effort has occurred in the past year to give the area a boost. There's the Wetherby splash pad and an inaugural music festival held in May, both of which have attracted people from throughout the community.

There also are a number of activities aimed at youths, like tutoring and mentor programs.

Another is a jobs program for teenagers that has them doing service-oriented work, like serving lunch as part of summer food programs for children.

The goal is to give them something productive to do “to empower them during the summer so we're not either enabling them or ignoring them” said Angie Blanchard-Manning, who's helping with the program.

After last summer's problems, community organizers surveyed several hundred homes in southeast Iowa City to get a better feel for what residents were thinking. One of the main findings was that people didn't know their neighbors.

“If you know your neighbors, you're going to have a safer neighborhood,” said Sue Freeman, program director at the Broadway Neighborhood Center, who helped organize the survey.

A program that came out of that was having block captains to knock on doors, provide newcomers information about the area, develop phone trees and in some cases organize block parties.

Naja Weeks, 32, a block captain on Indigo Court, said her block is pretty quiet, but the reception from her neighbors so far has been great.

“It's helping a great deal. … Now a lot of them know each other,” she said.

Residents and the Police Department's Hargadine and Bailey said it seems like things are improving in southeast Iowa City so far this year but it is too early to say for sure the area's fortunes have turned.

“Knock on wood,” Bailey said.