The Centretown-Downtown area ranks almost among the least advantaged areas of the city in terms of certain socio-economic factors, a recent study of neighbourhood profiles has found.
The Ottawa Neighbourhoods Study, a joint effort by researchers at the University of Ottawa, city officials and community health centres, carved the city into 86 distinct regions.
Each area’s demographic profile was further broken down into several components, such as housing, financial services and health.
The borders for Centretown-Downtown are defined as Gloucester Street to the north, the Queensway to the south, Queen Elizabeth Drive and the Rideau Canal to the east and Bronson Avenue to the west.
Centretown-Downtown has a socio-economic level of 4 on a scale where 1 refers to the most advantaged area in terms of socioeconomic status and 5 represents the least advantaged.
“We looked at a number of different factors before we developed this index,” said Elizabeth Kristjansson, lead researcher for the study and a professor at the University of Ottawa.
Some of these factors examined include the percentage of people below the low-income cut-off (nearly 24 per cent), those with less than high-school education (13 per cent), and unemployment (5.6 per cent), she said.
“That amount of people should not be living below the low-income cut-off,” Kristjansson said.
In comparison, the neighbourhoods of Manotick-North Gower ranked 1, and Vanier North ranked 5.
Other factors concerning Centretown include 31 per cent of the people in the neighbourhood spending more than 30 per cent of their income on housing,
According to the study, nearly 20,300 people live in the neighbourhood, making the number of those who find it difficult to afford housing as high as 6,300.
Also distressing is the fact that 10 per cent of the housing units are said to be in need of major repairs in Centretown-Downtown, a number well-above the city average, the report finds.
With 12 banks, the financial services in the area are above average, but it has six “less healthy financial services”. These include pawn shops and payday loan outlets, according to the study.
The neighbourhood also has below average amounts of greenspace, counting 0.01 kilometres for every 1,000 people, and limited recreational facilities.
On the other hand, Centretown-Downtown is buoyed up by the civic engagement of its residents, according to the study.
“It is a healthy sign that we have a very highly engaged community who really participate in community issues,” said Simone Thibault, executive director of the Centretown Community Health Centre.
Among other strengths, 47 per cent of voters showed up to vote in last year’s municipal elections, matching the city average, and nearly 57 per cent said they felt a sense of belonging to their community.
In preliminary results, the health of Centretown residents is on par with the average for Ottawa. Nearly 70 per cent said they felt their health was excellent in the time period between 2002 and 2006, according to the study.
The people who live in the neighbourhood also tend to be highly educated, with 43 per cent having a bachelor’s degree.
The downtown core tends to attract professionals, but the number of immigrants is fairly high (26 per cent), and many face difficulties in finding work and hence affordable housing, said Thibault.
For community health centres, the data from the report will be useful in planning future initiatives, said Thibault.
“This is a great tool to best plan our services,” said Thibault, adding that the study confirmed her opinion that there is a shortage of family physicians in the neighbourhood.
“The idea is not to point fingers at anybody,” said Kristjansson. “We need to see what is going well and what can be improved from a public health and community-building point of view.”
Kristjansson said she plans to study more indicators in the future, such as child development and cardiovascular disease data.
The study has combined data from three places to get a profile of the neighbourhoods. These include public health data, Canadian community health surveys and risk factor surveillance surveys.
“People identify by their neighbourhood, so we need to plan by neighbourhoods,” said Thibault. “In my experience, this study is one of a kind.”