Charlestown by the numbers

Charlestown isn’t what the CCA thinks it is

By Will Collette

Prodded by the chatter from the Charlestown Citizens Alliance, I find myself spending more time analyzing the actual data for Charlestown to try to get a grip on what kind of town Charlestown really is[1]. One thing I can tell you for sure is that the real Charlestown is very different than the one portrayed by the CCA.

When you start looking at the real numbers, you see that Charlestown is more a town of working-class people then it is a town of retirees (they comprise only one in five residents). 

Of our total population of 7,827, there are 4,634 good souls who work for a living, or at least try to. We have a very high unemployment rate – 9.7%, which translates into 451 people who are looking for work.

According to Census data, our total workforce of 4,634 equals 69% of the 6,791 Charlestown residents who are over the age of 16. 

Another 486 workers are out of the workforce due to permanent disability.

The top employment category is “education, health and social services,” which employs 22.7% of Charlestown workers. 

In second place is construction with 15% of the town’s workforce. The outlook for construction employment has been and continues to be very bad – Rhode Island posted the worst construction employment numbers in the US for 2012.

There are few jobs in Charlestown and no public transportation, so most working Charlestown residents have to drive to work. According to Census data, 3,336 Charlestown workers drive to work alone. Only 9 ride a bike, 135 carpool and 65 work at home[2].

Eighty-two Charlestown residents told the Census they take public transportation. I don’t doubt that, but since we have no places in Charlestown to catch public transportation, these 82 workers had to drive or bike out of town to catch that public transportation.

Our elderly population (65+) is 1,383 and growing. Children under 18 number 1506 and their numbers and percentage of our population are shrinking.

I was surprised to see that women aged 65 and under are actually outnumbered by men by a tiny margin (49.6% to 50.4%). 

But when you count women of all ages, Charlestown women outnumber men by a huge margin – 72.3% to 27.7%. That says a lot about the life expectancy of men past the age of 65. They either die off or go on the Town Council or Planning Commission under the CCA's auspices.

The most common context for any discussion about Charlestown’s economic data is affordable housing – our lack of it, and the CCA’s position that we don’t need any.

In the CCA’s world, low and moderate income people have been dropped down the memory hole. Working families struggling to get by don’t exist. There are just retirees, high-wage white collar executives and part-time residents.

They even have CCA Town Councilor George Tremblay’s “research” to prove that we have no need for affordable housing in Charlestown.

Charlestown’s full-time population is divided into 3,247 households. HousingWorksRI says we have 3,494 total units of housing, of which only 69 are affordable. 

We have a total of 4,818 total units of housing, according to the Census, which means that around 1,324 are seasonal dwellings. 

Recently, CCA leaders toyed with the idea of trying to get those seasonal units classified as affordable by inventing the tale that these typically unheated units are being rented off-season to students for cheap.

When you look at the real data, you learn that only around 1,600 Charlestown residents are retired – i.e., not children, not disabled, not employed or looking for work – and that’s only 20% of Charlestown’s population.

As much as the CCA would like to wish them away, we do have a lot of struggling working class families. According to the Census data, there are 1,432 Charlestown residents with incomes under 200% of the official poverty line – that figure, which is just over $46,000 for a family of four, is commonly accepted as low-income (as opposed to "poor," meaning below the poverty line). So 18.3% of our community is low-income.

However, Charlestown’s overall median income is high compared to the rest of Rhode Island at $81,696[3]. Median income only helps us to compare Charlestown’s economic condition to that of other towns. For example, Central Falls has a family median income of only $33,660.

Charlestown’s high median income compared with the other Census data merely means that Charlestown has a far wider gap between the wealthy and everyone else. Central Falls has lots of problems, but a yawning gap between the rich and the poor isn’t one of them.

As the CCA has morphed into Charlestown’s political party of privilege, its policies have increasingly ignored the bulk of the town’s population. 

They count on the higher level of political engagement by well-to-do retirees and the campaign contributions of nonresidents to maintain their power. Through the years, they have repaid their constituents with anti-working class policies.

As Charlestown prepares its now due update to its comprehensive plan, and then an entirely new plan due in 2016, I hope we will see more attention paid to the needs of Charlestown’s working people, especially in the area of jobs, tax relief, education and housing, and less emphasis on expensive boondoggles such as Y-Gate.

---

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Like so many municipalities, Charlestown is actually many different communities under one municipal name. It’s not just the North of One, South of One distinction. Consider the array of differences – Shannock, Quonnie, Carolina, Cross Mills, Kenyon, the Narragansetts, etc.

As one of my colleagues put it “I think there are actually several Charlestowns living uneasily cheek by jowl. There’s the north of One C-town here on Biscuit City Road where we clear trees off the road (for firewood) before the DPW can even get to them. Then there’s the south of One C-town where town councilors deploy DPW staff as their own personal work crew for the benefit of those whose white-collar hands have never held a chainsaw.”

According to the election returns, the CCA’s election victory was due to winning big in Precinct 3 which consists of Quonnie and most of the South of One southwestern corner of Charlestown, perhaps the greatest concentration of wealth in Charlestown. The CCA lost in Charlestown’s other three precincts.

[2] I wonder about the low number of people – only 65 – who told the Census they work from home, given how many people I know who have home businesses or who telecommute. Maybe it’s just that I know most of those 65. As one of my colleagues commented, "there's an awful lot of cash business in Charlestown."

[3] One anomaly of interest – Charlestown isn’t as lily white as you would think. Given how few people of color you see on town boards and committees, and even on town staff, you’d think Charlestown was close to 100% white – except for the Narragansetts.

Yes, Charlestown is very white, but 7% of Charlestown’s residents identified themselves in the Census as people of color (black, Hispanic, American Indian, Asian, mixed race, etc.). That's higher than what I had expected.

American Indians were the largest group of people of color, with 150 full-time residents. 

Only 33 Charlestown residents identify themselves as black, but they hold the distinction of having the highest median income – $250,001 – of any single population group in Charlestown. This is an example of how median income can be skewed.

Final note: I didn't make up any of the numbers in this article. Follow the links to the sources and check them out for yourself. Or just ask George Tremblay.