Published on Sunday, June 6, 1993
© 1993 The Arizona Republic

Byline: By Tom Spratt, THE PHOENIX GAZETTE

At an age when most north Phoenix teenagers are preparing for college, Sherl Mitchell of south Phoenix was struggling to put groceries on her family's table.

She dropped out of high school. She took food -- legally or illegally -- wherever she could find it. She drew the line when neighborhood men pressured her to sell her body.

She knows plenty of girls who didn't refuse.

''There are a lot of things, living in south Phoenix, that you have to overcome,'' she said, ''poverty, not having enough food to eat -- so you have to go through illegal ways of doing it.''

Rose Roulhac understands.

She cringes at the plight of residents near her office at 24th Street and Broadway Road, where homes exist next to a growing heap of abandoned cars, buses, tires and rubbish.

Roulhac has counted 23 crack houses nearby.

''I want to know why the children have to look at this junk,'' she said. ''If I were 14 years old, I'd be a gangster. This is the most depressing, horrible thing.''

Roulhac works -- and Mitchell lives -- in a neighborhood that is a mere eight miles from the shaded lawns of north Phoenix, well within the confines of the same city.

Yet these two Phoenix neighborhoods are worlds apart. And the gap between those two worlds is widening.

--> During the 1980s, poverty in south Phoenix, particularly among African-Americans and Hispanics, rose steadily; the citywide rate for whites declined.

--> By 1990, 47 percent of African-American children under age 5, and 39 percent of Hispanic children, lived in poverty; this was true for 17 percent of white children.

Misery in the south, a lack of peace of mind in the north - both result from the Valley's division into worlds whose inhabitants seldom speak to each other.

''The dichotomy of poverty is just so drastic,'' said Linda Parson, director of the Phoenix Birthing Project. ''It's not just that white people don't see it. Black people who are in a different economic group don't see it.''

Parson called Phoenix ''a microcosm of the nation. The nation is separate, black and white, and so is Phoenix. The economics of Phoenix, what's promoted on television . . . there are two separate cities.''

But as this cultural isolation increases, so do the financial costs, which are borne by all.

Public and private agencies are spending more than 10 times as much on the social needs of Phoenix's two southern districts as they do in the city's two northernmost districts.

Misery is spreading

Recent signs suggest Phoenix's two worlds cannot remain so separate much longer. More and more, the people to the north are beginning to feel the effects of the misery to the south.

Gang violence and drive-by shootings have spread fear to many middle-class neighborhoods. Still, suburban concern about the plight of poor neighborhoods remains superficial at best, south Phoenix community leaders complain.

''What I have found about north Phoenix is I don't think they could care less about how south Phoenix lives,'' Roulhac said.

She formed the group CITY DADS to help gang members rise above the wreckage of their neighborhoods. Most of her group's teenagers don't know how the people of north Phoenix live, she said.

Most have never been north of McDowell Road. They have never seen northeast Phoenix, where homeowners live amid fat, well-watered saguaros on streets with fashionable names like Hillery, Marilyn and Claire.

But the residents of those streets may have to start caring. The demands for human services keep growing, putting pressure on already overburdened public and private agencies.

During fiscal 1991-1992, such agencies poured $452.5 million into social programs and services for the 246,976 residents of Phoenix's two poorest council districts. The money was for medical services, rental assistance, Aid to Families With Dependent Children and food stamps, among other services.

In contrast, spending on social programs for the 244,192 residents of the two northern districts totaled $39.5 million.

More than just crime

Meanwhile, the spread of crime has caused the city to become a breeding ground of mistrust.

In south Phoenix, leaders claim northern residents remain apathetic about conditions in poor neighborhoods.

The only reason people in the north even think about the south, Roulhac claims, is because of their concern over gang-related issues.

Other neighborhood activists note central and northern Phoenix have become vulnerable to crimes that used to be committed only in the poorest parts of town.

''My perception is that because the central part of Phoenix is becoming so organized with Block Watch, that what we're doing is pushing it (crime) out of those neighborhoods into other neighborhoods,'' said Richard Fox, president of Phoenix's Block Watch Advisory Board.

But it's not just a question of crime.

A U.N. report released in May describes America as ''one country with two nations.'' It says citizens of some developing countries are better off than American blacks or Hispanics. But the study found U.S. whites rank first in the world in the quality-of-life index.

U.S. blacks scored about the same as people in Trinidad and Tobago. U.S. Hispanics received a score that put their quality of life between that of people in the former Soviet states of Latvia and Estonia.

The index measured life expectancy, education and purchasing power among people living in 173 countries.

Other statistics show the gap between whites, blacks and Hispanics has widened in Arizona.

The number of blacks living below the poverty level increased from 27 percent to 34 percent between 1980 and 1990, and the number of Hispanics rose from 23 percent to 28 percent. But the percentage of whites living in poverty fell from 15 percent to 11 percent.

Comparing districts

On a local level, figures provided by the Data Network for Human Services reflect the differences between living conditions in northern and southern Phoenix. The differences can be seen by comparing the two northernmost council districts -- 1 and 2 -- with the two in the south -- 7 and 8.

During 1991, the southern districts exceeded the northern districts in:

--> Alcohol-related deaths, 44 to 9.

--> Suicides, 47 to 31.

--> Referrals to juvenile court for violent crimes, 550 to 162.

--> Births to unwed mothers, 1,396 to 265.

--> High school dropouts, 1,586 to 1,005.

The northern districts reported a slightly higher rate of victims of domestic violence and adults who admitted abusing drugs during the previous year.

In Phoenix, the cultural and economic dividing line seems to be heading steadily to the north, passing McDowell, Thomas and Indian School roads and approaching Camelback.

''It's almost like a color line, and that has to be dissolved,'' said Mary Rose Wilcox, a Maricopa County supervisor who during the 1980s and early 1990s represented southwest Phoenix on the City Council.

Pete Garcia, executive director of Chicanos por la Causa in Phoenix, agrees.

''I think there's a dual society . . . Once you go under the underpass (on Central Avenue, under the railroad tracks in downtown Phoenix), it's a completely different place than north Phoenix. It's like going into a different world.''

Third World look

Parson said some south Phoenix scenes remind her of a Third World country she visited, the west African nation of Senegal. On one recent morning, for example, she saw a destitute man standing next to the the Keys Community Center at 25th Street and Broadway Road.

''He was looking for a cigarette. He was in a bad way. He was certainly visibly poor and unhealthy,'' she said.

''My mind immediately went back to the Third World country. It seemed like there wasn't much difference in where I was.''

But in north Phoenix, people have other problems to worry about.

They wonder how to cope with crowded schools. They worry about adult bookstores. Cross-town traffic driving through their neighborhoods. Idle teenagers.

''When you don't have things to do, especially the young people, yes, you're going to have problems,'' said Dolly Zepnewski, a northeast Phoenix activist. ''We have increased our young people's problems, whether it is alcoholism, drugs or basic literacy.''

Those and other difficulties of suburban life do not leave much time to fret about south Phoenix, she acknowledged.

''No, we don't tend to be concerned about what's going on down there, other than from the perspective, 'Gee, I don't want my neighborhood to get that way, and here's what I'm going to do to see that it doesn't,' '' she said.

It's far too late for Sherl Mitchell, now 23 and the mother of a 2-year-old girl, to prevent blight in her own neighborhood.

When she was 15, she watched helplessly as her mother lost her job as a technician at a Valley electronics company. Government red tape and her mother's former income initially disqualified them for public assistance.

''Plenty of times, my mother just had some flour or baking powder or sugar and made some bread and water. Some days, we didn't have too much to eat, or anything to eat,'' she said.

So she went hungry, sometimes for as long as two days at a time. Or she got food illegally.

Since then, she has improved her life. She went to school and found a job, working as a teaching assistant at the Keys Center. Her mother works as a registrar for an auto auction.

Mitchell said she has learned to be happy without worrying about the advantages of people in other parts of Phoenix.

''That's their lives,'' she said. ''Their families may have money, but that's them, so I don't really look at that, because that can get depressing.''

But she does believe the people of north Phoenix -- and of other Valley communities -- should work harder to understand the lives of those who live to the south.

''If you give the people in south Phoenix a chance, don't look down on them all the time, a lot of good people are down there,'' Mitchell said.

''They just need a chance.''

Color Photo by Peter Schwepker / THE PHOENIX GAZETTE
Color Photo by Dierdre Hamill / THE PHOENIX GAZETTE
Photo by Peter Schwepker / THE PHOENIX GAZETTE (page 4)
Diagram and Map by Nancy Pendleton / THE PHOENIX GAZETTE (See microfilm)

Phoenix's skyline separates the ''dual society'' within the city. Poverty in south Phoenix (foreground) is getting worse. North of downtown poverty figures fall rapidly.
Things are looking better for Sherl Mitchell (right) and her daughter, Arlandrea Evans. Mitchell sometimes would go two days without having food to eat. She now works as a teaching assistant.
Poverty, gang violence and graffiti mar life in south Phoenix, where many of the residents are growing poorer, studies reveal.
District comparison

In 1991, the Phoenix City Council redrew district boundaries, creating two mostly minority districts in the south, districts 7 and 8. The other six are mostly Anglo. districts 1 and 2 in teh north are almost exclusively white.