From Parramore to Pine Hills Road, Ivey Lane to Holden Heights, West Orlando families are paying more for food, gas, and banking services than their supposedly more “well-heeled” neighbors in the other 3 directions. Higher priced goods and services make it almost impossible for these families to get ahead, save for their children, or feel any sense of hope for the future. Everything from bread to fuel costs much more than in high income neighborhoods like Dr. Phillips or Lake Nona. The ironic discrimination in this situation is that nearly one out of every three residents in West Orlando lives below the poverty line.
Recent talk of predatory lenders and the resulting foreclosure problems have cast light upon other high priced, high fee services and their predatory business models that see lower income neighborhoods as fair prey.
Take a trip down West Colonial Drive and you will see a concentration of alternative financial services, check cashing centers and pay day lenders. What you won’t see are many banks. Instead, scattered throughout the West Side are dozens of these often predatory services which are mostly absent from wealthier areas of Orange County. Cashing a check at one of these quickie stops can cost 3% or more of the check’s value. Customers who borrow money from these short-term money lenders can be hit with annual percentage rates of over 400%; estimated to be more than 35 times higher than the average credit card rate in Florida.
West Side residents, along with their national urban counterparts also pay more for cars both in price and interest payments, as confirmed by national studies. Buy-Here-Pay-Here lots proliferate. Many of these dealer financed cars repeatedly come full circle; being sold and repossessed several times in the same West Side neighborhoods. All that they leave behind are a lot of needy people.
If a thorough comparison study were done, it would unnervingly reveal that West Siders are paying higher prices for just about everything they buy- cars, gas, furniture, groceries, and more. West Orlando residents pay more to fill their cars than their neighbors across town. There are popular convenience store chains offering lower prices for gasoline in more affluent communities separated only by a few miles from the west side. Traditional furniture stores long abandoned Orlando’s West Side for the greener pastures of the East and South Side. In their wake, predatory rent-to-own specialists set up shop. Customers often pay two to three times the actual value for appliances and furniture over the course of the agreement or, which is more often the case, never actually own anything and subsequently lose all of their money due to repossession. Again, profits for the predator are huge, as is devastation to the prey- in this case, the men, women and children of West Orlando.
The economic disparities between East and West Orlando are enormous. When viewed as a whole, these higher prices can amount to hundreds, sometimes thousands of dollars more for basic goods and services.
There is, however, some good news.
City and community leaders such as Orlando City Commissioner Daisy Lynum and Dr. Lance McCarthy of the Metropolitan Orlando Urban League among others are rallying behind new, innovative, practical initiatives to address these issues. Although the new thinking reflects progress, as evidenced by the pursuit of strategic economic development such as the Community Venues projects and the upcoming National Urban Urban League Conference, Lynum and McCarthy would do well to consider ways to directly reduce the high cost of living in West Orlando and do it soon. To do this, they must consider how it all began.
In the nineties, Welfare-to-Work programs tied benefits to employment and sent thousands of lower-income families into the Central Florida labor force. In turn, this created demand for all of the many services and necessities connected to work; including necessary vehicles and financial services.
Many workers were unsophisticated and new to owning a car, buying insurance and financing their purchases. This lack of sophistication left many of them vulnerable to unscrupulous practices. This is evidenced by the fact that even now, many West Side residents have no understanding of credit scores or even what having a credit report means.
To remedy the high cost of living on the West Side and restore some parity with other areas in Greater Orlando, community leaders and politicians must not look for quick fixes. They will instead have to recruit mainstream businesses and simultaneously pursue and offer incentives that will encourage them to move into West Orlando neighborhoods. Predatory businesses will still need to be weeded out, but this will be expedited once West Side consumers receive the education necessary to make better financial decisions.
Communities around the nation are starting to realize that the high cost of inner city living has a consequence that transcends neighborhood boundaries, resulting in many new initiatives. Recently, New York City encouraged the opening of 26 new bank branches in lower-income neighborhoods by supplementing consumer deposits in these areas with state treasury deposits. And nearly a dozen states and cities have curbed the development of high-priced alternative financial service companies like check cashers and payday lenders.
At the end of the day, West Orlando residents want the same things that their neighbors around Orlando desire; better lives, better opportunities and brighter futures for their children. The high cost of West Side living affects the entire community.
Poverty is expensive, and the question finally needs to be asked: Why should the poor pay more?
