College kids are making the city look bad.
According to statistics released this week by the U.S. Census Bureau, Gainesville's income gap was the fifth-largest in the nation from 2005 to 2009.
Atlanta tops the list, followed by New Orleans; Washington, D.C.; and Miami. The city with the lowest income gap is West Jordan, Utah.
Eve Irwin, the research program services coordinator at UF's Bureau of Economic and Business Research, said this ranking makes Gainesville's situation sound worse than it actually is.
Gainesville's large student population and the city's rural surroundings present a stark contrast to the high-paying jobs drawn in by the university and local hospitals, she said.
Historically low-income east Gainesville also plays a role in the disparity.
The students, however, play the largest role in skewing the data, Irwin said.
For 2005-2009, Gainesville's total population was about 115,000 and about 45,000 of those people were students, often with little to no reported income, according to Census data.
What little income most college students may have, Irwin said, typically comes from service industry jobs like waiting tables or bartending - jobs that would otherwise go to Gainesville residents at the bottom of the income scale.
City spokesman Bob Woods said east Gainesville's problems are not new to the City Commission. As Gainesville continues to expand west, the east side residents are often left behind.
Projects to revitalize the area with improved technology and transportation, like the Gainesville Technology Enterprise Center and Plan East Gainesville, have continued to garner support from commissioners, he said.
Woods said commissioners are also fighting to keep the Alachua County Fairgrounds in east Gainesville.
"Local governments are policy makers, facilitators," he said. "True development is a partnership between residents and businesses. All we can do is set the table, in a sense."
