Planting Churches among the City's Poor - Volume 1

400 • P LANTING C HURCHES AMONG THE C ITY ’ S P OOR : V OLUME 1

The next step was to develop a few more possibilities based on the criteria that were suggested to me by Fred Stoesz, my MTL, and Tim Goddu, my City Director. The two driving characteristics we were seeking in a community were that they be both dense in population and poor. Using these as standards, I began researching Census 2000 data for a period of approximately a week on the Internet. Considering all 2054 census tracts in Los Angeles County, I eliminated all those tracts not containing 30% or more families in poverty and 23,000 or more people per square mile. This reduced the number to approximately 250 tracts for each category. I then tightened the standard to 45% or more families in poverty and 50,000 people per square mile, which effectively isolated the top 1-2% of all census tracts in LA County for each category. Having this, I cross-referenced each list to see which tracts fit both standards. Three new clusters of census tracts emerged, giving me three areas in the county to consider. Two of them were on either side of Vermont Avenue on the north end of Koreatown. Due to the number of businesses and a street near both of these areas named Shatto, I labeled these two areas West Shatto and East Shatto. The third area was in Long Beach. I now had five total areas born of personal experience, reference, suggestion, and research. Out of these five areas there were 26 census tracts represented. These 26 census tracts were compared and ranked against each other in the following categories:

• population • population density • ethnicity • number of households • number of families • number of housing units • transiency • English proficiency levels • household income level

• % earning wages • per capita income • % in poverty • occupancy status • gross rent