【Poor Things】

CHARLOTTE,Poor Things North Carolina -- If you Google "Charlotte, North Carolina," after you wade through stories about the police shooting of Keith Scott, you're likely to see the city pop up on lists of the "best cities" in the United States.

The Huffington Postcalled Charlotte "the new Atlanta" in late 2014. Last year, Forbeslisted it as the 14th best city in the country for business and careers. Earlier this year, U.S. News and World Reportnamed it the 15th best place to live in the United States.

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These things aren't untrue so much as they are selectively true.

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Charlotte is a banking powerhouse where nearly 25 percent of households earn at least $100,000 per year, according to a study coauthored by researchers at the University of North Carolina and published earlier this year. But, according to that same study, Charlotte is also a deeply segregated city with rapidly increasing concentrated poverty in its black and Hispanic communities.

"It is an economic marvel, but it also has very deep problems of poverty and segregation and heavily racialized concentrated poverty," Gene Nichol, co-author of the study and a law professor at UNC, told Mashable.

Some of these disparities are getting more attention following the Tuesday police shooting of a black Charlotte resident named Keith Scott. Protests have followed ever since.

Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

Crack open the stats about household income and the issues begin to reveal themselves. Around 35 percent of white households in Charlotte earn more than $100,000 a year, but just under 10 percent of black households can say the same thing.

"Our side of town is completely different from their side of town," Kwan Thomas, a black resident of Charlotte, told Mashable. "You would think we live in completely different cities."

In all but geography, they often do.

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Not far from the city center, known as "uptown," "exclusive" neighborhoods of predominantly white residents are full of are full of condos, bungalows, sprawling single-family homes with porches out front, and apartment buildings where residents can relax on the roof.

But just down the road from uptown, many black and Hispanic Charlotte residents are sleeping in neighborhoods where apartments are often bolted shut by landlords, other homes foreclosed, and where many struggle to earn enough money to keep the lights on. Within walking distance of the city's Ritz-Carlton, some people go to sleep under an overpass.

Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

Just nine percent of white residents in Charlotte are poor, compared with 22% of black residents and 25% of Hispanic residents.

The city's overall poverty rate climbed from 10 percent to 18 percent between 2000 and today, in what Nichol has called "one of the sharpest increases in the nation." The rate of concentrated poverty, where poor families live in poor neighborhoods, is rising in tandem.

This happens in part due to an increase in housing and school segregation, which are problems across the U.S. and especially in Charlotte. The result is small, poor and isolated cities within a much richer one.

"I think the poverty in Charlotte to most folks is invisible," Nichol said.

Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

Concentrated poverty assails families with neighborhood-wide issues such as underperforming schools, little public transportation and few job opportunities, providing few avenues to get out of an economic rut.

At the center of the Queen City, brick-laden streets wind their way around, hotels, glass-front steakhouses, and skyscrapers including the Bank of America Corporate Center -- the city's tallest building. Buses come and go out of a central station, and a robotic voice occasionally announces the arrival of a train on the city's light rail system.

But it doesn't take long to drive to parts of Charlotte without a bus stop in sight, where the insides of homes are eroding, and where jobs are scarce despite living almost literally in the shadow of one of the world's largest banks.

"We don't get jobs we're qualified for," Greg Phillips, a black resident of Charlotte with two boys at home, told Mashable. "We don't have the same chance."

Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

Queen City residents are less likely to climb out of poverty than poor residents of any of America's 50 largest cities, according to a 2015 study conducted by several university professors who teach at schools including Stanford, Harvard and the University of California, Berkeley.

Charlotte is undoubtedly a "best place to live" for many of the white residents who reside there. But the paradox of poverty living like a ghost alongside wealth makes it clear what kind of information "best of" lists leave out.