| Stillman College in West Tuscaloosa, AL has made a long-term commitment to revitalize its local community, which is known as Westside Tuscaloosa. The area is suffering from economic and social decline and has a quality of life usually identified with Third World poverty. A vicious cycle of poverty prompts many of the neighborhood's 12,302 residents to resort to drug trafficking, violent crime, and social service dependency.
Local statistics illustrate the economic disparity between Westside Tuscaloosa and the City of Tuscaloosa as a whole. Although the City of Tuscaloosa is endowed with an outstanding school system, a major community and vocational college, a liberal arts college, and a major university, the rate of illiteracy in the Westside community stands at 18 percent. While industry is growing in Tuscaloosa County, residents in Westside Tuscaloosa are not prepared to be employed by such local companies as Mercedes North America, Uniroyal Goodrich Michelin International, Phifer Wire Products, Hunt Oil Inc., JVC America Inc., and Gulf State Paper Inc. A high percentage of residents did not complete high school and lack the vocational skills that are required by local industry.
Forty-one percent of households in West Tuscaloosa are headed by a single parent female and 40 percent live in poverty, compared to 24 percent in Tuscaloosa. The average value of an owner-occupied house in the neighborhood is $39,000, compared to $76,304 in the City of Tuscaloosa. The mean family income is $19,747, compared to $38,929 in Tuscaloosa.
Stillman College will use an Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU) grant to develop a 4-block Model Neighborhood adjacent to the campus. Although the college will provide its housing rehabilitation, job training, and resident empowerment activities to all eligible residents in the Westside Tuscaloosa target area, these activities will be heavily concentrated in the Model Neighborhood. This will help Stillman and its partners meet their goal to improve the neighborhood's quality of life by helping residents become self-sufficient.
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