Economy
When a Hospital Plays Housing Developer
A children’s hospital in Columbus, Ohio, is trying to treat a difficult patient: Its own struggling neighborhood.
Growing up on the South Side of Columbus, Ohio, in the 1970s, Carol Smith didn’t think much about the nearby children’s hospital, except when she went to see the doctor. Though the institution sat a few blocks from her family’s house in the Southern Orchards neighborhood, the people inside the stately brick building seldom interacted with blue-collar families living around it.
”It was just kind of an island,” said Smith, now a 55-year-old auditor for the city school district. “There wasn’t outreach or anything like that.”