Original Video: Elkhart, Indiana, ground zero in the recession
On February 9, 2009, a newly inaugurated President Barack Obama gave a speech in Elkhart, Indiana, to introduce the details of his economic stimulus package. Elkhart county had experienced what Obama called the fastest job losses in the country, with an unemployment rate that shot from 4.7 percent to 15.3 percent in just one year.
On a rainy week the following April, I rented a car and drove a few hours north from Indianapolis to Elkhart and La Grange counties to write a travel story about Indiana Amish country for The New York Times. I was living in Los Angeles at the time, but had grown up in Indianapolis, and had spent my summers as a child up north, where my grandfather owned a tiny cabin on Fish Lake in LaGrange county, just a few minutes south of the Michigan border.
Unemployment had gotten worse since Obama’s speech. Just weeks before, unemployment rates for both counties had approached a staggering 19%.
The sudden demise of the RV and mobile home industry had eviscerated the local economy. Cash-strapped consumers had simply stopped buying RVs, and Elkhart and LaGrange counties had put most of their eggs in that single basket.
This is a video I shot over the course of a few days on that trip. A lot of the rural scenes were shot along the drive from Indy to Elkhart and LaGrange counties; the rest was shot in and around the city of Elkhart, with a few clips shot near the LaGrange city courthouse.
At the region’s peak, the local tourism board estimates that more than 100 businesses within a 25-mile radius serviced the RV industry in some way, and accounted for nearly 50 percent of all RV production in the United States. It wasn’t just RV and mobile home makers and dealers that were affected, however. An assortment of other business tied to RVs were similarly hit, from the garages and tire makers that serviced the RVs to the upholsterers to cabinet makers who crafted the interiors.
Signs of the recession’s calamitous impact on the local landscape were ubiquitous. Dealerships had gone out of business, their lots empty. Numerous manufacturers had been shut down and sat vacant. Even the Amish, who had come to depend increasingly upon the industry in recent decades, weren’t insulated from economic shock. Some had begun collecting unemployment checks – a form of state dependency that, like collecting social security, had been strictly forbidden until now.
In downtown Elkhart, businesses had closed up and down main street, their shop front windows empty and coated with a fine layer of dust. Bakeries, realtors, mom-and-pops. Even the building that houses the Elkhart Centre, whose task is the revitalization of downtown, advertised commercial space for lease.
Like the video I posted earlier this month, this one’s a little rough. I’m still trying to learn the editing software, and most of the material was shot hand-held, before I had access to a tripod. That said, please enjoy, and please send feedback. Like I’ve said, I’m an erstwhile newspaper writer trying to learn in a new medium, and I can always use the constructive criticism.
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Well it certainly doesn’t look like you’re new with the software, I thought the editing looking pretty smooth, and the farm and barn shots made for nice eye candy. I realize this is a short piece but it very much felt unfinished to me. You told us things are bad, I think that’s a given, I would have like to have known what is going on locally to help turn things around. How are the people surviving and such? Sadly it’s no longer news that there are pockets of despair throughout the country.
Oh and you have a good voice for voice over.
I agree, Brian. I found myself wishing I had more time to pursue this project while I was up there reporting on that travel piece. I especially realized that when I started editing — wishing I’d had more interview material, etc.
Much as I like doing the occasional travel story, this is the stuff I’d much rather be doing. The good thing about blogging, I suppose, is that I can do little one-offs like this one while leaving it essentially open-ended. To be continued…
In response to another comment. See in context »Looking forward to seeing future installments, I like your eye.
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Great piece Austin. I think you’re navigating video editing very well, especially considering you’re new to the form. I’ll stay posted to see more vids from you. It’s a great way to tell these kinds of stories — to actually hear the voices of people who are normally expressed in the space between quotation marks can be very powerful.
MSNBC just did a piece on Elkhart, apparently things are looking up. Unemployment is down 2% and some new companies are moving into the area!
MSNBC has a eye on Elkhart Indiana on it’s Elkhart Project pages and blogmuch for the same reasons the town caught Austin’s attention, “The recession is a sprawling national story, but its effects are local and personal.”
Unfortunately, though a few jobs are being created in Elkhart, the competition for a couple of hundred jobs here, a couple of hundred there is fierce in Indiana. The latest figures show 19.7% in Howard county four counties south of Elkhart and from around 12-16 percent in the counties surrounding Elkhart.
The unemployment rate in part of the country made headlines in the eighties because if its heavy auto manufacturing dependency, but even then, the numbers weren’t so frightening.
Austin, you could not have picked two better guys to interview. Their poignant honesty and bravery in the face of what’s ahead for them is touching. Reminds me of putting a first-grader on the school bus for the first time. I love Hoosiers.
Keep up the good work telling the stories for the ones whose voices are (usually) not heard.
I was in Elkhart in May to do reporting for the series dianewieland alluded to, MSNBC.com’s Elkhart Project. (My piece was about the effect on youth sports. A link to the piece is here within my True/Slant addendum to it: http://trueslant.com/bobcook/2009/07/02/amid-downturn-a-rally-to-save-youth-sports/)
The interesting thing about Elkhart is even though it’s had its rough spots in the past, it’s not an area that has suffered long-term decline. In fact, it has grown rather rapidly, being particularly attractive to immigrants (I believe this year Elkhart County for the first time led the state in percentage of Hispanics). So even though the unemployment is high, the city doesn’t have a burnt-out feel (except for a few neighborhoods). It’s more like somebody hit the pause button. The test is going to come once the wider economy recovers. Will Elkhart roar back, or was this the beginning of the end? Given the people I met there, I would lean toward the former.