As someone who’s regularly been to Springfield, oh over the last decade. It’s not a beautiful place, it hasnt been for a long time. Most of downtown had been hollowed out and turned into parking lots, other buildings are deep in disrepair, which is contributing reason why it’s not recovered as quickly as neighboring cities like Dayton, Urbana, and Xenia.
It’s a hard hit rust belt city, long dealing with addiction and other deaths of despair.
I think that’s an unhelpful narrative. I think a better narrative is people who needed help and got it, improved their community.
The residents of Springfield have needed help for a long time and haven’t gotten nearly enough and that’s why things hadn’t gotten better until now. The immigrants who have arrived and improved things are people who got the help they needed.