The top 5 takeaways from Laramie’s resident survey
The top 5 takeaways from Laramie’s resident survey
White and Hispanic residents are divided about whether LPD treats people with “dignity and respect,” and rich and poor are divided on housing issues, but overall satisfaction remains high.
The Laramie City Council examined the results of a recent resident survey during a work session last week. That survey — conducted throughout the last half of 2022 — shows high satisfaction with life in Laramie and mixed feelings about policing and government involvement in the housing sector.
The Zencity Community Survey is being conducted twice a year. In its most recent iteration, the survey garnered 546 responses from across the Laramie community. Zencity, the private company contracted to conduct the survey, took efforts to gather a representative sample that broadly matched the city’s race, ethnicity, age and income demographics.
“At the end of the day, there was no demographic group that was overrepresented and underrepresented in the final score,” said Rachel Levenstein, Zencity’s head of survey research.
Below are some highlights from the council’s work session Tuesday. The graphics come from slides presented to the Laramie City Council.
Zencity has been using artificial intelligence to monitor online chatter about Laramie. City Manager Janine Jordan told councilors the last year has presented opportunities to expand beyond traditional methods of surveying and communicating with the public.
“They have AI that monitors the internet and sort of all digital platforms in the world — social media, every web page out there — and they track sentiment related to the city of Laramie or Laramie community, so government activities or issues going on in the Laramie community,” Jordan said. “And they report to us in real time. I get a report daily; I can go in and run a report that will show over the last six months, ‘here’s what sentiment has tracked for street conditions,’ or ‘here’s what sentiment has tracked for policing,’ or whatever the issue may be.”
Jordan said this allows the city to target informational messaging to specific areas or groups. For example, Jordan said, if there are repeated Facebook comments on local pages about a pothole on Grand Avenue, the city can selectively target those commenters with information about how and when the city addresses street repairs.
Overall satisfaction with city life and city government is high among Laramie residents. In addition to using AI to monitor online discourse, Zencity completed a more traditional survey of public sentiment. The overall satisfaction score was calculated by averaging responses to various quality of life measures.
It found 69 percent of residents were satisfied with life in Laramie, while 28 percent were neutral and just 3 percent were unsatisfied.
“Overall, people are pretty happy in Laramie,” Levenstein said.
Some 71 percent of respondents reported feeling safe in Laramie, but only 53 percent described Laramie as an accepting place for residents of all backgrounds. Only 50 percent of respondents said they planned to still be living in Laramie five years from now. Just 47 percent reported there is a strong sense of community among residents.
Minority communities often had differing opinions about safety and quality of life in Laramie. When it comes to feeling a sense of community, 48 percent of white residents said they were satisfied with the sense of community while just 34 percent of Hispanic residents reported the same.
There was also a stark divide between sexes on the same issue. A majority — 56 percent — of female respondents said they were satisfied with the sense of community in Laramie, while a minority — just 41 percent — of male respondents said the same. Additionally, both younger people and older people were significantly more likely to be satisfied with the sense of community than those in the 35-54 age range.
There were stark ethnic divides when it came to opinions about the Laramie Police Department. A plurality of white residents said the police have a collaborative relationship with the community and a majority of white residents said the police treat people with dignity and respect. But most Hispanic residents disagree.
Survey respondents were asked if they agreed with the statement that LPD “works with community members to solve problems.” “We saw that white respondents were much more likely to agree with that than Hispanic respondents,” Levenstein said. “We did see some differences by income, where lower income respondents were less likely to agree with that than middle and upper income respondents.” Specifically, 48 percent of white respondents and 55 percent of respondents making $125,000 or more agreed that LPD works with the community. But less than a third of Hispanic respondents (29 percent) and just 39 percent of those making less than $50,000 agreed.
The ethnic divide was even starker when it came to the question of whether LPD “treats people with dignity and respect.” A majority of white respondents (54 percent) agreed with that statement, but less than a third (30 percent) of Hispanic respondents did. A narrow majority of all respondents at all income levels agreed that LPD treats people with respect and dignity (51 percent of those making less than $50,000, 57 percent of middle-income-earners, and 53 percent of those making $125,000 or more).
There were minimal differences on either question when it came to age and sex. The starkest gender gap came when respondents were asked whether LPD “treats people with dignity and respect.” 57 percent of male respondents said they did, while just 51 percent of female respondents said the same.
Residents are split along demographic lines about whether the city government should do more to address the housing shortage. In total, 51 percent of respondents said the government should be more involved.
Laramie is a city of renters, where more than half the population rents the home they live in. And homeowners and home renters have very different opinions about how involved the government ought to be, with homeowners less likely to welcome government involvement. A full 58 percent of non-homeowners said the government should be more involved, while just 46 percent of homeowners said the same.
White and Hispanic respondents felt about the same, but there was a strong income divide on this topic, mirroring the divide between homeowners and renters. Poor and middle class people were more likely than rich people to want the city involved in housing development. A majority, 58 percent, of respondents making less than $50,000 a year supported more government involvement in addressing the housing crisis. Just 28 percent of those making $125,000 or more supported more government involvement.
This income divide has reared its head before, during debates about city zoning — when the city council has pushed for denser housing, and housing reform more generally, and faced pushback from upper middle class residents concerned about the “character” of their single-family neighborhoods.