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Cleveland now ranks as the worst-connected big city in the nation, newly released U.S. Census data show, even as the need for online learning has skyrocketed during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Almost 31 percent of Cleveland households have no internet access at home at all, not even through cell phones, according to new 2019 American Community Survey data released late last week by the Census Bureau. That鈥檚 the highest percentage of all cities with 100,000 or more households. Rankings from a year earlier placed Cleveland as fourth among the worst-connected large cities.

Miami, Newark and Memphis followed close behind, with between 25 and 30 percent of households lacking internet access.

With about half of the nation鈥檚 school districts starting the school year online, and with the pandemic all but guaranteeing that online classes will be part of school for the foreseeable future, internet connectivity has become crucial to keeping students learning.

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The number of connected households has been improving nationally in recent years, as home internet access becomes more standard. Five years ago, the 2014 data showed that almost 20 percent of households in cities with 65,000 or more people lacked internet. That dropped to about 12 percent this year.

In 2014, six large cities had higher rates of unconnected households than Cleveland鈥檚 2019 rate of 30.7 percent.

That鈥檚 because many cities saw large gains in connectivity in the past five years, including Houston, New York and Phoenix, which shaved about 15 percentage points off their rate.

Cleveland improved its rate by less than three percent, the third-lowest gain over the five years of any big cities. Only Las Vegas, with a 2.5 percentage point improvement, and Newark, with the nation鈥檚 only decline among large cities, fared worse. Las Vegas鈥檚 small gains let other cities pass it and move the city from 28th-worst in 2014 to ninth-worst in 2019.

The two worst-connected big cities five years ago, Detroit and New Orleans, rose to fifth- and seventh-worst in 2019 after improving their connectivity rates by 13 or more percentage points in that time.

Cleveland鈥檚 lack of internet is about twice that of cities such as Chicago, at 16.4 percent; Philadelphia, at 15.8 percent; and New York City, at 14.9 percent; those cities rank 17th, 19th and 26th respectively.

鈥淲e need our A game NOW to address this!鈥� Dorothy Baunach, head of , a nonprofit working with the Cleveland school district to make internet access akin to a public utility in the city, said in an email. 鈥淭his took the wind out of my sails. Our work together is more important than ever.鈥�

DigitalC is still in the early stages of its plan to connect 10,000 homes with Cleveland school district students by May and all 38,000 district students by 2022.

The school district, which had to delay classes three weeks this fall to shift to online lessons, did not respond to a request for comment. Partly because students lacked internet access and computers, when COVID-19 shut all Ohio schools in March.

Bill Callahan, a Cleveland-based research and policy adviser for the , which has produced for several years, noted that the new data run through 2019 and do not include any improvements made in response to the pandemic. That will come in next year鈥檚 data.

鈥淟ook at these 2019 numbers as 鈥榯he digital divide before COVID,鈥欌�� Callahan said. 鈥淭hey should help community leaders and policymakers understand the dimensions of the barriers they’ve become aware of during the past six months, and the scale of the efforts that are needed to overcome them.鈥�

The data will also be a baseline to gauge the impact of efforts school districts nationwide have made to connect students to online classes. That includes districts like Cleveland giving students portable hotspots or other districts helping families find low-cost internet services through private providers. Callahan cautions that next year鈥檚 data might not change much, however, since all households will be measured, not just those with school-age children.

鈥淔amilies of schoolchildren aren’t the majority of unconnected households, by a long shot,鈥� he said. 鈥淣o one is buying thousands of hotspots for seniors yet.鈥�

The poverty of residents also plays a role, since poorer families often can鈥檛 afford internet service.

鈥淭here鈥檚 a direct correlation between poverty and household broadband internet adoption,鈥� said Leon Wilson of the Cleveland Foundation, who helps run the new , which formed to tackle connectivity issues during the pandemic. 鈥淎s Cleveland has now surpassed Detroit in regards to poverty level, it has also done so with household broadband adoption.鈥�

The same 2019

The National Digital Inclusion Alliance chart below shows how more than a third of households nationally with less than $20,000 in annual income have no internet. But that percentage drops dramatically as income rises. Once income hits $50,000 or more, only 10 percent of households don鈥檛 have internet.

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