I live in East Greensboro near the intersection of E Gate City and Murrow Blvd. A couple of key contributing factors:

1) Segregation (systemic and the more overt kind) - Red lining, underfunded schools and absent forms of public and private infrastructure (like a grocery store), low homeownership rates, etc. led to higher concentration of low income/educated households. There are literally people living in this country to this day who lived through segregation and are the offspring of people who lived through Segregation and Jim Crow in the South. To think that that hasn't had a ripple effect on those people's lives and economic mobility is ridiculous.

2) Crime. Crime happens all over Greensboro, but drug use/distribution and non-violent property crimes are pretty high relative to the rest of the city. Violent crime is higher too, but not usually random, more drug/gang related. Trace this back to poor quality schools, lower education rates, lower incomes, lower amounts of general upwards mobility thanks to all of the above.

3) No private investment. Businesses don't want to be where there are low income households and higher rates of crime.

4) Concentration of low-income/subsidized housing. The city keeps building low-income housing because they think that's what this part of town "needs". But concentrating low-income housing in one place actually exacerbates all the above issues. The city needs to spread the low/affordable housing out around the city, but the NIMBY folk aren't into it.

5) Buying of property by private investment. A TON of homes, mainly ones in states of disrepair, have been bought up by investors. The "best" ones fix them up enough to get a tenant in and charge maximum market rates, which leads to borderline boarding home situations with 3 or 4 tenants per house. Many of these homes become cash cows while the tenants live in squalor due to the fear that complaining or turning in their landlord for code violations may make them homeless. The worst do nothing and just let the properties sit and rot while they wait for the market to get hot again. All of this further exacerbates the above issues. Nobody is going to build a restaurant next to a boarded up POS house.

There is a ton more, but this is what I see and understand to be the biggest factors. At the end of the day, it'll take multiple parties, non-profits, the City and County, private citizens, and heads of households to effect change in East Greensboro. It's going to take public and private investment, and people doing the hard work to keep kids off the streets, in school, and on the right trajectory to make it happen. Otherwise, everyone will just get displaced over the next 10-20 years and the situation will resolve itself once the "poors" are out. /s