If you're a poor, black, public housing tenant, chances are you don't live on Hillview Crescent, Whitfield.

No, you'd be more likely to reside on Murray Street, Manoora.

That's where people earn a median income of just $323, compared with $722 in the leafy, luxurious area around Hillview Crescent.

There are other differences between the two suburbs, as featured in the latest Census data. Really big, scary differences.

The average Whitfieldian is an old married Catholic, while a Manoorian is more likely to be young, single
and Anglican.

It appears worshipping cash is more popular than worshipping God in the Hillview Crescent region, with 22.8 per cent declaring themselves atheists.

On the contrary, perhaps being poor and living on welfare requires strength from God, because only 12.7 per cent of Murray St residents are atheists.

Or maybe prayers are a way of coping with a house full of kids on your own, because Manoora is overflowing with single parents.

Of all the families in and near Murray St, 109 (48.2 per cent) had one parent.

Money can buy you happiness, apparently, because the number of single parents around Hillview Crescent was just 30, or 12.5 per cent.

But all of those quirky distinctions pale in significance to the real guts of a big problem facing Cairns, and that is the concentration of welfare dependent black people in public housing.

Of the 1161 people who filled out a Census form in the "3011504 collection district", which is centred on Murray Street, 374 were indigenous.

That's 32.2 per cent in a small area. The national average is 2.3 per cent.

How many blackfellas live in the Hillview Crescent area, where 815 people were polled?

It's obviously not as high as 30 per cent. So let's say 15 per cent, or about 120 people.

Wrong. What about 10 per cent? Or five per cent? Wrong and wrong.

The number of indigenous people who live on or near Hillview Crescent is 13. That's right. Just 13.

As for public housing stock, the figures are starker, and shocking. In the salubrious region of Hillview Crescent, you'll find three, that's three, houses owned by the state.

Over in the Murray St area, you'll find 176 commission houses, a whopping 76.5 per cent of all rented premises. The national average is 14.9 per cent.

This dramatic disparity presents a looming crisis for Cairns.

The poor are getting poorer, and that means they get more drunk, more violent, and more destructive to themselves, their families and the entire city.

The waiting list for public housing in Cairns is out of control, while the vacancy rate in the private rental market is critically low, and rents high.

So even if families get off the welfare roundabout they'll have a hard time finding a rental home, let alone one they can afford.

In the maelstrom of issues swirling around in an election year, public housing gets shoved to the very back of
the queue.

So long as they ignore it, state and federal governments are fostering crime and trouble by failing to address the growing problems of ghettoes in Cairns.