The Big Shift
More low-income people live in suburbs
Poverty used to be a symptom of the inner cities, but today, more low-income people live in the suburbs. Jeff Tyler tells the story of an accountant with an MBA who survived suburban homelessness.
A boarded-up house. (iStockPhoto)
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Stacey Vanek-Smith: Where do most of poor people live in America? If you answered "the inner city," you'd be wrong. Most low-income people now live in suburbs than cities. Marketplace's Jeff Tyler reports on the changing face of poverty.
Jeff Tyler: Rising levels of unemployment have been pretty much the same in cities and suburbs.
Alan Berube is a senior fellow with the Brookings Institution:
Alan Berube: That's a change from previous recessions, where the cities seemed to take it on the chin and the suburbs avoided the worst.
He says Chicago exemplifies the national trend. When Nixon was president, about a third of Chicago's poor lived in the suburbs. Now, it's about half.
Forty-one-year-old Vanita Thomas is one of those people. She has an MBA and worked as an accountant, until she was hospitalized for a serious illness. After that, she managed to find a few temp jobs until the economy went cold.
Vanita Thomas: Nobody was hiring. You couldn't find a temp assignment. Everything went dead.
She went on unemployment, but that only lasted until the fall.
Thomas: September, my unemployment's running out. And basically, my landlord, he's saying, "You're a nice tenant, but Ms. Thomas if you can't afford the rent, I have to put you out."
A friend from her church let Thomas stay with her in the suburbs. When she still didn't have money for rent last January, Thomas had to move into a local shelter.
Thomas: That day was like my ground zero, because that's when the reality really hit me that I was homeless.
She lived dormitory-style with roommates. Thomas was grateful to have a roof over her head, but angry about her circumstances.
Thomas: Years back, they told you, go to school and get an education so you can get a good job, so you would never have to worry about being in a situation like that. I kept saying, "How can this happen to me?"
Some of the increased poverty in the suburbs has happened gradually. Immigrants who traditionally settled in inner cities are increasingly moving directly to suburbs. That's where the jobs are, or were.
Again, Alan Berube with Brookings:
Berube: This recession is going to perhaps accelerate the long-term trend toward the suburbanization of poverty.
Some of the suburban poor will bounce back. Vanita Thomas got a job with a call center. She earns less than she did as an accountant, but it's enough for an apartment. And she can set aside some money each month, aware that she's just a couple paychecks away from being homeless.
I'm Jeff Tyler for Marketplace.
Comments
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From Dallas, TX, 07/10/2009
I am a 22 year old student supporting a mother, two siblings, and a disabled uncle. yes we are poor and yes we live in the suburbs. the housing is actually cheaper the further you get from the city. I find it unsettling that people like the woman in this article, and my mother who have degrees and years of experience and yet are still struggling to make a living. i am currently in debt to my school 4,000 dollars and still managing to pay little bits here and there but im starting to wonder if this investment in higher education is going to be worth it, especially in this economy.
From Dallas, TX, 07/08/2009
Amid today’s economic chaos most investors, consumers, and politicians are asking what is guiding today’s’ businesses and government decisions. How does a CEO decided whether to pay bonuses, fire thousands or innovate? How does a president clean five rooms of a house simultaneously, while American workers of all education levels lose everything?
It’s because we no longer do we address the root cause of problems, no longer do we take the time to plan and implement, but only seek manageable and profitable manners in which to deliver a livable solution.
Health care – let’s address the final cost verses that there has only been one new medical school opened in the past 30 years, that taxpayer funded research at Universities end up being patented by drug companies, that an IT work with experience in databases needs to go get an RN before getting hired to work at a hospital.
Jobs – we continue to offer more HB1 visa, create job descriptions that won’t allow someone with a PhD in mathematics teach addition to 1st graders who’s teacher fell asleep in the class yesterday, and expect employees to spend 100K on higher education and won’t give them two weeks notice when you send their jobs oversea.
Energy – we spend billions on new roads and HOV lanes, but not mass transit systems, new technology to navigate around those congested roads, but very little on high MPG. We take taxpayer moneys to build the roads and then sell them to foreign countries.
All because these entities can continue increasing taxes and fees in HOPE that it will all magically return to normal. Hint it takes seven years for correct information to drop off credit reports
IT’S A FREAKIN MESS
07/08/2009
I can relate to Vanita Thomas. I am a doctoral candidate in social welfare. I had some major medical issues that effected my ability to work as a student and as an employee. I have been looking for employment in housing policy research, but now I will take whatever is available. Like Vanita, I also feel that the system as well as research organizations, academic institutions, and government agencies have failed. I am close to being homeless. However, I am using the experience to truly understand the experiences of the very people I have been wanting to help through my policy research.
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