Suburban Poverty

When we think of suburbia, one typical response is affluent.  However, a recent "New York Times" article dispels this idea.  Instead of pristine lawns and tidy house, blight has taken over.  This has resulted in boarded up windows, abandoned properties, and overgrown lots that have spread across the United States effecting, and still do, regions in Nevada, California, and Florida that experienced housing bubbles in the late nineties and early 2000s.  Why is this happening and what can be done about it?

The Brookings Institution reported that in 2008 the suburbs were home to the largest and fastest growing poor population in the nation.  In the previous eight years, suburban areas near metropolitan areas saw poverty rates climb by 25 percent, nearly five times faster than cities.  Nationally, 55 percent of the poor living in the metropolitan regions lived in the suburbs.  Adding salt to the wound a new measure to calculate poverty, introduced by the United States Census Bureau in 2011 revealed that 51 million households had incomes of less than 50 percent above the official poverty line, nearly half were in the suburbs. (campaignstops.blog.nytimes.com/2012/03/19/the-new-suburban-poverty/ March 19, 2012)

So why is this happening?  Part of the reason is demographics.  More Americans live in the suburbs, consequently there are more poor people.  The economic downturn has had a major impact on the suburbs, with a decline in certain job categories and the end to the housing boom that drew Americans to the suburbs in the first place.  How does the growing rate of suburban poverty threaten the assumptions of suburban life?  The reality of the suburbia is that they have been historically more economically and culturally diverse than anyone would assume.  Given the soaring poverty rate, the image of a comfortable existence shakes the suburbanite identity to the core, threatening suburban politics and the nation's self-image.  The "keeping up with the Joneses" caricature that evoked materialism and consumption has given way to the new normal of making ends meet, with formerly middle-class families trying to figure out how to pay for utilities, shelter, food, and transportation.  These residents are increasingly turning to food pantries and social service offices for assistance, transforming there own sense of identity and that of the place they live.  It remains to been if the politics of suburban living change accordingly.

The soaring rates of suburban poverty herald a definite end to the Fordist of mass production and consumption, and its most globally recognized symbol, the average middle class family neatly ensconced in a suburban development.  In an ironic twist, this model was once considered a novelty.in America.  Public infrastructure built during the New Deal, World War II, and the Cold War transformed the built environment.  The construction of a national and regional highway system shortened commutes to the surrounding urban centers.  Developers leveraged cheap mass-building techniques, loans to returning veterans, and Federal Housing Authority programs to produce subdivisions from Levittown, to Anaheim, California.  Blue collar men and women could purchase homes with government backed low-interest mortgages that required no down payments.  This increased the number of American homeowners from 40 percent in 1940 to 62 percent by 1960.  The number of people living in the suburbs grew from 7 percent in 1910 to 32 percent by 1960.  By 1970, the Census Bureau declared that the United States had "become a nation of suburbs." (ibid)  By then, the population in suburban areas had surpassed that of the central cities and non-metropolitan areas.  This rapid growth, together with the population to the Sun Belt states in the last third of the twentieth century, had serious political implications.  It fostered a variation of conservative politics, building a base of middle-income voters who favored the Republican Party.

The American postwar identity was strongly rooted in the upward striving suburban utopia.  The truth was that this vision was never realized.  These communities have and always been socially and economically diverse, socially stratified, and places of fluid mobility.  During periods of economic expansion following World War II, poverty was seen as someone else's problem, perceived as an urban and racial issue.  In 1962 Michael Harrington argued in "The Other America" that poverty survived especially because it was largely invisible to most Americans. Harrington declared that "ours is, indeed, an affluent society."  Americans saw poverty on the "other side of the tracks" in fleeting glimpses from a train or care, part of the distant inner city. (ibid)

The idea that poverty is a problem suffered by someone less deserving people was an essential part of self-identity that was reflected in politics. I hope Paul Ryan, Mitt Romney, and all the other bloated Tea Party red elephants read this article and were paying attention.  Well off suburban schools and organizations contributed to the overall sense of family residential security, individual meritocracy and private life.  Of course, they conveniently forgot that if it weren't for federal programs, their lives would not be possible.  Out this emerged a status quo preservationists politics of Nimbyism (Not In My Backyard).  The California tax revolt that led to the passage of Proposition 13 was an expression of this, an effort to contain local and state spending considered parasitical to the suburban tax bas.  Of course, the end result was Proposition 13 crippled municipalities' abilities to raise property taxes and the state's capacity to raise income to finance essential public services.  Proposition 13 and its spawn won widespread support nationally because suburbanites self-identified as "job creators" not recipients of services.  Got that you RNC blow hards.  In 1980, Ronald Reagan rode this tide into the White House, launching an attack on the New Deal State.  Despite the many signs that the golden age of suburbia had passed, its political legacy was passed down to the Tea Party.

Can the rising tide of suburban poverty threaten the core assumptions of suburban life.  Gone is the day when suburbanites could shield themselves from the problems formerly associated with the inner city: poverty, social disorder, drugs and violence.  What does this mean for the suburban poor, the suburban municipalities, and nationally?  The basic level, poor people living in the suburbs are challenged in their efforts to gain access to services they need because the municipalities they live are either unaccustomed, hostile to providing them, or simply unable to do so.  Despite the thin safety nets, the suburbs are not well equipped to handle the rising need for social welfare services.  Local food pantries are stretched beyond their limit to meet the needs of the needs of the new poor.  The suburban poor also face geographic challenges of decentralized living.  Car ownership, an essential part of suburban living, has become costly in the face of weak suburban public transit networks.  Budget cutbacks often target public transit first, impeding access to jobs and other services.  Add to this the environmental challenges of heating and lighting spacious but energy inefficient homes.  There's a chance that suburbs facing the highest share of the new poverty will be the least able to meet the new demands because of economic recession and the spatial retreat of the more affluent.  Just as "white flight" in the 1960s left cities with declining tax revenues and fewer job opportunities, there is a new cycle of flight of the affluent from the central urban centers.  As they retreat, provisions for amenities and essentials such as sanitation and parks, heavily funded by property tax are destined to flounder for those remaining.A study conducted by Sean Reardon and Kendra Bischoff of Stanford University documented the spatial sorting by income that is occurring with the wealthy congregating in exurbs and gentrifying pockets of urban centers.  In 1970, only 15 percent of families in metropolitan areas lived in socio-economic segregated neighborhoods categorized as affluent or poor.  In 2007, that figure 31.7 percent.  Does the new poverty have the potential to loosen the suburbs' historic ties to the Republican Party with its on individualism?

With the 2012 Presidential election over and done with, will President Obama's proposal for tax increases on the wealthy translate into suburban support for increased public revenues and spending?  As the suburbs grapple with poverty in their midst public solutions will begin to have appeal in places where voters have historically trended fiscal conservatism.  In the recent election, suburban voters by and large voted Republican but the new suburban poverty may alter this.  A recent survey by the National Center for Suburban Studies found that 59 percent suburbanites, though suspicious of the President's performance and extremely dissatisfied with their personal economic circumstances, favor a tax increase on the wealth.  The new poverty could loosen the suburbs ties with the Republican Party and their emphasis on individualist solutions.  Gazing into the future, the growth in suburban poverty should raise the alarm that this way of life is over and it's time to rethink the politics of the past.  As President Obama's second term begins to take form, it will be interesting to see what happens.  The recent report issued by the CPAC, condemned the hard core conservative politics favored by the Tea Party wing and favored more socially responsible policies without compromising the core beliefs of the party.  Yet it remains to be seen what happens next.