In relation to this blog, I thought her article was a great follow up to Richard Florida's January 3rd NY Times article that asks if life is better in red states, which I commented on in my initial post on this subject. Florida's article offers the benefits offered by the policies employed by both red and blue states, as well as the inherent issues that associated with each, including the high cost of housing in blue states and the sprawl and low tax revenue often seen in red states.
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Semuels' focuses on Gwinnett County, a suburban county centered about 25 miles northeast of Atlanta. (As an ATLien studying transportation and urban planning, it is bittersweet that so many of these sorts of analyses and articles seem to be set in Atlanta). Semuels swiftly shifts in and out of profiling some of Gwinnett County's families and individuals in poverty and provides statistics about poverty at the national, local, and regional levels. Perhaps most poignant of these stats is the fact that "between 2000 and 2011, Atlanta's suburban poor population increased by 159 percent while the number of poor in the city remained essentially flat." In an ironic and sad twist, life has come full-circle for those who decades ago fueled "white flight" in part to find homogeneic, gated-community harmony. This irony is emphasized by a quote from the article, when a resident claims that she "doesn't let the kids go outside," a statement more typically associated with the "perils" of the inner-city.
From a policy standpoint, the most important points made in the article stem from the fact that "many of these communities lack the infrastructure, safety-net supports, and resources to address the growing needs of a poor population." Inner cities by nature have denser street networks than suburbs. This tighter spacing, often in a grid network, makes it easier to provide health-care, education, and resources, as agencies and non-profits can have more efficient routes to see clients and provide benefits. This closer spacing also makes it more likely that they will be near others they know, trust, and can lean on.
Semuels' provides reasons as to why poverty rates in the suburbs have been increasing. These include housing costs, and a disconnect between where jobs and housing are located, the skills needed to qualify for these jobs, the wages those jobs provide, and the transportation options available to access them. With gentrification, housing prices increase and good paying jobs follow millennials closer to the core. This leaves the poor with higher housing costs and often a dearth of jobs for which they are qualified (educating the poor is another blog post entirely), which means they must travel great distances to jobs in the suburbs.
How do these individuals access these jobs, given that in 2013 AAA estimated that owning a small sedan costs $7,000 annually? Yes, owning a car is expensive and often consumes more of a household's budget than estimated, when the cost of fuel, which although currently relatively cheap has been more expensive much of the last decade, maintenance, insurance, registration, and the actual cost of the vehicle is included. These costs impact the poor and middle class even more significantly. Most of you reading this probably grew up in a suburban environment. Just consider the time, coordination, and uncertainty needed to keep a job in your suburban hometown if you didn't own a car. There might be a bus route nearby, but you will likely have to walk through a neighborhood with poor connectivity (see this, this, and this as to why the suburbs negatively impact walkability), or wait a long time for your bus due to long headways. Said simply, most of the time, it is nearly impossibly to move reliably within suburbs using transit. Thus, if you can't afford a car and have to walk or take transit, you likely spend hours each day commuting to a relatively low paying job.
Why is transit service typically so poor in the suburbs? The reasons are numerous, but for the sake of simplicity let's boil it down to the following:
- Suburbs typically have poor connectivity, decreasing the ridership catchment at transit stops
- Many suburbanites are not as familiar with using transit and have grown up almost in an almost exclusively autocentric household
- Suburban counties have less comprehensive funding mechanisms to support transit
The last bullet brings this post's update full circle. Semuels' article shows that the number of poor in the suburbs is increasing, which means that elected officials have to new challenges to solve and the economy in these locales is impacted in different ways. The ancestors of those who long-ago moved to the suburbs to escape the mid-century inner city blight seen now find themselves again adjacent to pockets of poverty. Florida's NY Times article relates as elected officials must make decisions (red v blue) to solve new and unfamiliar problems. Semuels article The Atlantic provides a relevant and personal foray into the results of these decisions.
Thanks for reading and I hope you have a good weekend!
Great post! it’s a topic that I have been reading up on over the past few years.
ReplyDeleteI recently bought a house in a suburb that has seen a large increase in poverty as well as an aging population that may not be able to drive as easily (note: I wanted to live in a walkable urban area but it was farther from work and more than we could afford). The city recently completed a planning study that argued for increased density, walkability, and transit to help serve the lower income and elderly residents as well as make the area more attractive to young professionals who are drawn to walkable urban areas. However, the building codes/ zoning ordinances do not currently allow for much of the proposed changes (i.e. large parking requirements, density restrictions, mandated setbacks, limits to mixed use buildings etc).
There are some suburbs that have really excelled at building walkable areas around transit hubs connecting to urban areas such as in the DC area. These seem to be mostly higher income areas so it still doesn't quite help out the poor. However, if this model was copied by a sufficient number of suburban locations the premium paid to live in one of these locations would decrease making it more affordable for those who would most benefit from such a location. Although, as poverty increases, the decrease in tax money makes it increasing difficult for suburbs to build the infrastructure.
Another way to fight the problem could be to provide more affordable housing in urban areas. If there is sufficient density within an urban area the supply and demand for housing should balance out and provide everyone with relatively affordable housing. However, there are many NIMBYs that like to fight any attempt at creating denser neighborhoods with more housing due to fear of having too much traffic, fewer places to park their vehicles, or having lower income citizens live near them. But even if urban density is built up the large housing stock available in close suburban areas won’t just disappear and will continue to drop in value as more people move either to outer suburbs or back to the city. Making the suburbs even more attractive to the working poor.
The only real long term solution I see to the problem is to fight poverty itself. Over the past few decades so much wealth has accumulated in the hands of the extremely wealthy at the expense of the middle class. Up until the 70s or so a family could earn enough on a single income to support a family. Today it requires two incomes with possibly multiple jobs for each parent in order to do so. During the same time the productivity of the American worker has increased rapidly providing more income to their employer for each hour worked. However, this increase in productivity has been used to inflate executive salaries and stock prices which overwhelmingly benefit the wealthy instead of supporting the very people who made it possible. Without a strong middle class we will continue to see increases in poverty and a poor job market due to lower demand for products and services.
Many of the policies that could begin to alleviate this issue are being fought tooth and nail by the Republicans. The America Cares Act provides a wonderful safety net that can help prevent increases in poverty due to outsized medical bills. But due to opposition many Red States have not accepted the federally funded Medicaid expansion leaving some of the poorest residents without access to affordable healthcare. Additionally, an increase in the minimum wage is far overdue which would put more money in the pockets of the poor and has been shown to increase overall economic activity. A more radical idea, that would have great far reaching benefits, is for a Basic Income Guarantee where everyone in the US (regardless of need) is provided with a flat amount of funds to ensure the basic necessities of living are met. However, it would be a long shot in today’s economic climate to get anything resembling this passed in the US.