For First Time, Poverty Shifts to the Suburbs »
Posted by: Karina 1 year, 6 months ago145 Comments Report this Story
Once prized as a leafy haven from the social ills of urban life, the suburbs are now grappling with a new outbreak of an old problem: poverty.
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chitownhustler231 year, 6 months ago
Im from Chicago and that's happening there. Thats because they knocking down all the projects and sending all the people from the project to the burbs. They moving out all the people who dont have money which is really all races because not everyone makes money, and they sending em to the burbs. All the rich folks moving into the city and moving all poor people out of the city. Greed. Mayor Daley is a mobster and thats how he gets down. He only wants rich people in the city while we get lost in the burbs. Now it's a problem. They move all the rich people into the city and raise property taxes and move everyone out. They not solving the problem they just creating a new one.
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tracyruns2621 year, 6 months ago
I live in the City. I work in the city and I want to be near my job - what's wrong with that? Daley is NOT a mobster - Chicago has had a strategic reengineering plan in the works for the gentrification of neighborhoods near the downtown area for years. Unfortunately, when new housing is built, property values rise - I for one certainly want that to happen. Why should subsidized housing exist with lakefront views???? Why shouldn't I live near where I work - particularly since I am willing to pay for it?
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lfergie8121 year, 6 months ago
With all the jobs being moved out of the country, the people that were trained to do them cannot find work and they don't have the money to go back to school for a new line of work. Jobs that require a formal education are being taken by the younger graduates and the older person that lost his job has a long road ahead. Where is the economy heading when these workers cannot find a job that pays a living wage?
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Changingconstant1 year, 6 months ago
The American Made thing would be great except.
1. Not much left that isn't made by or assembled in a foreign country.
2. They can't afford to.
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scanner1 year, 6 months ago
So there you have it folks! 1.2 TRILLION DOLLARS spent in Iraq, $38.5 BILLION, the largest corporate profit ever reported in history made by ExxonMobil, millions of US jobs continuing to be shipped overseas and the US dollar has been replaced by the Euro as the World currency. What has happened to our country??? GO BUSH/CHANEY!!!! NOT....
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newsquew1 year, 6 months ago
This is an evolution since the mid 70's
All communities are cyclical in nature. Much of the housing stock in the "burbs" is aging & maintenance costs grow & taxes increase because govt service costs continues to grow; it's costly because of geographic spread & low density. As U.S. population ages & downsizes, condos in cities, where services are closer, are becoming more attractive to many of $ means.
Much of the moderate VA housing stock in the "burbs" is a post WWII / freeway phenomena. They enabled many blue collar workers to commute greater distances to work. With the shift in the economy, the perceived advantages of distance from the workplace are now more costly. As the article points out, many residents are out of sync with choice of geographic residence & ability.
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DoseASpinoza1 year, 6 months ago
That would be true if American companies weren't shutting plants here and opening them overseas. Automakers and farming come to mind. Check out the web sites for Ford and GM some time. Here, Ford complains that it has trouble in the U.S. because it has to pay for health care and the pensions it promised former workers http://www.ford.com/en/company/about/publicPolicy/ Here they say they have 108 plants worldwide http://www.ford.com/en/company/about/overview.htm. How many are in the U.S.?
Here, GM says it makes its cars in 33 countries http://www.gm.com/company/corp_info/.
NAFTA opened Mexico to U.S. agribusiness, shutting down a lot of small famers there and sending them here to look for work.
So, when you buy American, are you really buying American? Or just supporting American multinationals that send jobs abroad?
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Jayce1 year, 6 months ago
When you dont have money or time to go searching for the American made model then what? The point is that we as a nation have less money to buy housing, food, clothing, and transportation. Dont give me that cycle routine, its bogus and dont try to tell me the money spent in Iraq isnt coming from the hardworking Americans, alot of whom hate the war in Iraq. Those billions of tax dollars are for the purposes of creating a strong job market here at home.
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jeffery11 year, 6 months ago
So, the alternative is an ever lowering of our standard of living. I have many friends who are engineers, who are training their replacements in China and India where there are literally 10s of millions of people who could be trained in short order to take all of the skilled jobs now done in the U.S. by Americans. China and India have very good colleges and can turn out more engineers each year than we have engineers employed. Add to that the many other manufacturing jobs that require little training and you could ultimately devastate the U.S.
You seem to not mind that we are in a race to the very bottom because it fits your ideology. The only ones who benefit from this are management and owners. You won't have to worry about our troublesome wages when they equal those in China and India, with their standard of living.
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Jayce1 year, 6 months ago
I remember a scene in all is quiet on the Wetstern front, it was near then end for the germans and they were eating sausages filled with sawdust, as long as all our money go's to fighting the illegitamate war in Iraq we'll all be eating sawdust.
Increased Productivity? You only end up working an already overworked population into an earlier grave, especialy sice medicare is being cu tin Bush's new budget.
"he alternative is a failed economic system like the U.S.S.R." THE USSR COLLAPSED AFTER A FAILED OCCUPATION IN AFGAHNISTAN!!!!!!!!!
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deathray1 year, 6 months ago
1. Productivity for he American worker is way up.
2. Actually, tax policy has enabled Amercian companies to outsource jobs, and in many cases, get tax breaks for doing so...
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EdInABQ1 year, 6 months ago
I think one of the major problems is that "American" corporations have simply quit being loyal to America. Examples such examples as the Caterpiller corporation moving its headquarters to Bermuda to avoid American taxes. If they are going to receive benefits, e.g. commerce department, military umbrella, our court system, they should work to contribute to he economic health of this country. As it is now, they have no higher conscience than quarterly profits.
This would not be a big deal to accomplish. We simply need to rewrite the rules that govern corporate charters to make them responsible citizens. We have rules of behavior for people that benefit the whole. We should for transnational American corporations, if that is not an oxymoron.
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EdInABQ1 year, 6 months ago
Just to remind you, American worker productivity is at an all time high. And it is greater than most countries in the world.
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Jayce1 year, 6 months ago
The above comment was in response to:
Bush and Cheney also never forced any corporations to send work overseas...people that demand higher rates for minimum wage with less productivity are the cause..labor is the single reason for higher cost of living in this country.
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rrrtx1 year, 6 months ago
You make a good point about people being forced to become more civilized. They have done studies that tracked poor families who reloacted to the suburbs and compared them to families that stayed in a predominantly urban poor environment. The kids in the burbs did dramatically better in school and there was a big decrease in criminal activity.
In the suburbs they will be socialized with a set of values they are unlikely to encounter in a more urban setting.
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ningyo1 year, 6 months ago
absoloutly correct chitown--its the same deal in my medium size city and another i spend a lot of time in--they knock down all the failed projects and guess which direction the criminals go--they can manage the flow to some extent but after that its a guess--in these two cases they made sure to protect the bel air suburbs but the regular working class towns...welll ..one i lived in had a terrifif school reputation..stable irish italian residents--the displaced project residents dont leave..just move along--and in 2-3 years they destroyed these schools--total war zones now--drugs... in the 3rd grade--it made the downtown into a upscale condo brew pub wonderland--but ruined a stable town next door beyond belief--its a problem and i see other cities following this redevelopment template--more social engineering gone horribly wrong
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tommmmie1 year, 6 months ago
I bought my house in the burbs when $50k ann. was a blue collar wage. The corporations here kept laying off and creating new job titles doing the same thing for half the cash. Luckily my house was paid off. I can still live the same with no mortgage to pay. I dont see how any young men and women can make it today. I made the $50k in 1971 in the steel mills. Cars were $4000.00. Houses were $35,000.00. What happened was trickle down economics. The trickle stopped here
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jeffery11 year, 6 months ago
Now, don't get me wrong, because I hate Bush and his administration and their ideology but what is going on has it's roots back with Reagan and through every President since, including Clinton. We are indeed a fascist state because business interests fund our elections, write our laws, and determine policy. Also, most Americans are concerned with getting cheap everything and support the myth of free markets.
In essense if you want to blame someone blame all voters that supported our rise to fascism because it got them cheap stuff.
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EdInABQ1 year, 6 months ago
KelLuv, you hit on one of my sore spots, the Federal Reserve. It was established in 1913, coincidently the same year as income tax. Our national debt was essentially flat until then. You can see it rise expontially from there. We simply allowed the powerful monied banking interests to write into law a monetary system to benfit them. It is a deeply flawed system for creating money and needs to be changed. Lincoln had it exactly right with greenbacks.
And I'm sure you know that the Federal Reserve is neither a government agency no is it a reserve of money. Each of the 12 banks is a privately held corporation, owned by its member banks. And like any corporation, it primarily serves the interests of its shareholders.
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Jayce1 year, 6 months ago
Not that you know of, yet the secret torture cells still exist and you dont seem to mind those.
Bush Embattled? I think you mean hated.
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royal-m1 year, 6 months ago
I heard a very conservative commentator comment on the growing differences between the haves and have nots. It something even many conservatives, at least the smart and honet ones are worried about. However we do it, by virtue of capitalist or socialisy means or perferably by dropping all references to obsolete mentalities we must, spread the money in this economy out, as much for reasons of practical maintenance of our economy as a means of social justice
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Phatman1 year, 6 months ago
If I have to give my money to you, why would I bother making it? Why should oil companies go to the expense and take the risk of finding new sources if Hilary is going to confiscate their profits?
The Soviet Union took 70 years to prove when you confiscate wealth from the rich and spread it among the poor, The poor don't get any wealthier. Wealth just diappears. Russia has more gold than South Africa and more oil than Saudi Arabia, but their ecconomic system based on class envy has made them paupers in the richest country on earth. Under a free market ecconomy at the turn of the last century Russia was a major food exporter. Now they can't grow enough food to feed themselves
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EdInABQ1 year, 6 months ago
Ehhh? The cold war has been over since the early '90s. But I'll strike a deal with you. If we cut off all subsidies and tax breaks to oil companies, they can keep their after-tax profits just as any other business would. You speak of a free market economy. I agree and would like to see one in this country. We can start by eliminating corporate welfare. Then we can take a serious look at what Eisenhower termed the military-industrial complex. Then we can....
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evelyna1 year, 6 months ago
But the price of housing has never really dropped. It goes up higher and higher no matter where it is.
The government has told people globalization is good for the country.
How can they say that when even the College educated people's salaries are flat.
I do not see a big move for people to go to the cities. Everyone I know who has a home in the city will also have a home in a few different locations.
One job is not that secure any more that anyone can expect to stay in one place their whole life.
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royal-m1 year, 6 months ago
Many say much about this is cyclical, brought about by the transition from the industrial wave of technology to the information age and by a global economy and this is partly true
The first wave was agriculture
It replaced the tribal hunter gatherer societies of the older cultures, often ripping the great clans and tribes apart in the process and causing conflict between the cereal based farming cultures and the great clans and tribes they displaced. Agriculture made cities possible. Ancient Greece and Rome were creations of the angricultural waves....
The second wave was the industrial culture, mass societies, mass education, nuclear families and massified centralized economies. This wave made both modern democracy and marxism possible. The British Empire at its height was made possible by this wave as was our own great democracy...
The third wave will be the technology and information age, society will be demassified, specialized and less conformist and so will the economy
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Changingconstant1 year, 6 months ago
Problem is not everyone has access to technology and information nor the ability to acquire it.
If you're worried about going to school without getting robbed for your sneakers, which armed gunmen have started doing in the Detroit area belive it or not, getting access to a computer is like a far away dream.
Total catch 22: If you don't have it, you can't learn it. If you can't learn it you can't use it. If you can't use it you can't afford to get it.
Knowledge is priceless and powerful.
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nostalgia1 year, 6 months ago
I'm seeing the same changes here in the Dallas Ft Worth area.
Some suburbs that were very upscale 20 years ago are in decline
The older suburbs are facing challenges similar to the inner cities - aging infrastructure, deteriorating schools and commercial corridors and inadequate housing stock.
As lower income people moved in, people with more money moved out - further out or back into the inner city where redevelopment was occuring
Many suburbs are now faced with a declining tax base and escalating costs - replacment of deteriorating infrastructure, increases in crime etc
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jenorth1 year, 6 months ago
I live in Mid State New York.
This began here in the mid 80's.
The problem was, that people were leaving the cities, and moving to suburbia. They were willing to make the travel to the cities.
Older families wishing to leave the state for better southern climates, began increasing the values of their homes to better value their assets to the wealth coming to the area.
The Real Estate companies took advantage of this, and re-evaluated the costs of the homes. Within a very short time frame, the local communites found that people from outside the area were willing to spend more for their homes here.
They brought in outside companies from closer to the cities, and had them reset the values of land and property.
In many cases, the value of a home increased by 2 or 3 times the amount.
This caused a persons Taxes to increase.
In 97, I purchased a home on 1 acre for $148,000. Taxes $4,800.
In 2003, it was valued at $245,000. Taxes were $6,300.
Cost of living made me lose wages.
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kedirian1 year, 6 months ago
Do you realize that most of the modern economic ideas came from the School of Economics of the University of Illinois in Chicago? Which is heavily Republican....and just happen to be mostly Jewish...
I gues if you're a REAL, Hotblooded, Flagwaving, Patriotic American, you (and your Party) won't rest until not only all the good jobs but also all the Middle Class and Lower class Americans have ben kicked out of the country...
Oops! I forgot: they would need some po' folks to do the dishes, yard, wash their cars, and clean their streets...
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deathray1 year, 6 months ago
Keridian -
The monetarists (I am assuming you are referring to these economists) are at the University of Chicago; the Univesity of Illinois in Chicago is a completrly different university.
As regards the rest of your post, not all the eonomists at the Chicago school are OF the Chicago School, and not all of them are Jews, either.
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Reedle1 year, 6 months ago
I, for one, am surprised it didn't happen sooner.
Billions and billions on armament, less on schools and hospitals, inflation, the currency dropping non-stop since the begining of the decade and it's 2007 now.
I am everything but surprised unfortunately.
And just with the current oil prices, going back and forth everyday for the suburbs could eventually amounts to digging their own grave...financially!
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youpeopledrivemenuts1 year, 6 months ago
no. We have the meicans for that. Off to france with you.
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TheDemocrat1 year, 6 months ago
In his State of the Union a while ago, George W. Bush claimed that his tax cuts for his wealthy friends have brought the greatest economic prosperity and the lowest unemployment rate in history. I say that he either is the greatest liar since Richard M. Nixon or that he has lost touch with reality.
Adolf Hitler, in the last days of his life, was under heavy medication. Even when the Soviets were at the gates of Berlin, he believed Germany still had many divisions left to defeat the Russians. Is George W. mentally fit to be President of the United States?
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rrrtx1 year, 6 months ago
Always trying to work in a Hitler/Bush comparison like a good leftist? You'll have to do better than that around here. That's a pretty worn out thing to do and just annoys people more than anything else.
Unemployment is under 5% which is about as low as it ever gets. Are you disagreeing with that or something? What are you trying to say?
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essenceofreason1 year, 6 months ago
There is no such thing as poverty in the United States by global standards. If you are hungry, you get food stamps, if you are cold, the govt. gives you energy assistance, if you don't have money, you get welfare, if you are sick, you get Medicaid or free clinic care. Our poor drive cars, get fat on too much food, work under the table while receiving assistance, always have enough money for cigarettes, and if all else fails, deal drugs. The only people who suffer are the children of low-lifes who don't have enough sense to avail themselves of all the free help the government doles out. Homeless shelters? Only for those too lazy to work. Anyone can get a job that pays enough to rent an apartment. Small businesses are dying for employees while the poor have too much "dignity" to take those jobs. Go to France or England if you want to see real poverty. Or to a 3rd world country. Not here.
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EdInABQ1 year, 6 months ago
Yes and of course we do that by consuming 25% of the world's energy production with 5% of the world's population while producing only 20% of the world GNP.
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Jayce1 year, 6 months ago
Essence
You odviousy benefited from the tax cuts, I would beg to differ that alot of people who arent represented here because they cant afford a computer are grossly misrepresented by your comment here.
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redLineRunner1 year, 6 months ago
I dont know where you live, but I highly disagree with your statements.
I moved away from San Francisco because the cost of living was so high. A 2 bedroom house there, four years ago, was renting for $1650 a month, and that was 20 minutes away from downtown (in Daly City for those familiar with the area). You say the poor have enough money for that kind of rent? Even 1 bedroom dorm-like apartments went for around a thousand a month.
Also, San Francisco had a large homeless population. Yes, some of them were not really in need, but many of them couldnt get jobs that would allow them to live or rent anything. Small businesses, fast food, etc didnt pay near enough to get by on.
Sure, our poor doesnt compare to the poor and starving in many third world countries, but you are not being fair.
How many days have you slept on the street, I wonder? Do you truly understand the people you put down?
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Murrah1 year, 6 months ago
I see the gas guzzling top of the line SUVs from the suburbs racing through the city and trying to make their mortgage on their $500,000 homes. They could live in the city for half the cost but want to send their kids to the all new public schools in the suburbs rather than the older schools in the city. I guess both spouses must work nowadays to make ends meet. At least newer homes and apartments are being built in the city, which I love as it helps the tax base. I'm getting too old to worry about status, so I'll stay securely in the city where you get better services such as water/sewer/garbage pick-up,medical,emergency help immediately. We have called 911 3 times in the past 3 years for aging parents involved in accidents and ambulances and fire trucks have shown up each time in the city within 10 minutes!! Not bad down here in the sticks of the Deep South.
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Sieben1 year, 6 months ago
Tracyrun262 Your comments are fascinating to say the least, How "DARE" poor people oops(SUBSIDIZED) people have the ight to have a lake view when working people like yourself are willing to pay for it. Your scary, but not uncommon,thats a typical American idea,but you need to wake up and smell the coffee especially in your city, take a good look as to is buying property and building multi million dollar condo,s They are "NOT" AMERICANS one day you will wake up to find that Chiago is not owned by AMERICANS, but by non ameicans. As for Daly are you that naive ????????????
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tracyruns2621 year, 6 months ago
I work EVERY D@MN DAY - thus IF I Can AFFORD A Lake View, then I should BUY one!!! I am not saying that people shouldn't be subsidized - rather I am saying that they shouldn't be subsidized with "premium" views. I 've spent years in school, years working hard - WHY shouldn't I have the "premium" that I can afford?
Decent SHELTER is a RIGHT - but a LAKE VIEW IS NOT!!! Most of the subsidized housing in the city was adjacent to some of the best neighborhoods or in close proximity to downtown and near the Lake. Why shouldn't working people live NEAR where they work?
I'm guessing YOU don't LIVE in Chicago - so how NAIVE are you? I didn't say that Daley was PRISTINE, just that he is NOT a MOBSTER.
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redLineRunner1 year, 6 months ago
The problem is, the "premium" keeps changing.
In San Francisco, the Mission district was middle to low income. Then at one point a few years ago, someone decided that it was a "prime" location. People with money would buy out 20 unit apartment buildings, evict the families, and knock them down to build a one family dwelling in its place.
We pulled the same thing with the American indians. Move them around till someone values the land they have, then move them again. Why should they get the good land?
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Rodkev1 year, 6 months ago
Essence - good comment - I often see people pay for groceries, seafood, etc with food stamps and then drive off in a high priced SUV. Also my job takes me into some poor peoples homes and what I see is amazing. Huge Plasma TVs in each room ,etc. its unreal
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Karina
Karina Longworth blogs about film at Spout.com. She co-founded the film blog Cinematical in March 2005, whilst simultaneously completing an MA in Cinema Studies ...
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