Poverty rate growing in N.J.’s working-class towns, census data shows, By Stephen Stirling and Eric Sagara, November 3, 2011, Star-Ledger: “Danny Bryant has lived in solidly blue-collar Carteret for 46 of his 47 years. During that time, just about everybody worked. Jobs weren’t glamorous, but they put food on the table. The houses were modest, tidy and well-kept. Now Bryant, a former pool supply worker, survives on the $600 his girlfriend brings home every other week from her fast-food job and $200 a month in food stamps after being laid off last year. And his section of Carteret is not the town it used to be. There are a lot of Danny Bryants there now. ‘If you live here and are poverty stricken, it’s hard to get help,’ Bryant said. ‘There’s a big line between being middle class and being poor. Everybody is struggling.’ More than one in four of the residents in Bryant’s neighborhood in the Middlesex County borough now live below the poverty line. A study released today by the Brookings Institution shows the poverty rate in New Jersey’s working-class communities like Carteret, Union Township and Garfield has grown substantially in the last decade…”
Pockets of severe poverty intensify and spread around Tampa Bay area, By Jeff Harrington and Darla Cameron, November 6, 2011, St. Petersburg Times: “Derrick Lewis lives in the hardest-hit slice of the Tampa Bay area. The poverty rate here jumped nearly threefold from 15 percent to 40 percent over the past decade, the cusp of what’s considered extreme poverty. Lewis, 50, considers himself lucky. He juggles a nighttime security guard job and a morning job making biscuits at Hardee’s, enough income to pay his landlady $250 to $275 every couple of weeks. Around the corner from his one-bedroom apartment lies a couple of boarded-up apartments, vacated after their latest residents were caught selling drugs. ‘I feel bad for them,’ he says. ‘You see it in tough times. A lot of people that never would have thought of doing something illegal before. Instead of being homeless, they do what it takes.’ This isn’t the inner city. It’s the suburbs. In a far-reaching analysis released Thursday, the Brookings Institution compared poverty rates in U.S. Census tracts in 2000 to their average poverty rates between 2005 and 2009. Among the report’s chief conclusions: Poverty is growing twice as fast in suburbs than in cities…”
Bay Area’s five poorest neighborhoods show up in study, By Matt O’Brien, November 3, 2011, San Jose Mercury News: “The Bay Area has fewer concentrations of extreme poverty than a decade ago, according to a report released Thursday. That may not console the people living in the Bay Area’s five poorest neighborhoods. In five census tracts, four of them in the East Bay, more than 40 percent of residents live below the poverty line, according to the Brookings Institution report. The neighborhoods are in downtown Berkeley, uptown Oakland, Alameda Point and parts of West Oakland and San Francisco’s Hunters Point. Two are business districts where many homeless congregate; one, the area around Oakland’s Frank H. Ogawa Plaza, has been central in the Occupy protests. Others are residential areas with well-kept public housing. The Uptown Oakland area, which includes some of downtown and the plaza, is a study in contrasts: Despite a glut of new condos meant to attract young professionals, more than 40 percent of residents live below the poverty line — which for a single person means making less than $11,000 a year…”
Poor Chattanooga neighborhoods have more than doubled in 9 years, By Judy Walton, November 4, 2011, Chattanooga Times Free Press: “The number of extremely poor neighborhoods in Chattanooga and the region — those with poverty rates above 40 percent — more than doubled from 2000 to 2009, a new report shows. The number of people living in the poorest census tracts in the Chattanooga region grew by more than 4,200, to 10,535, in the period, according to ‘The Re-Emergence of Concentrated Poverty,’ from the Brookings Metropolitan Policy Program. The Washington, D.C.-based Brookings Institute is a liberal-leaning nonprofit that researches social issues. ‘We lost ground against concentrated poverty in the 2000s,’ Elizabeth Kneebone, a senior research associate at Brookings and lead author of the report, said in a news release. ‘More people are living in areas that are extremely poor, and concentrated poverty now affects a greater swath of communities than in the past.’ In the release, Kneebone noted that the federal poverty level in 2010 was $22,314 annually for a family of four…”
Extreme poverty spikes in U.S., study finds, By Sabrina Tavernise, November 3, 2011, New York Times: “The number of people living in neighborhoods of extreme poverty grew substantially, by one third, over the past decade, according to a new report, erasing most of the gains from the 1990’s when concentrated poverty declined. More than 10 percent of America’s poor now live in such neighborhoods, up from 9.1 percent in the beginning of the decade, an addition of more than 2 million people, according to the report by the Brookings Institution, an independent research group. Extreme poverty – defined as areas where at least 40 percent of the population lives below the federal poverty line, which in 2010, was $22,300 for a family of four – is still below its 1990 level, when 14 percent of poor people lived in such areas. The report analyzed Census Bureau income data from 2000 to 2009, the most recent year for which there is comprehensive data…”
Poorest poor in US hits new record: 1 in 15 people, By Laura Wides-Munoz (AP), November 3, 2011, Deseret News: “The ranks of America’s poorest poor have climbed to a record high – 1 in 15 people – spread widely across metropolitan areas as the housing bust pushed many inner-city poor into suburbs and other outlying places and shriveled jobs and income. New census data paint a stark portrait of the nation’s haves and have-nots at a time when unemployment remains persistently high. It comes a week before the government releases first-ever economic data that will show more Hispanics, elderly and working-age poor have fallen into poverty. In all, the numbers underscore the breadth and scope by which the downturn has reached further into mainstream America…”
Poverty’s grip grows in central Ohio, By Mark Ferenchik and Rita Price, November 3, 2011, Columbus Dispatch: “The number of Columbus-area neighborhoods gripped by poverty continues to rise, and not only in the central city but in outlying areas as well. A report released today by the Brookings Metropolitan Policy Program says the number of census tracts showing extreme poverty in the city of Columbus increased from eight to 24 over 10 years. ‘That’s a very significant uptick,’ said Alan Berube, one of the report’s authors. The report says the number of extremely poor neighborhoods – those with poverty rates of 40 percent or higher – has jumped since 2000, with the population in those neighborhoods rising by one-third…”
Brookings report finds poverty-stricken neighborhoods jump dramatically in Cleveland area, By Dave Davis, November 3, 2011, Cleveland Plain Dealer: “The number of people living in extremely poor neighborhoods has grown faster in Northeast Ohio suburbs than elsewhere in the nation, poverty figures released Thursday by the Brookings Institution show. By the end of 2009, 13 Northeast Ohio suburban neighborhoods had poverty rates of at least 40 percent, Brookings researchers found. (See the full document below). Ten years earlier there was none. With an 8 percentage point increase, Cleveland’s suburbs claimed the nation’s fourth highest rate of growth of the poor in poverty-stricken neighborhoods…”
Toledo area poverty rise worst in U.S., By Mark Reiter, November 3, 2011, Toledo Blade: “The concentration of poor people living in Toledo’s poorest neighborhoods grew by more than 15 percent in the past decade, giving the metropolitan area the unenviable distinction of No. 1 among American’s largest metro areas. More than 46,000 people reside in neighborhoods with poverty rates of 40 percent or higher in the metro area — which includes Lucas, Fulton, Ottawa, and Wood counties — with all but one of the 22 poor neighborhoods located within the borders of Toledo, according to a Brookings Institution study of the 100 largest metropolitan areas in the country…”
