Street roots., June 21, 2013, Page 4, Image 4

Street roots
June 21, 2013
Local Voices
What people are saying
around Portland about
suburban poverty
“We are seeing more and more calls
coming to City Hall. Our staff get three to
five phone calls a week from people
seeking help of various kinds. Prior to the
recession we did not get any calls like that.
One person called and said she lost her
job three years ago after working for a
company 13-14 years. Her water was
turned off. She thought she had done
everything right, gone back to school,
gotten her masters and so o n .... It’s very
frustration to watch good people suffer. I’ve
never been shy to admit the problem is
here in Beaverton.
“Beaverton has the most homeless
students in the state: 1840 kids. It defies
logic that other cities don’t have a similar
problem. It’s just that the school does a
good job in outreach.... The numbers are
staggering and nobody wants to talk about
it. Not enough people are talking about
because they just don’t know.”
— Denny Doyle.
Beaverton Mayor
‘With prayer - that’s how I get through
this stuff every day. It’s so hard. I don’t like
the situation I'm in. It’s not good at all. It’s
not good for kids at all. It traumatizes them.
They need a stable place to call home.
When you only have some much time in a
certain place because the next family has
to come in. I just get through the day by
the grace of God. It’s hard, but there is a
way.”
— LaJaris Spann
Homeless mother living in shelter in
Milwaukie with her children, ages 6 and 9.
‘The demographics of poverty have
changed over time in Multnomah County
with the migration of poor people from
inner parts of Portland to East County.
That shift has definitely prompted us to
rethink how we apply our resources for
everything from health clinics to the
opening last year of the new East County
Courthouse. We are constantly evaluating
and re-evaluating where the greatest
current needs are for our county residents,
and reprioritizing scarce resources where
they can do the most good.
“We need to be communicating regularly
with our neighboring counties so we can
stay ahead of this trend and be working
together to have the most effective
response for vulnerable communities who
depend on us. When it comes to poverty,
all of us can do more to create family-wage
jobs throughout our community.”
— Jeff Cogen
Multnomah County Chair
‘We used to be concerned about the
ghettoization of poverty in the central city.
... I just think any concentration like this is
not good for any community. But I think
yourie going to see a greater stress on
neighborhoods further out. Greater stress
and demand on schools that are
overcrowded and whose funding is more
compromised or challenged than PPS.
These are communities that not long ago
were part of that suburban ring that was’
generally seen as middle class.
— Douglass Alles
Director of Social Services,
Catholic Charities
See LOCAL VOICES, page 5
5
LOCAL VOICES, fro m page 4
C O N F R O N T IN G S U B U R B A M P O V E R T Y in A M E R IC A
What’s Driving the Rapid Ri e of Poverty in the Suburbs?
2000-2011
PERCENT GROWTH IN
CITY POOR POPULATION
street roots
June 21, 2013
“They are working as hard as they can to
try to build back their economies to get a
job. But the recovery is very slow for those
on the lowest end of the job market. It
takes a much longer time... people are
saying we’re in a recovery, but we don’t
see a recovery for the homeless families
we’re serving. They look and look and look
and they cannot get jobs. I think that is as
true in Multnomah County where we have
very strong services as It is for Columbia or
Clark County. The families that we’re
seeing never go downtown.
“We’re seeing more and more of
Clackamas County and Washington
County with a growing homeless
population, It’s just that there are no dollars
from the fed government that are
increasing. (They) cut both the funding to
address homelessness and to address
energy assistance-and they cut the number
of workers. Everybody is tightening their
belt, more people are getting laid off and
that’s only increasing the problem.”
2011/13,359,850
THE DRIVERS OF
SUBURBAN POVERTY
P o p u la tio n C h a n g e
Percentage change in
population, 2000 to 2010:
A number of
factors help shape
poverty trends
«nertinW:
Im m ig ra tio n
Share o f suburban poor who
are foreign bom. 2000 anti 2010
14.0%
H o u sin g
Share o f housing choice voucher
households in suburbs.
2000 and 2008
47.3%
49.4%
T h e Econom y
Unemployed population In
suburbs, Dec. 2007 to
Dec. 2010
■ ÌB ÌR ÌB W wì
s 3.116.548
Source; US. Census Bureau
Source: The Suburbanization o f Housing
Choice'Voucher Recipients
'. |
-Source. U$. Census Bureau
THE IMPLICATIONS OF
SUBURBAN POVERTY
PeiCint Change in Low Imoine
Students 2005-06 to 2009-10
Slutting poverty -
affects existing
sendees and
infrastructure like:
T r a n s it
Share o f low-income suburbs
with transit access, and share o f
metro jobs reachable via transit
within 9t) minutes. 2011
TRANSIT ACCESS JOB ACCESS
Source; US. Bureau of.L
Source V.5. Dep.iretn«nr o f Education
Source Missed Opportunity
G R A PH IC C O U R TE SY OF T H E B R O O K I N G ^ N ^ T W ^ / C O N F R O N n N ^ U B U R B A t ^ ^ ^ S
SUBURBS, fro m page 1
an increasing shift toward Housing Choice
(Section 8) vouchers, a portable subsidy,
and they have been increasingly used in
the suburbs.
And then you have the role of the
foreclosure crisis recently. Across our
metro areas, about three-quarters of
foreclosures that have happened since the
collapse of the housing market happened
in the suburbs.
Housing dynamics definitely play a role,
but so do jobs. Jobs have continued to
suburbanize over the years. And lower-
wage jobs tend to be even more
suburbanize than higher-wage jobs.
Manufacturing tends to be more
suburbanized, and that was hit hard over
the past decade.
J.Z.: Is there a cultural impact to these
facts? Is there something not good that this is
where it’s happening?
E.K.: With (Section 8) vouchers, there
have been concerted efforts from a policy
perspective to de-concentrate poverty,
especially in particularly distressed and
very poor urban neighborhoods. The idea
is you want to offer mobility so that these
people can move to higher opportunity
areas. Because there are a lot of
challenges that come along with living in
concentrated poverty. It can make it that
much harder to get out of poverty because
many of these communities are facing
higher crime rates, poorer performing
schools, poorer health outcomes - so
there is a benefit to de-concentrating
poverty. The challenge comes when
mobility alone doesn’t necessarily ensure
that these residents are moving to higher
opportunity places. They may not have the
counseling services or information about
where those opportunities are. So even as
the population becomes more
suburbanized, in many cases they’re
ending up in lower-income suburbs that are
less jobs-rich than elsewhere in the region
and may not have those connections to
transit or better schools that one would
hope for.
J.Z.: Do you think there’s anything to the
argument that we’ve become a magnet for
services and that’s why those numbers are
Percentage change in the number
of poor in the Portland/Vancouver
metro area: 2000-2011
Suburban unemployment
population for
Portland metropolitan area
rcent
8 2 ,5 6 8
71.2 percent
35,971
Suburb
climbing?
E.K.: Looking at the magnitude of these
numbers, it’s clearly more than just people
moving into the region. This is a region
that has grown over the decade and the
suburbs did grow faster than the city. The
suburb grew about 18 percent compared to
11 percent in the city. This is a good pace
of growth in the community, but not
enough to explain such rapid increases in
the poor population.
It’s about longer term residents falling
behind economically. And you can look to a
decade that saw two downturns, including
the worst recession since The Great
Depression.
There are also structural changes that
impact these trends. We’ve seen some of
the fastest job growth occurring in
occupations that pay lower wages, that
even if a family is working full-time, it may
not be enough to keep them above the
poverty line.
J.Z.: I f this trend continues for another 10
years, what are we in for?
E.K.: It’s so important to not just look
at the overall changes in the poor
populations, but to understand how these
trends are playing out across communities.
Suburbs increasingly struggle with these
issues alongside cities, yet, our perceptions
and policies haven’t kept pace with how
quickly things have changed. And the
challenge there is that we don’t really
realign programs and policies that are in
place to address poverty in communities,
Dec. 2007
Dec. 2010
than we risk creating the same kind of
challenges in suburban areas that we’ve
been struggling with for decades in urban
areas.
We’ve seen concentrated poverty rise in
cities and suburbs. A third of the poor
population in suburbs live in
neighborhoods where poverty rates are 20
percent or higher. And that’s about the
level where we see the challenges
associated with concentrated poverty begin
to accrue. There should be some feeling of
urgency here in thinking about how do we
better adapt to the new geography of
poverty, especially in a narrative of limited
resources to better meet the needs of both
urban and suburban residents. Thinking
regionally how we can connect these
residents in these communities to the
kinds of opportunities that provide a
pathway out of poverty.
J.Z.: Do you conclude that our anti-poverty
efforts from the federal level have failed us?
E.K.: In the 50 years since Lyndon
Johnson declared a war on poverty, we’ve
learned a lot, from both the successes and
the failures over time, on how to address
the challenges of poverty. The challenge is
that the systems we’ve built up over the
decade to alleviate the poverty in place
have left us with a very fragmented system
and one that was build largely to address
distressed inner-city neighborhoods. So it
can be very difficult to make that system
work and adapt to the landscape of poverty
in the suburban communities.
This is not about how the problem has
costs to working this way, but their scale
shifted. Really this is showing that these
allows them to do this and navigate those
are regional challenges - that suburbs and
barriers so that they’re more effective,
cities alike are struggling with these
efficient and responsive.'
issues, and the resources have not grown
In Chicago, it’s municipalities that came
to keep pace with the need. So how do we
together after the foreclosure crisis and
better deploy those resources to try and
instead of competing with each other, they
overcome the challenges of a fragmented
worked together to attract federal funding
system? From the regional perspective and and have continued to work as a
ending the poverty silo.
collaborative around things such as
neighborhood stabilization and housing,
It’s not just about finding stable housing
for a family, it’s also
transit development
about housing near
and long-term
good education
The geography of poverty planning in how to
opportunities and
revitalize their
has changed, but onr
community in
growing job
perceptions haven't kept
balanced ways.
opportunities so
In Seattle,
workers can connect pace. That can be a barrier,
southern suburban
to the kind of
in
both
understanding
employment that
districts came
where the need is but who
together with the
would help them
work their way out of we are talking about. And
Seattle School
poverty. If not nearby in some communities, there District to address
achievement gaps,
is there
can be real tensions that
and did so with a
transportation? All of
cradle-to-career
these things relate to come out because a
each other. I think
collective impact
community is changing.
the most promising
People can marginalize the model, where they’re
working together and
models we’ve seen in
issue or turn away from the agreeing to the same
addressing this are
issue."
set of metrics and the
ones that try to
overcome the
same set of goals to
fragmentation of the
close the
achievement gaps.
system to ereate a
more scaled approach that cuts across
The program just recently won a Race to
jurisdictional boundaries but also these
the Top award.
The most promising models find ways to
policy silos to really address this at the
work at a better scale. They’re working
scale at which these challenges play out
across jurisdictional and policy silos to
J.Z.: Can you give a few examples o f what
make limited funding stretch further and
you’re talking about?
more strategically address the issues of
the residents they’re serving.
E.K.: There are a number of good
examples. In the Houston region, there’s a
J.Z.: Why was it important for you and
human services provider called
your co-author to create the Action Toolkit?
Neighborhood Centers. This is a $275
E.K.: It’s intended to help people in
million operation in 70 sites across the city
and suburbs. It blends 35 federal programs these communities engage in these issues.
It’s really trying to give people the tools to
with state, local and private investments to
start the conversation in their community
create a really seamless continuum of
and think about creating change to more
services for residents. At the same time, it
effectively address the needs of people.
has the scale to operate across all of those
programs, but really invests in
J.Z.: I ’m assuming you’re talking about
understanding the needs of the different
communities that it’s serving. It takes a lot bringing not ju st government officials, but
to do th a t There are a lot of administrative nonprofits and organizations around the
table. H ow m uch o f this involves b ringing
people who are experiencing poverty to the
table?
E.K.: I think having that community
engagement is very important Given the
scale and scope of need today, this is not
something that’s going to be solved just by
government, or nonprofits or even the
private sector. It’s really going to take
collaborative and integrated solutions. And
for those solutions to be really effective it
is important to have the voice of the
residents and the community that’s really
struggling with these issues at the table.
J.Z.: How much do stereotypes become an
issue or obstacle in dealing with this?
E.K.: That’s a really important point
The geography of poverty has changed, but
our perceptions haven’t kept pace. That
can be a barrier, in both understanding
where the need is but who we are talking
about And in some communities, there
can be real tensions that come out because
a community is changing. People can
marginalize the issue or turn away from
the issue. Whereas when you really look at
the numbers of who is struggling, this is
happening in all communities, including
places people often thought of as immune
to these trends. And it can be invisible in
these communities to a certain extent And
no one place can really tackle this on its
own.
This is a shift that has been playing out
over decades, and the tip that we’ve seen
toward the suburbs happened even before
the Great Rececssion. So even as we hope
to see the poverty numbers move in the
right direction as the recovery numbers
begin to take hold, the idea that this is a
regional challenge will persist
Learn more about suburban poverty and
the Action Toolkit a t www.
confrontingsuburbanpoverty. org
This feature is part of our ongoing coverage
exploring poverty in our suburbs. Look for
more in upcoming editions of Street Roots.
— Jean DeMaster
Executive Director, Human Solutions,
East Multnomah County
‘The dynamic of homelessness is
different in the suburbs than in the city. It’s
about family homelessness. It’s taken HUD
years to start looking at homeless families
as an issue: HUDs focus has been on the
more urban form of homelessness and not
on the suburban form of homelessness. If
you’re a mom, homeless with two kids, the
answer is not Burnside. The answer is
finding someone to double up with, a m p in
t h e f o r e s t, b e g s o m e o n e w h o h a s a n
o u tb u ild in g o r a n u n u s e d R V
4 0 s o / c a n s ta y th e re .
on t h e back
“Their options are fewer. I see more
people who have less education, less work
experience, more disability than I use to. It
is about who is able to cling to a job. We
see more of the three kids, no GED,
unemployed for six months or longer and
harder to place.
“When you look at just the effect of
trauma on children and homelessness on
children, it’s not good. Their lives are
measurably changed and it creates
burdens in the communities in which those
kids grow up. We’re looking at dynamics
going forward that are not good.
“Will there be a wave of reinvestment?
Will there be a moment when we say this
is too much poverty as a society and we’re
going to make an investment to stop it?”
— Martha McLennan
Executive Director Northwest
Alternatives, Clackamas County
“Fundamentally, I think that we have this
incredible quality of life in Portland that we
all love and makes it unique and different
and a place where we all want to live. But
there are people who are not able to
access that economic opportunity or that
quality of life. That’s an indicator that we’re
not getting the job done. We have to have
a regional strategy to make sure we are
investing in the kind of jobs that provide
access for people who are disadvantaged
in different ways. We have to make sure
that we are investing our transportation
and open space dollars in ways that serve
our lowest income communities; that we
are regionally looking at strategies so that
people can live in places appropriate for
their families and the region.”
— Sam Chase
Metro Council, Clackamas, Multnomah
and Washington counties