The Challenge of the Suburbs for the Emerging Poor

A must-read analysis of suburban poverty in the New York Times – incorporating an analysis of how and why the American suburbs emerged:

The public infrastructure built during the New Deal, World War II and the cold war transformed the nation’s built environment. That part of the story is familiar. Government highway programs significantly shortened travel times from surrounding urban centers. Developers leveraged cheap mass-building techniques, G.I. loans to returning veterans, and Federal Housing Authority programs to conjure subdivisions in farm fields from Levittown, N.Y. to Anaheim, Calif.

Working-class men and women could purchase homes with government-backed low-interest mortgages; loans to veterans required no down payments.  These subsidized opportunities increased the number of American homeowners from 40 percent in 1940 to 62 percent in 1960.

After the successful attack in the 1970s and 80s on government programs in general and taxes in particular, the suburbs now face the consequences:

Could the rising tide of suburban poverty threaten the core assumptions of suburban life? Many suburbanites will no longer be able to insulate themselves from problems they used to associate with the inner city: poverty, social disorder, drugs and violence. What will this mean for the new suburban poor, for suburban municipalities and for the United States?

Certainly the suburban poor face a different dynamic than urban inner-city dwellers:

The suburban poor also face the geographic challenges of decentralized living. Car ownership is a costly, brittle lifeline in suburbs with weak public transport networks. Budget cuts often target public transportation first, hindering access to jobs, as well as services. Suburban poverty also throws into bold relief the environmental burden of the suburbs; poor people are faced with the challenge of heating and lighting spacious but energy-inefficient single-family homes.

Then the politics.   Article by Lisa McGirr, a professor of history at Harvard and the author of “Suburban Warriors: The Origins of the New American Right.”