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In "Et in Arcadia Ego," The Economist details the
latest boom unfolding in America's sunbelt -- in unemployment, charity
cases, and tent cities:
The suburban sunbelt is the scene of
terrible poverty
THE statistics are worthy of Detroit or
Newark: almost half the children in the local schools are from families poor
enough to be eligible for free or cut-price lunches; a tenth of households
qualify for food stamps; one in eight residents gets free meals from soup
kitchens or food banks; perhaps one in 12 has suffered a recent spell of
homelessness. Yet the spot in question is not a benighted rust-belt city, but
Sarasota, Florida—a balmy, palm-studded resort town on the shores of
the Gulf of Mexico.
The Sarasota-Bradenton metropolitan
area, a two-county sprawl of condominiums, marinas and retirement homes, saw
the proportion of people living below the poverty line rise by more between
2007 and 2009 than any other big city in America, from 9.2% to 13.7%,
according to the Census Bureau. Nor is Sarasota an aberration. All the other
metropolitan areas that saw jumps of four points or more are also formerly
fast-growing southern and western cities: Bakersfield, California; Boise,
Idaho; Greenville, South Carolina; Lakeland, Florida and Tucson, Arizona.
Arizona now has the second highest poverty rate in the nation, after
Mississippi. The especially severe housing bust that ended the breakneck
growth of these sunbelt cities has brought with it deprivation on a scale
they have never previously encountered and are struggling to address.
Poor inner cities in the Midwest and
north-east still have higher overall poverty rates, but in recent years,
notes Elizabeth Kneebone of the Brookings Institution, a think-tank, poverty
has grown fastest in the suburbs, especially in the sunbelt. A third of
America’s poor, she notes, now live in suburban areas. Many cities in
the sunbelt, adds Margaret Simms of the Urban Institute, are suffering from
what it calls “double trouble”, meaning a plunge both in property
values and employment, with concomitant jumps in poverty. This trend is
significant, says Scott Allard of the University of Chicago, since it is
harder for the poor to seek assistance and to hunt for jobs amid the suburban
sprawl.
Click here to read the rest.
Michael
J. Panzner
Editor, Financialarmageddon.com
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