brookings | On May 20, the Metropolitan Policy Program at Brookings will host an event marking the release of Confronting Suburban Poverty in America, co-authored
by Elizabeth Kneebone and Alan Berube. They, along with some of the
nation’s leading anti-poverty experts, including Luis Ubiñas, president
of the Ford Foundation, and Bill Shore, founder and CEO of Share our
Strength, will join leading local innovators from across the country to
discuss a new metropolitan opportunity agenda for addressing suburban
poverty, how federal and state policymakers can deploy limited resources
to address a growing challenge, and why building on local solutions
holds great promise.
Synopsis:
It has been nearly a half century since President Lyndon Johnson
declared his War on Poverty, setting in motion development of America’s
modern safety net. Back in the 1960s, tackling poverty “in place” meant
focusing resources in the inner city and in isolated rural areas. The
suburbs were home to middle- and upper-class families—affluent commuters
and homeowners who did not want to raise kids in the city. But the
America of 2012 is a very different place. Poverty is no longer just an
urban or rural problem but increasingly a suburban one as well.
In Confronting Suburban Poverty in America, Elizabeth
Kneebone and Alan Berube take on the new reality of metropolitan poverty
and opportunity in America. For decades, suburbs added poor residents
at a faster pace than cities, so that suburbia is now home to more poor
residents than central cities, composing over a third of the nation’s
total poor population. Unfortunately, the antipoverty infrastructure
built over the past several decades does not fit this rapidly changing
geography. The solution no longer fits the problem. Kneebone and Berube
explain the source and impact of these important developments; moreover,
they present innovative ideas on addressing them.
The spread of suburban poverty has many causes, including job sprawl,
shifts in affordable housing, population dynamics, immigration, and a
struggling economy. As the authors explain in Confronting Suburban Poverty in America, it
raises a number of daunting challenges, such as the need for more (and
better) transportation options, services, and financial resources. But
necessity also produces opportunity—in this case, the opportunity to
rethink and modernize services, structures, and procedures so that they
better reflect and address new demands. This book embraces that
opportunity.
The authors put forward a series of workable recommendations for
public, private, and nonprofit leaders seeking to modernize poverty
alleviation and community development strategies and connect residents
with economic opportunity. They describe and evaluate ongoing efforts in
metro areas where local leaders are learning how to do more with less
and adjusting their approaches to address the metropolitan scale of
poverty—for example, collaborating across sectors and jurisdictions,
using data and technology in innovative ways, and integrating services
and service delivery. Kneebone and Berube combine clear prose, original
thinking, and illustrative graphics in Confronting Suburban Poverty in America to paint a new picture of poverty in America as well as the best ways to combat it.
