To look around Northeast Ohio, the poorest areas seem easy to pick out. Cleveland, East Cleveland, the near-west side of Cleveland come to mind, all beset by increasing poverty levels, foreclosures, declining employment bases. Places like Westlake, Strongsville, Mayfield Heights, meanwhile, retain the illusion of happy middle class life with picket fences and trimmed lawns. We all know that’s not true — there’s poverty everywhere, foreclosures everywhere — but new data shows that the problems in picket-fence land might be worse than we all thought.
The New York Times reports that while cities experienced a 26-percent increase in poverty levels, suburban levels climbed by 53 percent. The report, which focuses on NEO, shines a light not only on the existence of increasingly poor populations in the outer-ring suburbs like Parma Heights, but the problems these cash-strapped suburbs face in providing services to the needy. 60 percent of Cleveland’s poor, according to the report, now reside in the suburbs.
The whole piece is well worth your time. A short excerpt below.
As a result, suburban municipalities — once concerned with policing, putting out fires and repairing roads — are confronting a new set of issues, namely how to help poor residents without the array of social programs that cities have, and how to get those residents to services without public transportation. Many suburbs are facing these challenges with the tightest budgets in years.
“The whole political class is just getting the memo that Ozzie and Harriet don’t live here anymore,” said Edward Hill, dean of the Levin College of Urban Affairs at Cleveland State University.
This shift has helped redefine the image of the suburbs. “The suburbs were always a place of opportunity — a better school, a bigger house, a better job,” said Scott Allard, an associate professor at the University of Chicago who focuses on social welfare policy and poverty. “Today, that’s not as true as the popular mythology would have us believe.”
This article appears in Oct 26 – Nov 1, 2011.
Thanks for bringing the article to everyone’s attention. One quibble: I don’t really think Parma Heights can be considered an “outer ring suburb. It’s surrounded by Parma, which directly borders Cleveland, and you don’t even have to get on the highway to go downtown from there. Westlake and Strongsville would be closer to the idea.
It bugs me too, when East Siders say they’re going “Downtown” when they visit the Art Museum. Downtown is Downtown and University Circle is its own unique place as well.
As an Urban Studies major at CSU, this is quite interesting to see in the suburbs. Usually we usually view the city of Cleveland and the inner-ring suburbs (e.g. Euclid, East Cleveland, Cleveland Heights, Lakewood, etc.) as having residents below the poverty line, which they do. It’s interesting that the outer-ring suburbs are also experiencing their set of “urban” issues as well. I find it funny how these very same outer-ring suburbs thought they were invincible to the challenges that inner-city or inner-ring communities face, when in reality according to the above article, they’re not. All cities and suburbs will face these challenges, or some sort of challenge one way or another!
I have to tell you right now that the floor is about to fall out from under us.This article only touches on the surface of a problem called Zombies. I assume because the mortgages look good right now but are actually going to die (like zombies that are dead but walking around) I know of many homeowners who are looking at the home across the street for half of what they owe on their own home and saying to themselves “hmmm, why not buy that home while I still have good credit and walk over there and let my home go back to the bank?” The zombies are everywhere and I expect a huge new wave of foreclosures. USE RED Diamond Realty lease option homes to avoid having this problem. I expect 5 million homes nationally to go into foreclosure that are not even on the horizon right now.
All the more reason to vote for SB5 (Issue 2). Communities need to be able to have better control of their expenses.