Stop Building Homes, Stop Suburban Poverty

"Ed Goetz, a housing policy specialist at the University of Minnesota, said the suburban dream often fades for poor families because old support systems are severed, and access to programs and services — day care, after-school programs, job training, drug treatment and counseling — are greatly hampered by shear distance.

'The isolation can be both physical and emotional,' Goetz said. 'The frequency of interaction with neighbors declines, social networks break down. We haven't considered that carefully enough.' Goetz said studies show a surprising willingness among the suburban poor to return to urban, high-poverty neighborhoods where services are more accessible and mass transit more convenient.

But the suburban diaspora of America's poor is unlikely to subside, most experts agree, posing complex challenges for policymakers. If anything, added Alan Berube, a housing expert at the Brookings Institution, suburban poverty will grow not just from in-migration of the poor but from within as the financial crisis "pushes middle-class families down the economic ladder.'"