The Growing Problem of Suburban Poverty

This piece from Governing looks at the growing trend and what some suburban areas are trying to do about it.

"Poverty is on the rise in suburban areas nationwide. Some of it is pure demographics: More people are moving to the suburbs, so more poor people live in the suburbs. But there's more to it than that. The housing crisis and recession have hit suburbs harder than other places, which means foreclosures and unemployment have an outsize impact on suburban communities. By 2008, according to the Brookings Institution, the nation's suburbs were home to the largest and fastest-growing poor population in the nation.

That's making it doubly hard to deal with the problem. For one, the simple rise in poverty rates puts a strain on groups that administer services to the suburban poor. But many suburbs don't have the capacity to handle the poor populations they already have, much less an increase in those numbers."