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12. The Persistence of Concentrated Poverty Neighborhoods

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The Changing American Neighborhood
This chapter is in the book The Changing American Neighborhood
25912THE PERSISTENCE OF CONCENTRATED POVERTY NEIGHBORHOODSJesus is memorably quoted as having said that “the poor you shall always have w it h you.”1 Not only have the poor always been present, but for many centuries they and their neighborhoods also made up the greater part of most cities. As urban historian Charles Duff puts it, until relatively recently “cities were squalid places with isolated bits of beauty.”2 Despite the growth of the middle class in the nineteenth century, large parts of most Euro pean and American cities re-mained crowded, disease-ridden areas of abject poverty, as is still true in many cities in the Global South today. As we described earlier, at the beginning of the twentieth century millions of people in American cities were still desperately poor, living in the “filthy and rotten tenements” that Jane Addams, Jacob Riis, and other reformers of the time vividly described.3With the increasing prosperity of the twentieth century and the transforma-tion of society from the 1930s through the 1960s, the number of poor people in the United States dropped sharply, from the “one-third of a nation ill-housed, ill-clad, and ill-nourished” of Franklin Roose velt’s second inaugural address in 1937 to 12 percent, or one-eighth of the nation, by 1969.4 Impressive as that was, the distribution of poverty remained sharply unequal, with 27 percent of the Black and other nonwhite population below the poverty level, compared to only 8  percent of the white population.5 Since then the total poverty rate has fluctu-ated only narrowly, rising during recessions and falling during periods of recov-ery. In 2019 despite ten years of economic recovery, it had dropped only slightly, to 10.5 percent. Much of this decline was attributable to the substantial drop in Black and Latinx poverty rates after the end of the Great Recession, as can be
© 2023 Cornell University Press, Ithaca

25912THE PERSISTENCE OF CONCENTRATED POVERTY NEIGHBORHOODSJesus is memorably quoted as having said that “the poor you shall always have w it h you.”1 Not only have the poor always been present, but for many centuries they and their neighborhoods also made up the greater part of most cities. As urban historian Charles Duff puts it, until relatively recently “cities were squalid places with isolated bits of beauty.”2 Despite the growth of the middle class in the nineteenth century, large parts of most Euro pean and American cities re-mained crowded, disease-ridden areas of abject poverty, as is still true in many cities in the Global South today. As we described earlier, at the beginning of the twentieth century millions of people in American cities were still desperately poor, living in the “filthy and rotten tenements” that Jane Addams, Jacob Riis, and other reformers of the time vividly described.3With the increasing prosperity of the twentieth century and the transforma-tion of society from the 1930s through the 1960s, the number of poor people in the United States dropped sharply, from the “one-third of a nation ill-housed, ill-clad, and ill-nourished” of Franklin Roose velt’s second inaugural address in 1937 to 12 percent, or one-eighth of the nation, by 1969.4 Impressive as that was, the distribution of poverty remained sharply unequal, with 27 percent of the Black and other nonwhite population below the poverty level, compared to only 8  percent of the white population.5 Since then the total poverty rate has fluctu-ated only narrowly, rising during recessions and falling during periods of recov-ery. In 2019 despite ten years of economic recovery, it had dropped only slightly, to 10.5 percent. Much of this decline was attributable to the substantial drop in Black and Latinx poverty rates after the end of the Great Recession, as can be
© 2023 Cornell University Press, Ithaca

Chapters in this book

  1. Frontmatter i
  2. Contents vii
  3. Preface ix
  4. Acknowledgments xv
  5. Introduction 1
  6. 1. Why Good Neighborhoods? 13
  7. 2. A Dynamic Systems Approach to Understanding Neighborhood Change 32
  8. 3. The Rise of the American Urban Neighborhood, 1860–1950 51
  9. 4. The American Urban Neighborhood under Siege, 1950–1990 70
  10. 5. The Polarization of the American Neighborhood, 1990–2020 99
  11. 6. Neighborhoods as Markets 122
  12. 7. Neighborhoods in an Era of Demographic Change and Economic Restructuring 145
  13. 8. The Continuing yet Changing Significance of Race 167
  14. 9. Agents of Neighborhood Change 189
  15. 10. Deconstructing Gentrification 212
  16. 11. The Crisis of the Urban Middle Neighborhood 234
  17. 12. The Persistence of Concentrated Poverty Neighborhoods 259
  18. 13. Neighborhood Change in the Suburbs 280
  19. 14. The Theory and Practice of Neighborhood Change 305
  20. Notes 323
  21. Index 361
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https://doi.org/10.1515/9781501770906-015

Chapters in this book

  1. Frontmatter i
  2. Contents vii
  3. Preface ix
  4. Acknowledgments xv
  5. Introduction 1
  6. 1. Why Good Neighborhoods? 13
  7. 2. A Dynamic Systems Approach to Understanding Neighborhood Change 32
  8. 3. The Rise of the American Urban Neighborhood, 1860–1950 51
  9. 4. The American Urban Neighborhood under Siege, 1950–1990 70
  10. 5. The Polarization of the American Neighborhood, 1990–2020 99
  11. 6. Neighborhoods as Markets 122
  12. 7. Neighborhoods in an Era of Demographic Change and Economic Restructuring 145
  13. 8. The Continuing yet Changing Significance of Race 167
  14. 9. Agents of Neighborhood Change 189
  15. 10. Deconstructing Gentrification 212
  16. 11. The Crisis of the Urban Middle Neighborhood 234
  17. 12. The Persistence of Concentrated Poverty Neighborhoods 259
  18. 13. Neighborhood Change in the Suburbs 280
  19. 14. The Theory and Practice of Neighborhood Change 305
  20. Notes 323
  21. Index 361
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