Via Brookings.
As the number of people in poverty decreased in the D.C. region’s cities over the past decade, that population exploded in the suburbs.
Using data from the American Community Survey, Elizabeth Kneebone at the Brookings Institute shows the extent that poverty has moved from cities and rural areas to suburbs in a concentrated way.
Between 2000 and 2008-2012, Kneebone’s analysis shows that “the number of distressed neighborhoods in the United States—defined as census tracts with poverty rates of 40 percent or more—climbed by nearly three-quarters.”
“As distressed neighborhoods and their residents increased in number, so, too, did high-poverty neighborhoods—or census tracts with poverty rates between 20 and 40 percent,” she wrote.
The entire Washington-Arlington-Alexandria metropolitan area saw a a 1.7 percent decrease in the number of distressed neighborhoods, defined here as a Census tract, and a 2.2 percent increase in high-poverty neighborhoods between 2000 and 2008-2012. Overall the region as a whole saw a 24.5 percent increase in its poor population during this time period.
But in the D.C.’s region cities — defined by Brookings as D.C., Arlington County and Alexandria city — there was a 3.5 percent decrease in the poor population during this period, from 134,326 people to 129,644 people. In the suburbs — defined here as the remainder of the metropolitan area outside D.C., Arlington County and Alexandria city — the poor population increased by 42.2 percent from 2000 to 2008-2012. That includes an increase in the number of high-poverty neighborhoods, from 11 in 2000 to 43 between 2008-2012.
The number of distressed neighborhoods in D.C., Arlington County and Alexandria city dropped only slightly between 2000 and 2008-2012, from 20 to 19. In the 2008-2012 period, the primary cities also contained more high-poverty neighborhoods (69) than the suburbs (43).
These numbers will not surprise anyone when you look at how housing costs in D.C. and its surrounding urban areas has increased over the past decade. According to the DC Fiscal Policy Institute, “the median rent in D.C. for a one-bedroom apartment has risen by 50 percent beyond inflation over the past decade, from $735 in 2000 to $1,100 in 2010.” This happened while D.C. “lost more than half of its low-cost rental units and 72 percent of its low-value homes.” The median income for a four-person family in D.C. is now $100,408, according to new numbers from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
Brookings admits that this definition of “suburb” is imperfect and a compromise: “The ‘suburban’ aggregate used throughout much of this analysis represents a compromise that distinguishes within each metropolitan area between large, broadly recognized jurisdictions and smaller places that are more likely to lack the scale and capacity necessary to address some of the challenges of rising poverty.”
