Concentrated Poverty Spikes in Metro Detroit
Niraj Warikoo, Detroit Free Press 8:01 p.m. EDT
August 23, 2015
The huge increase in concentrations of poverty among minorities has concerned civic leaders who say it has the potential to lead to unrest as seen in Ferguson and Baltimore
Concentrated poverty has exploded in metro Detroit over the past 15 years, especially among minority groups, according to a new report.
In Wayne County, half of all its residents who are poor now live in areas of high concentration of poverty, the second-highest rate in the U.S. In Detroit, the number of census tracts where more than 40% of people are in poverty more than tripled, from 51 to 184. And the high concentrations of poverty are now pushing out to Detroit suburbs such as Warren, Dearborn, Oak Park and Southfield.
Titled "Architecture of Segregation: Civil Unrest, the Concentration of Poverty, and Public Policy," the study by the Century Foundation analyzed census data to look at changes in the concentration of poverty in metro areas across the U.S.
The huge increase has alarmed researchers and civic leaders in metro Detroit, who say such concentrations can lead to hopelessness that has the potential to explode, as it did over the past year in places like Ferguson, Mo., a black-majority suburb of St. Louis, and Baltimore.
"It has just an unbelievable impact," said Shirley Stancato, president and CEO of New Detroit, a group formed after the 1967 riot in Detroit to address issues of race and class in metro Detroit. "It's something we all should be paying close attention to.
"Concentrated poverty is one of the biggest issues associated with civil unrest," Stancato said. "The anger that you see" in places after a police shooting is "often like the last straw" after dealing with poverty and unemployment.
In Wayne County, the percentage of African Americans who are poor living in areas of high poverty jumped from 18% in 2000 to 58% in 2013, says the report by the Century Foundation. That's the second-highest percentage in the U.S., after metro Syracuse, N.Y. Nationally, the figure is 25.2%.
The percentage of poor Hispanics in Wayne County living in areas of high poverty — defined as an area where more than 40% of residents live below the poverty line — grew from just 9% to 51%, the fourth-highest rate in the U.S.
Whites in Wayne County saw an increase, too, from just 6% to 33% of poor whites living in high concentrations of poverty, the second-highest in the U.S. Overall, the rate increased from 14% to 50% in Wayne County, which ranked second in the U.S. after McAllen, Texas. The national figure is 14.4%.
Released last week, the report focused on the specific issue of where poor people live; those who live among other poor people are more likely to face challenges in education and employment, the report said.
"The contrast between 2000 and 2009-13 could not be more dramatic, as a huge swath of neighborhoods transform to high-poverty tracts," the report said of Detroit.
The report is the second one released this year showing that metro Detroit has large numbers of segregated poor: A new working paper from the University of Minnesota says there are 147 racially concentrated areas of poverty in metro Detroit.
"As leaders, we have a responsibility to figure out ways to change that," Stancato said.
New Detroit is working on a report about poverty that's expected to be released in the fall. Living in areas with high concentration of poverty has "an impact in terms of education, the businesses in the community, the quality of affordable housing," Stancato said.
The increase since 2000 comes after a "dramatic decline in concentrated poverty between 1990 and 2000," the report said. Across the U.S., there are now 13.8 million people living in high-poverty neighborhoods, the highest number ever recorded, said Paul Jargowsky, the report's author and a professor at Rutgers University who studies inequality, poverty and racial segregation.
In the counties of Oakland, Macomb, St. Clair, Livingston and Lapeer, the percentage of poor people living in high poverty areas is much smaller, but it did increase sharply, from 1.3% to 6.4%. The number of people living in high-poverty neigborhoods in those counties jumped 845% to 37,327 residents, while in Wayne County, it increased 327% to 439,440 residents.
"We are witnessing a nationwide return of concentrated poverty that is racial in nature," said Jargowsky.
The report was released a month after President Barack Obama announced a new effort to push municipalities to monitor the rates of racial segregation in their areas, tying it to how they spend federal housing money.
Jargowsky said the spike in concentrated poverty came about in part "through exclusionary zoning and outright housing market discrimination.
"The upper-middle class and affluent could move to the suburbs, and the poor were left behind," he said. "Public and assisted housing units were often constructed in ways that reinforced existing spatial disparities. Now, with gentrification driving up property values, rents and taxes in many urban cores, some of the poor are moving out of central cities into decaying inner-ring suburbs."
That can be seen locally, where many feel they are being pushed out of the city, said Stancato.
The report showed that some census tracts in south Warren and east Dearborn, as well as parts of Oak Park and Southfield near the I-696 highway, now have high concentrations of poverty.
In Warren, the area between 8 Mile and 9 Mile roads and between Sherwood Ave. and Van Dyke, the rate of poverty is 40% to 60%, with more than a quarter of the residents African American, according to the report.
Several census tracts in east and south Dearborn, which has a sizable Arab-American population, also saw sharp increases in poverty rates, the report showed.
In 2000, only one Census tract out of nine in the eastern and southern sections of Dearborn had a poverty rate above 40%. Today, eight of those nine Census tracts are above 40%, with one tract in the northeast section of the city 60% to 80% poor, a rate higher than in most parts of Detroit.
Warren Mayor Jim Fouts said the increase in concentrated poverty in some parts of Warren may be because of an "influx of residents who tend to be economically challenged.
"They are drawn here because they know we are against blight and crime, they're drawn to a city that's stabilized," Fouts said.
Fouts said some of the areas may be poor because of the high number of rental homes, especially in 40-foot lots. The city now has a law requiring all new homes to have at least 60-foot lots. He said the city tries to crack down on blight with enforcement sweeps.
Jargowsky says that reducing concentrated poverty would require federal and state governments to control suburban development, and that new housing should reflect "the income distribution of the metropolitan area as a whole."
Steve Spreitzer, president and CEO of the Michigan Roundtable for Diversity and Inclusion, said of the report: "Unfortunately, these numbers are not surprising. When we use the lens of race to understand the issues of inequity, we see that the history of racial spatial segregation has its impact today, hitting Detroit and Wayne County black residents the hardest."
The Michigan Roundtable has a program called Race2Equity that seeks to address these issues through dialogue. It has held forums over the past year on race and police community relations, among other topics.
Spreitzer said the region needs to have a "conversation designed to direct people toward solutions as we seek to help make our communities places where all people are welcomed and treated fairly."
Contact Niraj Warikoo: nwarikoo@freepress.com or 313-223-4792. Follow him on Twitter @nwarikoo
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| Detroit workers demonstrate against bankruptcy on Oct. 23, 2013. |
August 23, 2015
The huge increase in concentrations of poverty among minorities has concerned civic leaders who say it has the potential to lead to unrest as seen in Ferguson and Baltimore
Concentrated poverty has exploded in metro Detroit over the past 15 years, especially among minority groups, according to a new report.
In Wayne County, half of all its residents who are poor now live in areas of high concentration of poverty, the second-highest rate in the U.S. In Detroit, the number of census tracts where more than 40% of people are in poverty more than tripled, from 51 to 184. And the high concentrations of poverty are now pushing out to Detroit suburbs such as Warren, Dearborn, Oak Park and Southfield.
Titled "Architecture of Segregation: Civil Unrest, the Concentration of Poverty, and Public Policy," the study by the Century Foundation analyzed census data to look at changes in the concentration of poverty in metro areas across the U.S.
The huge increase has alarmed researchers and civic leaders in metro Detroit, who say such concentrations can lead to hopelessness that has the potential to explode, as it did over the past year in places like Ferguson, Mo., a black-majority suburb of St. Louis, and Baltimore.
"It has just an unbelievable impact," said Shirley Stancato, president and CEO of New Detroit, a group formed after the 1967 riot in Detroit to address issues of race and class in metro Detroit. "It's something we all should be paying close attention to.
"Concentrated poverty is one of the biggest issues associated with civil unrest," Stancato said. "The anger that you see" in places after a police shooting is "often like the last straw" after dealing with poverty and unemployment.
In Wayne County, the percentage of African Americans who are poor living in areas of high poverty jumped from 18% in 2000 to 58% in 2013, says the report by the Century Foundation. That's the second-highest percentage in the U.S., after metro Syracuse, N.Y. Nationally, the figure is 25.2%.
The percentage of poor Hispanics in Wayne County living in areas of high poverty — defined as an area where more than 40% of residents live below the poverty line — grew from just 9% to 51%, the fourth-highest rate in the U.S.
Whites in Wayne County saw an increase, too, from just 6% to 33% of poor whites living in high concentrations of poverty, the second-highest in the U.S. Overall, the rate increased from 14% to 50% in Wayne County, which ranked second in the U.S. after McAllen, Texas. The national figure is 14.4%.
Released last week, the report focused on the specific issue of where poor people live; those who live among other poor people are more likely to face challenges in education and employment, the report said.
"The contrast between 2000 and 2009-13 could not be more dramatic, as a huge swath of neighborhoods transform to high-poverty tracts," the report said of Detroit.
The report is the second one released this year showing that metro Detroit has large numbers of segregated poor: A new working paper from the University of Minnesota says there are 147 racially concentrated areas of poverty in metro Detroit.
"As leaders, we have a responsibility to figure out ways to change that," Stancato said.
New Detroit is working on a report about poverty that's expected to be released in the fall. Living in areas with high concentration of poverty has "an impact in terms of education, the businesses in the community, the quality of affordable housing," Stancato said.
The increase since 2000 comes after a "dramatic decline in concentrated poverty between 1990 and 2000," the report said. Across the U.S., there are now 13.8 million people living in high-poverty neighborhoods, the highest number ever recorded, said Paul Jargowsky, the report's author and a professor at Rutgers University who studies inequality, poverty and racial segregation.
In the counties of Oakland, Macomb, St. Clair, Livingston and Lapeer, the percentage of poor people living in high poverty areas is much smaller, but it did increase sharply, from 1.3% to 6.4%. The number of people living in high-poverty neigborhoods in those counties jumped 845% to 37,327 residents, while in Wayne County, it increased 327% to 439,440 residents.
"We are witnessing a nationwide return of concentrated poverty that is racial in nature," said Jargowsky.
The report was released a month after President Barack Obama announced a new effort to push municipalities to monitor the rates of racial segregation in their areas, tying it to how they spend federal housing money.
Jargowsky said the spike in concentrated poverty came about in part "through exclusionary zoning and outright housing market discrimination.
"The upper-middle class and affluent could move to the suburbs, and the poor were left behind," he said. "Public and assisted housing units were often constructed in ways that reinforced existing spatial disparities. Now, with gentrification driving up property values, rents and taxes in many urban cores, some of the poor are moving out of central cities into decaying inner-ring suburbs."
That can be seen locally, where many feel they are being pushed out of the city, said Stancato.
The report showed that some census tracts in south Warren and east Dearborn, as well as parts of Oak Park and Southfield near the I-696 highway, now have high concentrations of poverty.
In Warren, the area between 8 Mile and 9 Mile roads and between Sherwood Ave. and Van Dyke, the rate of poverty is 40% to 60%, with more than a quarter of the residents African American, according to the report.
Several census tracts in east and south Dearborn, which has a sizable Arab-American population, also saw sharp increases in poverty rates, the report showed.
In 2000, only one Census tract out of nine in the eastern and southern sections of Dearborn had a poverty rate above 40%. Today, eight of those nine Census tracts are above 40%, with one tract in the northeast section of the city 60% to 80% poor, a rate higher than in most parts of Detroit.
Warren Mayor Jim Fouts said the increase in concentrated poverty in some parts of Warren may be because of an "influx of residents who tend to be economically challenged.
"They are drawn here because they know we are against blight and crime, they're drawn to a city that's stabilized," Fouts said.
Fouts said some of the areas may be poor because of the high number of rental homes, especially in 40-foot lots. The city now has a law requiring all new homes to have at least 60-foot lots. He said the city tries to crack down on blight with enforcement sweeps.
Jargowsky says that reducing concentrated poverty would require federal and state governments to control suburban development, and that new housing should reflect "the income distribution of the metropolitan area as a whole."
Steve Spreitzer, president and CEO of the Michigan Roundtable for Diversity and Inclusion, said of the report: "Unfortunately, these numbers are not surprising. When we use the lens of race to understand the issues of inequity, we see that the history of racial spatial segregation has its impact today, hitting Detroit and Wayne County black residents the hardest."
The Michigan Roundtable has a program called Race2Equity that seeks to address these issues through dialogue. It has held forums over the past year on race and police community relations, among other topics.
Spreitzer said the region needs to have a "conversation designed to direct people toward solutions as we seek to help make our communities places where all people are welcomed and treated fairly."
Contact Niraj Warikoo: nwarikoo@freepress.com or 313-223-4792. Follow him on Twitter @nwarikoo
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