Photo by Flickr user eric_allix_rogers
By Breann Gala and Kate Calabra, MPC research assistant - May 30, 2013
Communities across the nation – big cities and small towns alike – are still grappling with the effects of the economic recession, from vacant properties to joblessness. Yet many would be surprised to learn the premise of the newest book published by The Metropolitan Policy Program at Brookings Institution: that poverty has become even more prevalent in our nation’s suburbs than in urban areas.
On May 20, Brookings hosted a webinar on the book, Confronting Suburban Poverty in America, featuring co-authors Elizabeth Kneebone and Alan Berube. They were joined by experts and practitioners from around the country for a panel discussion about how our nation’s “antipoverty infrastructure” has not adapted to address suburban poverty – and what that means for local and national leaders as they work together to revitalize communities and connect suburban residents with new economic opportunities. Luis Ubinas, president of the Ford Foundation, gave opening remarks, noting that 2014 will mark the 50th anniversary of Linden B. Johnson’s War on Poverty. Ubinas reflected that the nation’s suburbs, once regarded as a bastion of the American Dream, have “become home to the same cycles of poverty” that trapped people in urban ghettos. He declared a call to action to accept this new geography of poverty as a means of properly identifying solutions.
MPC listened to the presentation in part to cheer on panelist Joe Neri, CEO of IFF in metropolitan Chicago. Neri represented our region’s case study featured in the book, which focused on two clusters of suburbs in Cook County that are taking an innovative, collaborative approach to housing and economic development. Metropolitan Planning Council (MPC) has been supporting this work since day one, helping these two collaboratives – one in South Cook County and one in West Cook County, which IFF and Neri supports as coordinator and development partner – work not only across municipal boundaries but also with regional and state governments, philanthropies and banks to target public and private funding to transit and freight corridors, to revitalize housing and attract new economic redevelopment. The South Cook County collaborative in particular is among a half-dozen local and regional efforts featured in the book, all of which are tackling the suburbanization of poverty in innovative and often collaborative ways.
But as Neri and his fellow panelists pointed out, the battle is just beginning to transform public policies and funding programs to support these innovators. Kneebone and Berube, along with Neri; Mary Fertakis, director of the Tukwila, Wash. School Board; and Angela Blanchard, president and CEO of Neighborhood Centers, Inc., stressed three much-needed policy transformations:
- Strategic funding and implementation. Strategic funding and implementation, particularly the pooling of resources across private, public and community development financial institutions has proven highly useful in tackling housing issues in the Chicago suburbs. Neri described how IFF in Chicago has made great progress but still finds it challenging to attract resources flexible enough to adapt to changing suburban demographics, markets and needs.
- Collaborate across borders and create strong alliances. Key to designing policies and programs that address suburban poverty is collective action—no one organization or program can tackle the numerous challenges facing communities today. In addition to metropolitan Chicago’s story, the Road Map Project in Seattle has brought together parents, students, teachers, schools, community organizations, government, and public and private funders to break down the silos that prohibit successful education. Rather than working in individual schools or communities, the organization collaborates across seven school districts to improve education. Nancy Fertakis discussed the immense costs incurred attempting to breakdown bureaucracy to effectively reinvest in our communities.
- Properly scaling resources. Delivering social services at the proper scale – for instance, at a subregional scale instead of community by community – can optimize capacity and results. Neighborhood Centers, Inc. in Houston, Tex., demonstrates how scaling resources, such as money or manpower, has allowed the organization to comprehensively tackle neighborhood and community development, health and human services, and a range of school and youth programs.
To wrap up the presentation, Kneebone and Berube discussed the larger policy changes needed to support regions taking these innovative approaches. Their recommendations include repurposing $4 billion in federal funding to create a Metropolitan Opportunity Challenge, a competitive funding system for place-based poverty alleviation strategies. They acknowledge that waiting for such a policy could take some time and encouraged advocates, practitioners and local governments to continue adapting local efforts to address our country’s changing demographics.
MPC is looking forward to continuing this conversation with local decision makers and national policymakers on June 18, at 2 p.m. CT (3 p.m. ET, noon PT), during a webinar featuring Kneebone; Massachusetts Smart Growth Alliance; and MPC’s MarySue Barrett. Their discussion will highlight what metropolitan Chicago and Boston have learned about the benefits of and barriers to collaboration, as well as new strategies for planning and data analysis, community engagement, foreclosure response and prevention, transit-oriented development and more. Registration will be open soon; stay tuned!