In a shift from trends seen in the 1960s, the nation’s poor are fleeing the city for more affordable housing in the suburbs, with the low-income population in areas outside Minneapolis, Minn., increasing 128 percent over the last decade, according to a report released this month by the Brookings Institute.
The Metropolitan Policy Program, an arm of the Brookings Institute, revealed in a research book a reverse migration trend, with suburban populations now home to one-third of the nation’s poor.
The trend closes a chapter of American history, a time when living in American suburbs represented the dawning of the American dream.
“Moving to suburbia signaled a step up — a house with a yard, a car to drive to work, good schools and safe streets,” authors Elizabeth Kneebone and Alan Berube write in the Brookings book.
Now, the dream has shifted.
According to the most recent Census data, population in downtown American cities grew by more than 10 percent in the last decade, with young people increasingly setting their sights on urban living.
“For the first time since World War II, the United States is experiencing increased levels of urbanization,” Pike Research analyst Eric Bloom said in a 2012 interview with Real Estate Economy Watch. “As more people move into the cities, they tend to occupy apartments, condominiums, and other attached multi-unit housing types.”
As housing prices in the cities rise in metropolitan areas like the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minn., low-income populations are being forced to look elsewhere for affordable options. They’re finding it in the suburbs, yet the move away from transportation and assistance programs of the inner cities is creating a new strain on today’s poor.
“We have people in the suburbs that are homeless,” Pat Longs, manager of Minneapolis-based Communication Action Partnership, told local station KARE 11. “One of the biggest problems they have is that they are afraid to come to the Hennepin County shelter because they are in the suburbs. They do not want to go to the shelter. So, they would rather sleep in their car.”
The real impact on the poor
Minnesota’s Twin Cities area was highlighted in the Brookings Institution report as one of the top 10 major metropolitan areas impacted by the flight of the poor to the suburbs.
Over the course of the last 10 years, the suburbs of Minneapolis and St. Paul saw an influx of 100,000 low-income residents, now representing 8 percent of the suburban population.
The poverty rate in the metro area is still higher than the suburbs– 24 percent in the city and 8 percent in the suburbs.
The reverse migration has created new transportation issues for low-income people living in the suburbs, who find themselves with limited access to the bus and train services that operate primarily within the city limits. For the new wave of suburbanites working until late hours of the night, transportation home from city jobs is scarce.
“They get off (work) at 2 or 3 in the morning,” Long told KARE 11, “but the buses stop running.”
The Brookings Institute attributes the changes to a few factors, chief of which is an overall rise in suburban populations. In the last 10 years, the Twin Cities have seen a 13 percent increase in total suburban populations.
Immigration and housing are also factors, with 12.5 percent of the suburban poor made up of immigrants. Those receiving housing vouchers attributed for 53 percent of the low-income suburban population, compared to 51 percent of the city’s poor.
Despite the challenges that come with de-urbanization, the Brookings Institute indicated it’s not too late to alter the locations of services to the poor — from the inner city to the outer suburbs.