Confronting Suburban Poverty in America

4. The Implications of Suburban Poverty

On Pittsburgh’s eastern border lies the suburban city of Penn Hills, the second-largest community in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania. Penn Hills came of age in the mid-twentieth century as a middle-class bedroom community for workers and managers at the nearby Westinghouse Electric Company, among other once-significant Pittsburgh-area firms. It is still home to Longue Vue, one of the oldest and most exclusive golf clubs in the region, once known as “The Millionaires’ Club.” The challenges facing the region since the 1980s, however, have transformed Penn Hills both demographically and economically. In 2010, its population stood at about 42,000, down from almost 58,000 in 1980. One in three Penn Hills residents is African American, up from one in nine in 1980. The share of people in poverty rose from almost 8 percent in 2000 to 11 percent in 2008–10. The local unemployment rate, which was historically lower than the city of Pittsburgh’s, now equals and CHAPTER 4 The Implications of Suburban Poverty Penn Hills, Pennsylvania: A bus stop in Penn Hills, where transit cuts have reduced service to only a few pick-up and drop-off times during weekday rush hour. (Howard Davidson) 04-2390-5 ch04_Kneebone 4/22/13 1:55 PM Page 55 periodically exceeds it. Penn Hills is caught in many ways between its stable suburban past and an unfamiliar “urbanizing” present, facing a host of new issues. Among the more pressing problems facing the growing low-income population in Penn Hills is access to transportation. The suburb covers nineteen square miles, has more than twenty distinct neighborhoods, and is traversed by an interstate highway, a few major state roads, and a series of local roads with only a few sidewalks that wind their way up and down the hilly terrain. Infrastructure in some parts of the township resembles that of a rural community more than a major metropolitan suburb. More often now, residents must navigate these byways without a car. By 2008–10, almost one in ten (about 1,700) Penn Hills households lacked access to a vehicle, notably more than three decades earlier, when the local population was much larger. Public transportation service, unfortunately, is dwindling. Sociologist Alexandra Murphy profiled a predominantly black, low-income Penn Hills neighborhood where many residents have no car and many more cannot keep up with the expenses of the maintenance, repairs, and gas required to ensure that their vehicles run reliably.1 One bus line serves the community but comes only a few times in the morning (into the city) and a few times in the late afternoon to early evening (back out of the city). As Murphy described, budget cuts at the Allegheny County Port Authority have left many more of Penn Hills’s neighborhoods and residents with limited public transit options, including none on the weekends . These cuts have left many residents struggling to gain and maintain employment, particularly those working late shifts in the city or trying to get to jobs in neighboring suburbs. Lack of reliable public transportation also complicates other tasks for low-income families in Penn Hills. The director of a local food pantry told us that many clients of the adjoining Head Start program had difficulty getting there. Residents without cars depend increasingly on family members, friends, or neighbors with cars to help them shop for groceries (the closest store is more than two miles from some poor neighborhoods ) or get to a doctor’s appointment, stressing already fragile relationships . A trip to get Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) benefits can turn into an all-day affair. Penn Hills helps illustrate the paradox of suburban poverty. Ideally, the increasing presence of poor residents in the suburbs would signal that more struggling families are able to access better local environments with affordable housing, more job opportunities, lower crime rates, and 56 IMPLICATIONS OF SUBURBAN POVERTY 04-2390-5 ch04_Kneebone 4/22/13 1:55 PM Page 56 better schools than are available in the inner city. In this way, suburbanization would provide them with a platform for upward mobility. And some poor suburban residents do indeed live in more opportunity-rich communities than their urban counterparts. Indeed, many lower-income African American families in Penn Hills moved there from very poor Pittsburgh neighborhoods or other declining steel towns that suffer even greater economic and social challenges. Yet rapid growth in suburban poverty—in...