Confronting Suburban Poverty in America

6. Innovating Locally to Confront Suburban Poverty

Montgomery County, Maryland—a suburban county adjacent to the nation’s capital—consistently ranks among the country’s wealthiest counties. In 2010, it ranked twelfth in the nation for median household income at more than $89,000, well above the $50,000 national median. Within the county, communities including Bethesda, Chevy Chase, Potomac, and Rockville are home to much of the Washington region’s high-paid professional class of lawyers, consultants, scientists, technology workers, and government executives. Yet in recent years, this million-person jurisdiction has grown increasingly diverse, both demographically and economically, changing the scope and scale of need among the county’s residents. The 2000s, in particular, were a period of marked transformation in Montgomery County. The early to mid-2000s brought more jobs Montgomery County, Maryland: Apartment buildings in Wheaton, which rapidly diversified demographically and economically in the 2000s. (JaneWilliams) CHAPTER 6 Innovating Locally to Confront Suburban Poverty 06-2390-5 ch06_Kneebone 4/22/13 1:56 PM Page 96 and people to the county and a slight drop in the number of residents living in poverty. However, the disruption of the Great Recession more than erased those gains. In just three years, Montgomery County shed more than 37,000 jobs, dropping below its 2000 jobs total by 2010. At the same time, the number of residents living below the federal poverty line grew by two-thirds, or more than 30,000 people, pushing the poverty rate up by nearly 3 percentage points between 2007 and 2010. No other county in the Washington region, including the District of Columbia, experienced increases in poverty of this magnitude during the 2000s. The 2000s also marked a period of growing ethnic and racial diversity in Montgomery County. Indeed, the 2010 census revealed that, for the first time, non-Hispanic whites constituted less than half (49 percent ) of the county’s residents, down from 73 percent two decades earlier . Whereas immigrants accounted for fewer than one in five residents in 1990, in 2010 they represented almost one-third of the population and almost 40 percent of poor residents. As chronicled in the previous chapters, such rapid increases in poverty, coupled with the shifting demographic makeup of the community, often leave community leaders playing catch-up without the resources to match. Yet Montgomery County officials and service providers recognized the changing needs of a diversifying population and anticipated the growing demands that would arise as the Great Recession began to take hold. In 2006, the newly elected county executive, Isiah (Ike) Leggett, signaled that the county recognized the transitions under way and the need to leverage resources beyond what it alone could provide. The county established an Office of Community Partnerships (OCP), with the mission to “strengthen relationships between the Montgomery County government and the residents it serves, with special focus on underserved and emerging communities and our neighbors in need.”1 In 2009, during the deepest part of the recession, officials from OCP and the county’s Department of Health and Human Services came together with the support of the Community Foundation of Montgomery County to partner with leaders from the faith-based community, social service nonprofits, and grassroots organizations led by IMPACT Silver Spring to develop strategies for making sure diverse communities in need did not miss out on critical emergency and safety net services because of lack of information or cultural barriers. This partnership launched the Neighborhood Opportunity Network, a cross-sector collaboration that seeks to ensure that emergency services (county or nonprofit) reach residents in need, and to create community connections and networks in INNOVATING LOCALLY 97 06-2390-5 ch06_Kneebone 4/22/13 1:56 PM Page 97 suburbs where such resources are lacking. The initiative uses door-knocking campaigns to identify needs and alert residents to services available at newly created Neighborhood Service Centers. These centers are staffed by “Community Connectors” who guide residents through various application processes. The network also promotes participatory community sessions and small meetings of neighbors to build relationships, identify issues and needs, and share resources. As OCP director Bruce Adams writes, the Neighborhood Opportunity Network model “has replaced the traditional charity/social services approach to emergency service delivery with a culturally competent capacity building model.”2 In many ways, the proactive and collaborative approach that emerged in Montgomery County mirrors the actions of innovators in metropolitan areas across the country who have developed strategies that address the growing scale...