The report comes from Washington based think-tank The Brookings Institution, which studied poor people living in big cities, and in the adjacent metropolitan areas.
Results showed the increase of the statistically poor living in suburbs ....is vastly outstripping increases in inner cities. With midwestern metros like Cleveland suffering from losses in manufacturing and auto industry jobs, the report says many newly unemployed were simply too poor to move where new jobs are.
The result is that in 2008, 23% more people were living in poverty "outside" Cleveland's borders than inside.
That's because from 2000, the number of poor people living outside Cleveland - jumped by 44%, to more than 9% of the total suburban population, even as Cleveland numbers of poor decreased.
In Youngstown, the number of suburban poor jumped by 36%, to 13% of the total population. Akron's suburban poor increased 30%.
Study author and senior analyst Elizabeth Kneebone notes that few areas have learned what those changes require, and that societal safety services simply weren't designed to assist migrating populations.
ELIZABETH KNEEBONE:
"As we're thinking about "Where are we placing new transit opportunities, or affordable housing; Where are we putting our economic development strategies"... that that's done at a regional level as well, so that truly the region functions as a whole, and we're not closing people off from opportunity in high poverty neighborhoods, but we're connecting them to the regional labor market."
Kneebone says metros in the Midwest and Sun Belt should expect continuing increases in suburban poor, until the economy stabilizes.
