On the surface, Lake County, Illinois – the setting for John Hughes’ 1980s films of affluent suburban angst – is all detached houses, swimming pools and malls. Hidden from view, though, is the growing need

Lake County, Illinois – one of the wealthiest counties in the United States – conforms to many popular conceptions of the American suburban ideal. Set beside Lake Michigan north of the city of Chicago, Lake County abounds with large single-family homes built mostly since 1970. Parks, swimming pools and recreational spaces dot the landscape. Commuter trains and toll roads ferry workers into Chicago, and back again.



Residents are highly reliant on cars for local trips to work, school or child care stops, and to strip malls containing familiar chain stores and restaurants. Officeplexes, megachurches and well-equipped modern school buildings can be found across the county. In more exclusive residential areas, one can glimpse mansions inhabited at various points in time by iconic Chicago figures, such as Michael Jordan. The county even served as a backdrop for Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and film-maker John Hughes’s other movies about affluent suburban youth angst in the 1980s.



Less apparent on a casual drive through Lake County, however, are the rising poverty rates – the percentage of residents living in poverty – of most suburban municipalities in the region. The number of people living in Lake County below the federal poverty line of $19,073 for a family of three with two children in 2014, increased by more than 150% from 1990 to 2014, from 25,575 people to 64,432. The number of people living in deep poverty – with income less than half of the federal poverty threshold – has more than doubled in Lake County since 1990.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Despite its ‘middle class’ appearance, many Lake County communities from all racial and ethnic groups are in need. Photograph: Allan Baxter/Getty

Poverty problems in Lake County can be hidden from plain view. Many low-income families live in homes and neighbourhoods that appear very “middle class” on the surface – single-family homes with garages and cars in the driveway.

Closer inspection, however, reveals signs of poverty in all corners of the county. Many Lake County communities from all racial and ethnic groups are in need, and poverty rates in the older communities along Lake Michigan, such as Zion or Waukegan, more closely resemble those in the central city.

Pockets of concentrated poverty can be found in subdivisions of single-family homes, isolated apartment complexes and mobile home parks across the county. It also appears at the outer edges of Lake County in areas that might have been described as rural or recreational 30 or 40 years ago, before suburban sprawl brought in new residents and job-seekers. Several once-bustling strip malls are home to discount retailers and empty storefronts. It is not uncommon to see families at local grocery stores and supermarkets using food stamps or electronic benefit transfer cards to pay for part of their bill.

Many smaller ranch-style homes have five or six cars in front – a sign that families are doubling and tripling up to afford rent or cope with job loss – and food pantries (which provide food directly to those in need) often report lines down the block before their doors open, and numbers that would have been unthinkable 15 or 20 years ago. Elementary and high schools grapple with social problems more commonly associated with the Chicago Public Schools system.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The suburban poor in the US have been hit hard since the so-called Great Recession. Photograph: Christian Science Monitor/Getty

The poverty-related challenges confronting Lake County leaders and residents are evident at regular meetings of local non-profits and school leaders. Even though the Great Recession has long been officially over, the discussion mostly comes back to issues of poverty and joblessness.



At one such meeting, a speaker raised the issue of basic literacy among working-poor Latino immigrants in the region, and the upcoming changes to the General Educational Development (GED) equivalency examinations that might make it more difficult for those individuals to complete the test. A pastor described his church’s emergency assistance programme, noting that the community needed to increase awareness about the challenges faced by families in the suburbs who were coming to his church for help – including rising demand at the food pantry, housing instability and difficulties paying utility bills. It appeared that his congregation was doing this work on a bit of an island in the county, with relatively few partners or collaborators.

In the last decade, the number of poor people in suburban Chicago eclipsed the number in the city

Rising suburban poverty is not confined to Lake County. There are suburbs in need all around the Chicago metro area. Demand at food pantries, shelters and social service providers has increased in affluent west suburban communities such as Naperville and Schaumburg.

In 2013, in the middle of these supposedly affluent western suburbs, a large suburban Christian congregation opened a multimillion-dollar, state-of-the-art social assistance centre, crowdfunded by congregants from all over the city. Each day, within minutes of opening its doors, the centre receives several hundred working-poor families looking for food assistance, medical care, car repairs and help finding a job. The centre cannot keep up with demand, despite the generosity of members and volunteers. As in the northern suburbs, nearly all communities here are grappling with how to best serve the immigrant youth from low-income households.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Poverty is not as hidden in Chicago’s southern neighbourhoods, such as Harvey, where abandoned homes line the streets. Photograph: Christian Science Monitor/Getty Images

Heading counterclockwise around the suburban ring, you reach the Southland, where suburban communities share a demographic and industrial history with the South Side of Chicago and the steel mills of Gary, Indiana. The Southland has a much higher percentage of African Americans than most other suburban areas in Chicago, and need has been prevalent here for some time.

The loss of manufacturing and industrial jobs that devastated the Chicago economy in the 1970s and 80s also altered the economic landscape in these suburban communities. Poverty rates that approach or exceed those in the poorest parts of Chicago are nothing new in many southern neighbourhoods. Unlike the north and west, however, the landscape does not hide this heightened poverty. Abandoned homes line the streets of Harvey and Chicago Heights. At a factory with broken windows shrouded in overgrown vines, a broken sign – “Now hiring” – dangles in the breeze, a reminder of opportunity long since past.

Local institutions and community agencies operate in suboptimal office space, coping with cutbacks and a sense that society has similarly divested its compassion. Pockets and parcels of affluence exist, of course. But in many ways these racially segregated south suburban communities are hardly distinguishable from the central Chicago “underclass” neighbourhoods, like Englewood, that William Julius Wilson highlighted in his seminal work about race, class and white flight in the later years of the 20th century.

Last decade, the number of poor people in suburban Chicago eclipsed the number in the city. There are no signs of this trend reversing any time soon: seven of every 10 suburban municipalities outside Chicago saw the number of poor residents at least double from 1990 to 2014; more than 40% of Chicago suburbs saw their poverty population more than triple during that time. Unemployment has fallen in recent years from post-recession highs, but there is widespread discussion in many suburbs about the scarcity of good-paying jobs.



The reality of poverty in the Chicago suburbs can be observed across America. Today there are nearly 17 million poor people living in the suburbs of the largest 100 metropolitan areas in the US, compared with less than 13 million in the cities of those same metros. Yet, rising suburban poverty has not corresponded to a dramatic reduction of poverty in cities. Central city neighbourhoods today often struggle with high poverty rates and joblessness that are worse now than 25 years ago. It’s the same worldwide: there are places in need in every neighbourhood of every community in every corner of our global cities.

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But the safety net has not adapted in response. The typical urban county spends nearly 10 times as much on job training, emergency food assistance and child care services per low-income person as the typical suburban county. Many suburban communities simply lack the public or non-profit capacity to adequately respond to rising need.

Yet resources cannot simply be reallocated away from cities to the suburbs. Proposed cuts to federal antipoverty programs will compound problems in all communities.

Suburbs and cities must work together to support anti-poverty programmes and maintain, if not expand, spending levels. If metropolitan areas cannot find common ground and paths forward, America risks committing to a path that will leave poor people with few opportunities and little support, regardless of who they are and where they live.

• This is an edited extract from Scott Allard’s new book, Places in Need: The Changing Geography of Poverty, published by the Russell Sage Foundation

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