Recent Study Shows Poverty in DFW Suburbs Has Doubled in the Past 12 Years (Dallas: 2014, foreclosed)

[RonnieinDallas]

If you think more poor people are living in the DFW area in recent years, you could be spot-on. Heck, after the 2008 recession you could be one of them. According to a recent Brookings Institute study, DFW, land of the suburbs, is quickly turning into the land of the slums.

Recent Study Shows Poverty in DFW Suburbs Has Doubled in the Past 12 Years | Dallas Observer

[Cowboys fan in Houston]

Gentrification.

[BigDGeek]

Sadly that's not surprising.

[biafra4life]

Would have been interesting to know which suburbs in particular this was occurring in.

[TurtleCreek80]

Originally Posted by biafra4life

Would have been interesting to know which suburbs in particular this was occurring in.

It's all over and even in places one wouldn't expect. My office is in Collin County and we support a ton of CoCo charities. I'm always surprised by the reminder of real poverty in the midst of such an affluent area:

The Samaritan Inn > Home
The Samaritan Inn for the homeless in McKinney currently has 160 residents (61 of which are children). This week they turned away 29 people due to lack of space.

Homeless Children Shelter, Donate: My Friend's House | Dallas County
"It was noted there were 1,236 homeless students within Plano, Frisco, Allen and McKinney ISD ‘s on a single day in 2011."


Our Story - Minnie's Food Pantry
Since 2008, Minnie's Food Pantry in Plano has served 165,000 visitors over 3.9 million meals. In Plano!!

"Although Jackson was told that there were no hungry people in Plano, Texas she went against the grain and the rest is now history. The thought of opening a food pantry in one of Dallas’ most affluent cities seemed odd. But with the economy at the beginning of a serious down turn, Minnie’s Food Pantry found themselves right where they needed to be.....Once word began to spread about how Minnie’s Food Pantry served people, the grass roots of this organization has blossomed into one of the leading food pantries in Collin County."

[MckinneyOwnr]

There's a family living on my street who have been foreclosed on. The bank just hasn't gotten around to kicking them out. Their home is valued at around $350-$375k. Haven't been paying their mortgage for over 2 years, but of course they have DirecTV.

There's another family just up the road, also foreclosed on. Their house is worth around $750k. Same thing... bank hasn't gotten around to kicking them out either.

[yukon]

The skyrocketing rents in the Dallas area aren't helping.

[EDS_]

Lots of problems with this..........

As soon as I saw "the study" was from Brookings I feared it would be very biased and so far as I can tell it is.

On the Observer, not Brookings, poverty has not doubled in the 'burbs. It's up ~89% in 12 years but only in nominal terms.

Firmly on Brookings, the numbers show the gross increase in those at or below the federal poverty line but so far as I can tell they do not account for increases in population - WTH! I'll look this up tomorrow but IIRC DFW population has grown ~30% since 2000 and much of that has been in the 'burbs.

Finally a point about poverty in Dallas and Texas and The South in general; The federal poverty rate for the nation is $23,492 for a family of 4. That numbers has to be adjusted per location.

As examples and not including taxes which would make the numbers worse for these other cities.

$23,492 in Dallas = $$33,902 in LA or $42,042 in San Francisco or $35,003 in Boston. In other words it's much better to be poor around here than nearly any other big city in the country.

This sort of thing is why people should pay attention to poverty RATES over time not raw poverty numbers. And of course the dollars must be adjusted to show true relative values in different cities.


Disclaimer, I'm tired and on my phone so the study is quite hard to read so I may have missed some things. I'll correct any mistakes tomorrow.

[alastrian2]

On a micro level I would echo the gentrification comments. In my area of North Oak Cliff many poor families in rented or generationally owned properties are being bought out by rehabbers. My observation is that those families are moving to Mesquite, Garland and Grand Prairie.

[biafra4life]

Originally Posted by TurtleCreek80

It's all over and even in places one wouldn't expect. My office is in Collin County and we support a ton of CoCo charities. I'm always surprised by the reminder of real poverty in the midst of such an affluent area:

The Samaritan Inn > Home
The Samaritan Inn for the homeless in McKinney currently has 160 residents (61 of which are children). This week they turned away 29 people due to lack of space.

Homeless Children Shelter, Donate: My Friend's House | Dallas County
"It was noted there were 1,236 homeless students within Plano, Frisco, Allen and McKinney ISD ‘s on a single day in 2011."


Our Story - Minnie's Food Pantry
Since 2008, Minnie's Food Pantry in Plano has served 165,000 visitors over 3.9 million meals. In Plano!!

"Although Jackson was told that there were no hungry people in Plano, Texas she went against the grain and the rest is now history. The thought of opening a food pantry in one of Dallas’ most affluent cities seemed odd. But with the economy at the beginning of a serious down turn, Minnie’s Food Pantry found themselves right where they needed to be.....Once word began to spread about how Minnie’s Food Pantry served people, the grass roots of this organization has blossomed into one of the leading food pantries in Collin County."

I would actually agree with this. I do copywriting on the side, and a friend from church approached me about helping her apply for a grant to start a soup kitchen in Frisco where she lived. I laughed and told her that she would be better off having her soup kitchen in Dallas as that is where the most poor people are. She said oh no, she volunteers a lot in the Frisco area and there are plenty of struggling people in Frisco, Plano McKinney. I didn't believe her till she took me out to the churches where she helped out. It stunned me. Not what you would expect to find in the land of the McMansion.