Metro Atlanta Bucking National Trend Showing Growing Pockets of Poverty
There are growing pockets of poverty across the country, according to a new study by the Pew Research Center. The study attributes the trend in part to an influx of low-skill, low-wage immigrants to U.S. cities.
But in metro Atlanta, the percent of low-income households living in majority low-income neighborhoods has actually dropped over the last 30 years, from 33 percent to 28 percent.
“Atlanta’s lower income households are not increasingly concentrated in lower income neighborhoods which was a bit of a surprise and unlike much of the nation,” said Richard Fry, a senior economist with the Pew Research Center.
Fry can’t put his finger on the reason, but he says some experts point to the mid-’90s. That’s when Atlanta started demolishing public housing projects and relocating residents to mixed-income communities.
That policy remains controversial.
Georgia State sociology professor Deirdre Oakley is currently tracking more than 300 residents who have been relocated.
She says the results of the overall initiative have been marginal at best, despite the Pew numbers.
“These aren’t middle class neighborhoods. These are poor neighborhoods. They just aren’t as poor as the public housing neighborhoods. But by virtue of the fact that they’re moving to neighborhoods that have on average 10 percent less poverty is going to affect these numbers that Pew put out.”
She suggests other factors could be the recent foreclosure crises and current patterns of gentrification in several intown neighborhoods.
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