I’ve been wanting to post this essay for some time, but I keep forgetting. Rolf Pendall, over at the Metro Trends Blog, discusses the deconcentration of poverty in post-Katrina New Orleans and Stockton.
The money observation:
Two metros—New Orleans and Stockton—present extreme examples of poverty deconcentration and falling poverty. In New Orleans, poverty and concentrated poverty both fell after Hurricane Katrina devastated poor and high-poverty neighborhoods. The city, the 2010 Census reveals, lost over 11 percent of its residents between 2000 and 2010. Its estimated poverty rate also fell from 18.4% in 1999 to 14.6% in 2006, 2007, and 2008 because the storm destroyed so many low-cost housing units. Indeed, the share of New Orleanians living in high-poverty neighborhoods dropped by 9.4 percentage points. Since 2009, however, poverty is rising again in metro New Orleans.
His discussion of Stockton’s trends is equally as insightful. Go read.