Where are Chicago’s poor white neighborhoods?

Why does Chicago have so much concentrated black poverty?

 It’s clear from the data that different factors are at play within the black and Latino communities. To unpack some of the reasons that have contributed to Chicago’s extensive areas of concentrated black poverty, we spoke with Mary Pattillo, the Harold Washington Professor of Sociology and African-American Studies at Northwestern University. Mary Pattillo: So the answer to the question of why there isn’t concentrated white poverty in Chicago — and many other cities, Chicago is not alone in this — rests on two big points. One is racial residential segregation, and the other is the different poverty rates in the various race/ethnic groups. So when you combine those two together, you get concentrated black and Latino poverty, and pretty much no concentrated white poverty. Racial residential segregation … Let’s begin with the fact that Chicago is an old city, much of which was built before the Fair Housing Act of 1968 [and] a lot of which [was] built during a time when we had what were called racial restrictive covenants. [These] were agreements … that white homeowners entered amongst each other to exclude mostly blacks, but in some cities and in some times they also excluded Jewish people. They also excluded Chinese people, depending on what city and what was the marginalized group at the time. The federal government is not at all innocent in this. The federal government very much underwrote the suburbanization of whites and the concentration of blacks in the city. So the building of the suburbs was very much supported by the federal government’s insuring of mortgages, and that allowed the banks to give a lot more mortgages, but they only insured those mortgages in neighborhoods that, as they said, didn’t house “inharmonious racial groups” … which basically meant if there were any prospect of black people moving in, they wouldn’t support the mortgage. So this very much created residential racial segregation, not just in the city of Chicago but also in the metropolitan area, by supporting the suburbanization of whites and the concentration of blacks in the city in — what the federal government also built — which were public housing projects. WBEZ: Do any of these factors still play out today, or have new ones crept in? Mary Pattillo: The research today still finds housing discrimination. Sometimes it’s the blatant discrimination: A black person calls and the realtor says that apartment’s been rented. … So black folks have to work extra hard to see the same number of units as whites. … But there is something to preferences and knowledge. What neighborhoods do people know about? And, how do you know about neighborhoods? You know about the neighborhoods where your friends live. And if our friendship patterns are racially segregated, then we know about the neighborhoods where other black people live if we’re black, or the neighborhoods where other Latinos live if we’re Latino. So there’s knowledge, and there’s preferences and comfort. WBEZ: Are we seeing higher-income blacks mix up the incomes in some of these high-poverty neighborhoods? Mary Pattillo: That’s an excellent question. Let’s say you had complete racial residential segregation — which we don’t have, but in Chicago, we almost do — so that if the black poverty rate is 30 percent, that means all black neighborhoods should have a 30 percent poverty rate, if everybody is kind of shuffled around. But that’s not the case. You have class segregation within race. Class segregation among blacks is higher than among both whites and Latinos. So when you measure, as you mentioned, the evenness of the classes within the predominantly black, Latino or white neighborhoods, you find that there is greater pull-away between poor blacks and upper income blacks than there is between poor whites and upper income whites and poor Latinos and upper income Latinos. Chart: Comparison of Chicago residents living in poverty, by race WBEZ: Can we account for the psychology, in any way, behind that high level of class segregation among blacks? Mary Pattillo: It is both that many populations don’t want to live around poor people (it’s a reflection on them, they think) and because what goes along with neighborhoods that have high poverty rates are things like fewer services, schools that are less well invested. … I think for many reasons people see high-poverty neighborhoods as lacking in the kind of resources and amenities that they want for themselves and for their kids.  

Why is there concentrated Latino poverty in Chicago?

 Our experts told us that some of the factors behind concentrated black poverty in Chicago also apply to the question of why we see some areas of concentrated Latino poverty. Researchers have conducted studies where “testers” of different races and ethnic backgrounds are deployed to inquire about available housing in cities across the U.S. These studies have exposed disparate treatment of Latinos and whites, just as they have found disparate treatment between African-Americans and whites. However, many Latino neighborhoods are also landing spots for new immigrants, so we spoke with Sylvia Puente, Executive Director of the Latino Policy Forum. We asked her how immigration, and other unique explanations, might lie behind the data. Sylvia Puente: So Latino poverty, to a large extent, you’re really going to see families, you’re going to see two-parent households — a married mom and dad with kids — but they’re only able to earn a wage which doesn’t take them past the poverty level. A significant number of adults are working in low-wage labor markets. … That’s among all Latinos, but especially for those who are undocumented or unauthorized in this country. They’re living in a shadow economy that sometimes doesn’t even pay minimum wage. … A significant number of Latinos are low-wage workers for a variety of reasons, and then people choose to live where they have friends and family. Where they go to church and Mass is in the language that they’re most comfortable in, and they can go grocery shopping and know people from their home communities. It’s always, I think, an interesting question to say, “Are these ethnic enclaves, or are they ghettos?” And I think that a community can be both, and I don’t mean ghetto in a negative way. But [with ghettos], we see large concentrations of poverty. We don’t see a lot of economic activity. We see large concentrations of people in the same ethnic group living there who don’t have a way out. [Whereas] ethnic enclaves have, maybe, a lot of those same characteristics. … Ethnic enclaves are [where] people are choosing to live in these communities, because certainly with Latinos, they can go to the store in Spanish. They can go to the grocery store and find products from their home country, they can cook meals that are familiar to them. A lot of what we’ve seen in terms of Latino concentration are people literally coming from the same village in Mexico or in another country, so you go where you know people. And ethnic enclaves also [are] people choosing to live with people who are like them because it’s home, it’s familiar. There’s a certain comfort in that.    

What does it mean if, when we talk about concentrated poverty in Chicago, we really are only talking about communities of color?

Sylvia Puente: One of the concerns that I have around it is that we have two Chicagos. We have a thriving white middle class Chicago who largely lives along the lakefront and on the Northwest Side of the city, and Chicago is big enough that you don’t have to go into a South Side neighborhood ever in your whole life. And I’m certainly of the belief that to have compassion, to really address all the social challenges that we have in our state, you’ve got to get out of your comfort zone and understand how people live. Mary Pattillo:  I think that that contributes to our misunderstanding of poverty in general, our misunderstanding of welfare and social services, and I think it contributes to a kind of political conservatism because we can point to those “other people.” If we’re white, we can point to those other people (and think) “Something’s wrong with black people, something’s wrong with Latinos. White people — look, you don’t see any poor white neighborhoods.” But there are poor white people, there are lots of poor white people. But because they’re not visibly located in a single place, it doesn’t lend itself to our stigmatizing them.

Martha’s conclusions

After hearing input from our three experts, we asked our questioner, Martha Diaz, to reflect on what resonated with her, as a Latina who grew up in a working-class background but attained a college education and lives in today’s gentrified Lake View neighborhood.  Martha Diaz: Well, I suppose much of the outcome of your life depends on circumstances that are really beyond your control. My parents bought the three-flat that we have in Lake View not because they were speculating, not because they thought that Lake View was going to be the next big thing, but because it was cheaper than the house near the brickyard mall that they had originally been scoping out. And as a result of that, they put themselves and our family in the middle of a community that was about to gentrify. And, as a result of that, my brothers and I had access to better schools probably than our peers did in other parts of the city. And it was serendipitous and wonderful in the example of our family because it made everything for us possible, it made my life possible. But that’s obviously not the case for a lot of people in this city.