From the San Jose Mercury News,
In five census tracts, four of them in the East Bay, more than 40 percent of residents live below the poverty line, according to the Brookings Institution report.
The neighborhoods are in downtown Berkeley, uptown Oakland, Alameda Point and parts of West Oakland and San Francisco's Hunters Point.
From the full Brookings Institute report:
As the first decade of the 2000s drew to a close, the two downturns that bookended the period, combined with slow job growth between, clearly took their toll on the nation’s less fortunate residents. Over a ten-year span, the country saw the poor population grow by 12.3 million, driving the total number of Americans in poverty to a historic high of 46.2 million. By the end of the decade, over 15 percent of the nation’s population lived below the federal poverty line—$22,314 for a family of four in 2010—though these increases did not occur evenly throughout the country.
After declining in the 1990s, the population in extreme-poverty neighborhoods— where at least 40 percent of individuals live below the poverty line—rose by one-third from 2000 to 2005–09.
Why Does Concentrated Poverty Matter?
Being poor in a very poor neighborhood subjects residents to costs and limitations above and beyond the burdens of individual poverty. Summarized in part below, research has shown the wide-ranging social and economic effects that result when the poor are concentrated in economically segregated and disadvantaged neighborhoods. Concentrated poverty can:
Limit educational opportunity. Children in high-poverty communities tend to go to neighborhood schools where nearly all the students are poor and at greater risk of failure, as measured by standardized tests, dropout rates, and grade retention. Low performance owes not only to family background, but also to the negative effects high-poverty neighborhoods have on school processes and quality. Teachers in these schools tend to be less experienced, the student body more mobile, and additional systems must often be put in place to deal with the social welfare needs of the student body, creating further demands on limited resources.
Lead to increased crime rates and poor health outcomes. Crime rates, and particularly violent crime rates, tend to be higher in economically distressed inner-city neighborhoods. Faced with high crime rates, dilapidated housing stock, and the stress and marginalization of poverty, residents of very poor neighborhoods demonstrate a higher incidence of poor physical and mental health outcomes, like asthma, depression, diabetes, and heart ailments.
Hinder wealth building. Many residents in extreme-poverty neighborhoods own their home, yet neighborhood conditions in these areas can lead the market to devalue these assets and deny them the ability to accumulate wealth through the appreciations of house prices. Moreover, the presence of high-poverty neighborhoods can affect residents of the larger metropolitan area generally, depressing values for owner-occupied properties in the region by 13 percent on average.
Reduce private-sector investment and increase prices for goods and services. High concentrations of low-income and low-skilled households in a neighborhood can make the community less attractive to private investors and employers, which may limit local job opportunities and ultimately create a “spatial mismatch” between low-income residents and employment centers. In addition, lack of business competition in poor neighborhoods can drive up prices for basic goods and services—like food, car insurance, utilities, and financial services—compared to what families pay in middle-income neighborhoods.
Raise costs for local government. The concentration of poor individuals and families—which can result in elevated welfare caseloads, high rates of indigent patients at hospitals and clinics, and the need for increased policing—burdens the fiscal capacity of local governments and can divert resources from the provision of other public goods. In turn, these dynamics can lead to higher taxes for local businesses and non-poor residents.
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