The unrelenting recession is turning middle-class enclaves in Washington’s suburbs into 21st-century slums as empty McMansions turn into flophouses and once-prosperous families turn to government aid to feed themselves.
The suburbs’ share of local poverty grew by 7 percent between 2000 and 2008, a new Brookings Institution report found. About 62 percent of the region’s poor lived in suburbs in 2000; by 2008, the percentage had grown to nearly 70 percent. Even those who have avoided foreclosure are still walking a razor’s edge.
“I can’t do anything,” said Ashok Jashnani, speaking in the driveway of his Germantown house.
The house behind Jashnani’s McMansion sat empty for nearly two years. The roof shingles are torn up, and a sliding door was off its hinges for months. Down the street, a mansion has been converted into a boarding house and there are old ladders, collapsing Christmas decorations and other rubbish on the front porch and back yard.
The crisis has hit Jashnani even more directly, though: His house has lost more than $300,000 in value and is now worth less than he paid for it. His bank has slashed his line of credit by more than $100,000 and is threatening to do so again.
“There’s no equity,” he said. “I’ll have to write it off.”
Linda Crudup, president of the Kettering Community Association in Upper Marlboro, knows how Jashnani feels. She says her home has lost nearly $225,000 in value and that she and her neighbors are struggling to keep local teenagers from using abandoned homes as flophouses. “We’re maintaining,” she said, “but it’s a struggle.”
For every poor person in the District, Arlington or Alexandria, two more live in the outer suburbs, according to the Brookings study.
“They’ve been hit the hardest,” Brookings scholar Elizabeth Kneebone said of the outer suburbs. “We can expect the numbers in 2009 to show an even larger increase in economic difficulties in the area.”
The foreclosure crisis has forced thousands of residents out of their homes and created pockets of blight in the sprawling suburbs. Anecdotes are pouring in about former single-family homes becoming boarding houses or rental tenements. The problem has gotten so bad in Fairfax County, for instance, that officials there created a special task force to combat emerging slumlords.
Brookings scholars found that the Washington area is doing better than many major metropolitan areas — the region’s suburban poverty rate is just under 6 percent, while the national suburban poverty rate is nearly 10 percent — but locals still feel besieged by poverty.
“Saturation would be a better word,” said Jane Ouellette, a Fairfax County welfare official who sees about 35 new “clients” every day. “When you see grown men who are really humbled by the experience and crying because they can’t feed their kids. … It’s hard.”
In Montgomery County, the number of children eating free or reduced-price meals has risen steadily for the last three years. Now, nearly one of every three students in the school system is getting federal help for his or her lunch. In Fairfax, applications for food stamps have nearly doubled since 2007, county records show.
At the same time that newly minted poor are asking for help, falling property values — and therefore, falling tax revenues — mean local governments are losing the money to attack poverty.
“It’s the tragedy of local government,” said Prince William County Supervisor Marty Nohee, R-Coles. “Right at the time when the community needs the services the most is when we can least afford to provide them.”
