5 ms·

The destitute are merely more visible in "big dense blue cities" but statistically there are more of them in rural red places like Mississippi and Oklahoma. Af

The destitute are merely more visible in "big dense blue cities" but statistically there are more of them in rural red places like Mississippi and Oklahoma. After all, in OK or MS you need a car, which is a $2000+ asset, just to even access any public space or resource or make yourself visible at all. There's much more poverty in those places, but it is hidden away. You can see a slight bit of it at gas stations that are walking distance to poor areas, but for the most part, those are the lucky ones, and the unlucky ones are walking distance to nothing. I would much rather be destitute in a big city where I can access all kinds of formal and informal resources like temp agencies or subways to sleep on, than in a rural area where I am totally dependent on rides to anywhere. The advantage of the rural poverty accrues solely to the wealthier, who don't have to look at the poor as much as the urban wealthy and middle classes do. And perhaps that is why we are kinder (well, ok, slightly less unkind) to the deeply poor here, because we actually see them regularly rather than having locked them away so securely we can actually trick ourselves into thinking we don't have them here. It is deeply ironic that you came to the opposite conclusion by accepting superficial appearances. The trick of hiding the poor by means of car culture sure worked on you.

asow92 4y ago
In my personal experience of living in both rural New York and Pennsylvania and NYC for decades, the ratio seems to skew more towards the city. But I can't say as much for the west. A $2k car is a lot less than higher average taxes and housing costs.
- galdosdi 4y ago
  The rural places you lived in probably genuinely didn't have as much extreme poverty. I'm familiar with some of the types of places you probably mean. I was thinking of the rural South, where maintaining some degree of radical poverty even in the face of all kinds of modern development has been a strange national sport of sorts for hundreds of years. The OP seemed to be pitting southern red state rural vs northern cities based on their list. $2000 is a lot for plenty of poor people. And it's not even that easy to get a reliable car at that price anymore, you know. I'm glad it's hard for you to imagine that, but having to constantly either deal with the lack of a car (which usually means being unable to get to work, and thus earn money to feed the car...) or struggle to keep a car (worrying about a surprise bill) is a huge, huge pain for the poor.
  - asow92 4y ago
    You don't need a car to live in these cities, but that doesn't mean it costs less to live there overall.
  - lampshades 4y ago
    I’m from the poorest place in the country. Ok, well almost the poorest (right outside the Mississippi delta). You can get a car for less than 2000 and like someone else mentioned, you don’t even need one because you can just ride a bike. Public transportation? Public transportation to where? Down the road to the grocery store? Someone is about to wait at a bus stop outside the projects to go 500 feet? Just ride a bike or walk. Can’t get to work? Someone will pick you up and bring you. Overslept? Expect that same person dragging you out of your bed. You can find shelter for less than $100/month. Need food? Go out back and get it. If I ever was destitute, I’d go back to the rural South in a heartbeat and it blows my mind how many people don’t do that very thing. Bottom line, I’m 99% sure I’ve a better understanding and closer relationship to extreme poverty than you and you have no idea what you’re talking about.
- whimsicalism 4y ago
  Try the rural south. Lots of rural NY is just a play place for richer people.
  - asow92 4y ago
    I totally agree with you and don't want to discount the plight of the south.
  - asow92 4y ago
    But, I'd also like to point out that much of the southern tier and western NY is a lot like Appalachia economically. We have much higher poverty rates compared to the rest of the state. The town in which I live is double the state average at around 30% poverty. And despite the fact that we have double the poverty rate of NYC it's nowhere near as apparent.
    - bombcar 4y ago
      In the rural areas you have "poor people" who have their own land and may even live off it a bit - which means they have housing and so are not as noticeable as actual homeless. If you own your hovel outright you can be incredibly far below the poverty line and be "okish" for some value of "ok". Especially if you have a number of people banding together on the same property (very common in rural areas) - some on SSI or SSD, some on welfare, some making some money on odd jobs. You can't really have that in the city or near it; the land is too valuable.
josephcsible 4y ago
> I would much rather be destitute in a big city where I can access all kinds of formal and informal resources like temp agencies or subways to sleep on, than in a rural area This is why so many commuters forego cities' public transit in favor of driving.
- asow92 4y ago
  I've literally seen someone shit in a subway before, and as we know, single toilets can cost millions of dollars in cities for some reason.
  - bombcar 4y ago
    According to Wikipedia a subway car is only 300k more, so it might be a better deal to buy subway cars to use as restrooms than buying these toilets. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R160_(New_York_City_Subway_car) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R160_(New_York_City_Subway_car...
    - asow92 4y ago
      It might get a little messy with the bumps around, but it could work in theory if cleaned regularly.
Zanneth 4y ago
"Hiding the poor" versus "letting the poor suffer in plain sight" doesn't seem to matter, then. If it was true that oblivious poverty resulted in more action being taken to help those in need, we wouldn't have a homelessness problem in San Francisco. Clearly that is not the case, so I'd much rather live in a place where it is hidden.
hcurtiss 4y ago
Somehow those poor in rural areas find places to live other than tents, tarps, and heaps of garbage. That leads to me to believe your facts are wrong or somehow misconstrued.
- ROTMetro 4y ago
  No. I moved from the Bay Area to a rural area, we have an entire tent city out in the countryside too. It's just way less visible and people are more understanding of it as the average citizen lives pretty close to that level. Lots of people pay a couple hundred dollars a year to park a 40+ year old camper/trailer on someone's land and can only afford to eat meat that they hunted for. People are SUFFERING and our politicians are fighting over if transgenders should be allowed to exist (yes, yes, human beings should be allowed to exist, now, about the crushing poverty leading people to hopelessness and escape into fentanyl in our district mister conservative family values politician, how about read address REAL social issues?).
  - hcurtiss 4y ago
    But for 10 years in downtown Portland, OR, I have lived in rural towns my entire forty-five years. I have also travelled extensively through rural PNW towns with my schooling and work. This does not at all match my experience.
    - ROTMetro 4y ago
      Rural PNW towns not impacted by insane levels of brown/white? Dude, come on. Mexi's (fentanyl pills) are killing so many people right now. Driving so many young girls prostituting themselves. It is horrible. You lived in rural America and didn't experience families whose only source of meat was what they hunted? Dude, come on. Or families living in ancient trailer homes/campers? As for the camps, these places aren't really visible or publicized, I bet plenty of locals don't know about our camp town (or choose not to know). It's way out of town and not near any roads.
      - 4y ago
viridian 4y ago
> After all, in OK or MS you need a car, which is a $2000+ asset, just to even access any public space or resource or make yourself visible at all. Nah, you may need a ride every once in a great while, but in most counties you can get by just walking or biking so long as you live in the county seat. Most services are still consolidated within a couple square miles. The bigger difference is that you can be incredibly poor and still have a house. We didn't have utilities a decent portion of the time growing up because we were so poor, house was in condemn-worthy condition for most of the time we lived there (roof, basement), but my mom's mortgage was, and still is, around $200 a month.

asow92 4y ago

In my personal experience of living in both rural New York and Pennsylvania and NYC for decades, the ratio seems to skew more towards the city. But I can't say as much for the west. A $2k car is a lot less than higher average taxes and housing costs.

galdosdi 4y ago
The rural places you lived in probably genuinely didn't have as much extreme poverty. I'm familiar with some of the types of places you probably mean. I was thinking of the rural South, where maintaining some degree of radical poverty even in the face of all kinds of modern development has been a strange national sport of sorts for hundreds of years. The OP seemed to be pitting southern red state rural vs northern cities based on their list. $2000 is a lot for plenty of poor people. And it's not even that easy to get a reliable car at that price anymore, you know. I'm glad it's hard for you to imagine that, but having to constantly either deal with the lack of a car (which usually means being unable to get to work, and thus earn money to feed the car...) or struggle to keep a car (worrying about a surprise bill) is a huge, huge pain for the poor.
- asow92 4y ago
  You don't need a car to live in these cities, but that doesn't mean it costs less to live there overall.
- lampshades 4y ago
  I’m from the poorest place in the country. Ok, well almost the poorest (right outside the Mississippi delta). You can get a car for less than 2000 and like someone else mentioned, you don’t even need one because you can just ride a bike. Public transportation? Public transportation to where? Down the road to the grocery store? Someone is about to wait at a bus stop outside the projects to go 500 feet? Just ride a bike or walk. Can’t get to work? Someone will pick you up and bring you. Overslept? Expect that same person dragging you out of your bed. You can find shelter for less than $100/month. Need food? Go out back and get it. If I ever was destitute, I’d go back to the rural South in a heartbeat and it blows my mind how many people don’t do that very thing. Bottom line, I’m 99% sure I’ve a better understanding and closer relationship to extreme poverty than you and you have no idea what you’re talking about.
whimsicalism 4y ago
Try the rural south. Lots of rural NY is just a play place for richer people.
- asow92 4y ago
  I totally agree with you and don't want to discount the plight of the south.
- asow92 4y ago
  But, I'd also like to point out that much of the southern tier and western NY is a lot like Appalachia economically. We have much higher poverty rates compared to the rest of the state. The town in which I live is double the state average at around 30% poverty. And despite the fact that we have double the poverty rate of NYC it's nowhere near as apparent.
  - bombcar 4y ago
    In the rural areas you have "poor people" who have their own land and may even live off it a bit - which means they have housing and so are not as noticeable as actual homeless. If you own your hovel outright you can be incredibly far below the poverty line and be "okish" for some value of "ok". Especially if you have a number of people banding together on the same property (very common in rural areas) - some on SSI or SSD, some on welfare, some making some money on odd jobs. You can't really have that in the city or near it; the land is too valuable.

josephcsible 4y ago

> I would much rather be destitute in a big city where I can access all kinds of formal and informal resources like temp agencies or subways to sleep on, than in a rural area This is why so many commuters forego cities' public transit in favor of driving.

asow92 4y ago
I've literally seen someone shit in a subway before, and as we know, single toilets can cost millions of dollars in cities for some reason.
- bombcar 4y ago
  According to Wikipedia a subway car is only 300k more, so it might be a better deal to buy subway cars to use as restrooms than buying these toilets. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R160_(New_York_City_Subway_car) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R160_(New_York_City_Subway_car...
  - asow92 4y ago
    It might get a little messy with the bumps around, but it could work in theory if cleaned regularly.

Zanneth 4y ago

"Hiding the poor" versus "letting the poor suffer in plain sight" doesn't seem to matter, then. If it was true that oblivious poverty resulted in more action being taken to help those in need, we wouldn't have a homelessness problem in San Francisco. Clearly that is not the case, so I'd much rather live in a place where it is hidden.

hcurtiss 4y ago

Somehow those poor in rural areas find places to live other than tents, tarps, and heaps of garbage. That leads to me to believe your facts are wrong or somehow misconstrued.

ROTMetro 4y ago
No. I moved from the Bay Area to a rural area, we have an entire tent city out in the countryside too. It's just way less visible and people are more understanding of it as the average citizen lives pretty close to that level. Lots of people pay a couple hundred dollars a year to park a 40+ year old camper/trailer on someone's land and can only afford to eat meat that they hunted for. People are SUFFERING and our politicians are fighting over if transgenders should be allowed to exist (yes, yes, human beings should be allowed to exist, now, about the crushing poverty leading people to hopelessness and escape into fentanyl in our district mister conservative family values politician, how about read address REAL social issues?).
- hcurtiss 4y ago
  But for 10 years in downtown Portland, OR, I have lived in rural towns my entire forty-five years. I have also travelled extensively through rural PNW towns with my schooling and work. This does not at all match my experience.
  - ROTMetro 4y ago
    Rural PNW towns not impacted by insane levels of brown/white? Dude, come on. Mexi's (fentanyl pills) are killing so many people right now. Driving so many young girls prostituting themselves. It is horrible. You lived in rural America and didn't experience families whose only source of meat was what they hunted? Dude, come on. Or families living in ancient trailer homes/campers? As for the camps, these places aren't really visible or publicized, I bet plenty of locals don't know about our camp town (or choose not to know). It's way out of town and not near any roads.
    - 4y ago

viridian 4y ago

> After all, in OK or MS you need a car, which is a $2000+ asset, just to even access any public space or resource or make yourself visible at all. Nah, you may need a ride every once in a great while, but in most counties you can get by just walking or biking so long as you live in the county seat. Most services are still consolidated within a couple square miles. The bigger difference is that you can be incredibly poor and still have a house. We didn't have utilities a decent portion of the time growing up because we were so poor, house was in condemn-worthy condition for most of the time we lived there (roof, basement), but my mom's mortgage was, and still is, around $200 a month.