When hundreds camped out in the south suburban town of Park Forest last summer in the hopes that they would be added to an affordable housing waiting list, it illuminated how the economic downturn had reached beyond urban and rural areas to the suburbs.  A new study (PDF) from the Brookings Institution backs that up, finding that the poverty rate in the Chicagoland suburbs grew by 9 percent between 2000 and 2008 (while remaining more or less flat in the city itself).  Factor in the historic loss of jobs in 2009, and the report estimates that the number of poor suburbanites may have grown by another 2.3 percent.  But this trend isn't unique to the Chicago area, as the study's authors note:

Between 2000 and 2008, suburbs in the country’s largest metro areas saw their poor population grow by 25 percent—almost five times faster than primary cities and well ahead of the growth seen in smaller metro areas and non-metropolitan communities. As a result, by 2008 large suburbs were home to 1.5 million more poor than their primary cities and housed almost one-third of the nation’s poor overall.

Check out this adjoining fact sheet (PDF, page 20), which boils down some stats from the six-county Chicago-area. Missing from the breakdown, however, is the fact that nowhere is the population of poor suburbanites as large, or the challenge as great, as in Chicago's southeast suburbs. In towns like Ford City, Dolton, and Harvey, unemployment hit double digits long before the recession began. In response, anti-hunger advocates from the Greater Chicago Food Depository have deemed (PDF) it one of the top three most food-insecure areas in the region. Brookings' Emily Barr ponders the recovery of such distraught communities, noting that the data "brings questions of access to service providers, transportation, and jobs even further to the forefront of debate."

What's certain is that these communities cannot meet this challenge alone and need to see their safety net programs strengthened, as a University of Illinois-Chicago study concluded (PDF) last summer. What the researchers didn't anticipate, however, is the sort of cuts and reimbursement delays that have driven the existing agencies to the brink of financial collapse -- all thanks to the ongoing budget crisis in Springfield.

"Poverty elimination will not happen over night," the Heartland Alliance states in a report released today, "or even over the course of the year or couple of years." But with some strategic thinking along with a reallocation of state and federal resources poverty can indeed be mitigated. Check out Heartland's recommendations (PDF) for improving transportation, housing, health care, food and nutrition, child care, employment, and income support policies in Illinois.