Disadvantaged Areas

Some people are forced to live in specific areas where there is a concentration of very hard aspects of life: these are the disadvantaged areas.

“We are forced to the Bottom”

The geographic concentration of the aspects of poverty not only worsens the consequences of poverty; it constitutes an aspect of poverty by itself.

Disadvantaged areas can be found in both urban and rural parts of the United States. They are a direct result of policy, and in some instances a deliberate creation of policy. These communities are under-resourced in many ways, including lack of jobs (high rates of unemployment and underemployment), underfunded and failing schools, food deserts, failing infrastructure, residential segregation, lack of access to any health care or affordable health care, lack of political representation, and poor water and air quality (presence of chemicals and lead) affecting the health of people living there. Some describe this as “a state of psychological warfare” where a person’s mind is broken down, where there’s resentment and an inability to function.

“They put you in a crappy place, don’t give enough services and ‘hopefully’ you die in this crappy place because that’s all you deserved.”

Disadvantaged areas are at the same time over-policed and under-policed: a heavy law-enforcement presence views the people living in these areas as criminal or suspect (the “broken windows” theory; “the racism and criminalization that occurs in public spaces”) ; yet police intervention is missing when residents of these areas become victims of crime and need help. Some rural disadvantaged areas are experiencing population drops because the people who can leave go elsewhere to seek out more opportunities — jobs, health care, and better education for their children. In urban areas, people in distressed communities face less and less affordable housing and more and more gentrification, seeing housing improvements that they know are not meant for them and that push them out of their communities as rents increase. This has led to an increasing homeless population and homeless encampment in some major cities.

In both rural and urban disadvantaged areas, residents face location-based stigma, prejudice, and judgment.

“You live there so you must be like that”

They also experience discrimination when they seek employment and give their zip code and area code, which can show where they live. This stigmatizing environment creates division within the community, with some people adopting respectability politics by distancing themselves from their peers to be better accepted by society at large. These dynamics increase the shame felt by some people and leads others to internalize their pain, suffering in silence.

“You are stuck in a place. You don’t choose or pick a place. It’s chosen for you and you have to deal with it.” “You are not good enough.”

There is a high incidence of drug and alcohol use in both rural and urban distressed areas. The residents see this as not just a symptom of the area, but as an attack on them, themselves: they feel preyed upon and taken advantage of. People in rural areas where there is a high incidence of opioid use have questioned why doctors prescribe opioids so freely when they know there is a problem in the area. In urban areas, they question why so many liquor store permits are given out by the local government for their neighborhoods as opposed to other neighborhoods, “…making it look almost inviting” . In both rural and urban areas, residents recognize that businesses become more “friendly” to them on the 1st and 15th of the month, when people receiving government subsidies usually receive their benefits; indeed, they notice that prices in local stores slightly increase on those dates.

The families living in these areas become fragile because of the constant struggle to sustain themselves and survive in an area where “lack of” is the only thing in abundance. This struggle also causes families to face added scrutiny of their parenting skills when people assume that they do not know how to adequately care for their children, as opposed to there not being enough resources to help care for children. This heightened scrutiny adds an extra layer of anxiety for heads of households — both women and men, in urban and rural communities — who fear that their children might be taken away. The trauma-induced stress caused by living in these areas can have lifelong effects, even if a person is able to move to a more economically stable area.