Recession ravages Middle Tennessee suburbs, rural areas

Outside Davidson, needs are greater but help is scarce

By Jennifer Brooks
THE TENNESSEAN

They used to donate to the local food pantry. Now they're the ones coming in for help.

The recession is changing the face of poverty in Middle Tennessee. This time, the hardest-hit neighborhoods aren't in the inner city — they're in the suburbs, the bedroom communities and small towns.

The farther out from Nashville you go, the deeper the recession cuts. People who have never had to ask for a handout in their lives are doing the unthinkable — filing for unemployment, skipping a mortgage payment, waiting in line at the food bank so the children will have something to eat tonight.

"People walk in, and they're shocked to even be here. They never thought they'd have to visit a food bank," said Lynn McDonald, coordinator of Helping Hands in Fairview, which distributes food and clothing to the growing ranks of the needy in this Williamson County community of 7,000.

The Brookings Institution calls it the "crabgrass recession" — an economic downturn that has hit many suburbs and rural areas even harder than the cities.

In a new report this week, Brookings researchers charted the growing gap between the urban and suburban recession in Middle Tennessee. The unemployment rate is higher outside the Davidson County limits than inside. Suburban and rural residents are registering for emergency food assistance at twice the rate as their urban neighbors,

"Things are really starting to shift and change," said Elizabeth Kneebone, a senior research analyst at Brookings. "The communities that are seeing their unemployed populations growing fastest are the exurbs (rural counties where fewer than a quarter of the population lives in cities) and the suburbs."

Nashville, its work force cushioned slightly by its base of government, health-care, education and service jobs, is actually faring a bit better than the rest of the country.

The counties that ring Davidson are faring worse. Outside the cities, Kneebone said, jobs are scarcer and many tend to be in industries decimated by the downturn, like construction and factory jobs.

Some areas lack a food pantry

All too often, the communities with the deepest needs have the fewest resources. Some counties have only one or two food pantries. Some have none at all.

Three months ago, Fairview didn't even have a food bank. Before McDonald and a handful of other volunteers took it upon themselves to launch Helping Hands, Fairview residents had to drive to Franklin, half an hour away, to get emergency food assistance.

"We're the only resource like this in this area," said Joelle Chappell, another Helping Hands coordinator. She, McDonald, two regular volunteers and a handful of others have been the main source of food and clothing for 550 of their neighbors the past three months.

Williamson County is wealthy. Most Fairview residents are not. They work construction, or they commute to General Motors' Spring Hill plant, or they clean houses in Brentwood and Franklin.

Or rather, they used to. The construction jobs have dried up, the factory is closing, and even the wealthy households are tightening their belts — and the weekly cleaning service is one of the first household expenses that get trimmed.

If you lose your job in the city, there's a broad network of charities and social service agencies nearby to offer aid, not to mention plenty of other potential employers.

The farther from the city you go, the wider the gaps in the safety net.

"People were not prepared for this," said Jaynee Day, president and CEO of Second Harvest Food Bank, which works with 400 community food pantries in 46 Middle Tennessee counties. "They're telling us that they're seeing new types of people coming in and needing services. People who used to donate to them are now coming to them to get help."

'You know these people'

Nashville's unemployment rate jumped from 5 percent to 8.6 percent from May 2008 to May 2009. The average unemployment rate in neighboring counties jumped from 5.3 percent to 9.8 percent.

Over the same year, the number of people registering for the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program — formerly known as food stamps — jumped by 12 percent in Davidson County and 23 percent in the suburban counties.

The picture is even grimmer in the exurbs — counties such as Dickson, Trousdale, Cannon and Clay, where the unemployment rate averaged 11.6 percent in May. In some rural counties, it barely matters how many people now qualify for emergency food assistance because there are so few agencies available to help them.

The United Way of Middle Tennessee charts the stark contrast between the services available in urban communities and rural areas, where the need may be just as deep, but the support network is simply not broad enough, or well-funded enough, to help everyone.

The United Way counts 552 charities and social aid agencies in Davidson County. In Rutherford County, there are 105; in Williamson County, there are 58; Wilson, 44; and Robertson, 27. In Cheatham County, with a population of almost 40,000, just 15 agencies are available to help those in need.

Second Harvest operates mobile food pantries, which it sends into counties with no local food banks at all. But with demand skyrocketing at existing food pantries, Day said the agency has been forced to cut back its mobile pantry budget.

"These people didn't do anything wrong," Day said. "You know these people. It's your hairdresser and your Sunday school teacher."