Poverty increases in Milwaukee

A Journal-Sentinel article reports the rise of poverty in the City of Milwaukee, making it the fourth poorest city in the nation.  Ignoring the partisan warfare in the comments section, I'd like to point out:

• Milwaukee's poverty rate reached 27% with African-American unemployment in some parts of the city possibly being as high as 60%-70%.
• Poverty rates in the suburbs were: Waukesha County (4.8%), Ozaukee (5.3%) and Washington (5.4%).

To me this confirms that most of the emerging job markets are in the suburban counties (more on that later) and combine that with a poor public transportation system that makes it difficult to travel to the suburbs, there's a real disconnection between people and jobs. Then there's the housing policies that makes it difficult for people to move to the suburbs into housing they can afford.

It doesn't help that communities compete for businesses and try to draw them from the City of Milwaukee with tax incentives.  We should be growing our businesses and trying to draw new employers from outside the region instead of cannibalizing what we do have. Wasn't that the whole idea of The Milwaukee 7?