Dear friends,

Watching my five year old learning to count to 100, he sometimes gets stuck at 60 and goes backward. 57, 58, 59, 30... 31, 32... then he gets a look on his face that says, "Haven't I been here before?"  It's the same feeling I get while reading Facing Suburban Poverty, the recent Brookings Institution study on the startling rise of poverty in our suburban communities. 

When I first began reading the book I was under the impression that poverty was shifting from urban to suburban areas. That impression was wrong. Suburban poverty is indeed growing at a faster rate than urban poverty but urban poverty has not declined. Entrenched urban poverty is as strong as ever. How can this be? Fifty years after President Johnson started the war on poverty, we're going backwards. There are solutions.

We are lucky to be hosting Alan Berube, co-author of the Brookings' study as our speaker for Top of the Town on April 9. Alan will be in Seattle as part of the Global Cities Initiative, a partnership between Brookings and JPMorgan Chase. He'll be speaking about his book and discussing solutions to this alarming trend. You should be there. Call to sponsor a table today.

Best regards, 

Wednesday, April 9, 2014 

To guarantee a seat, become a sponsor. Contact Michael Seiwerath at 206-204-3840 or   mseiwerath@capitolhillhousing.org.

A limited number of individual tickets will be available beginning in late February. To put your name on the waiting list, contact Amy Allsopp at aallsopp@capitolhillhousing.org.