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In Levittown’s Shadow: Poverty in America’s Wealthiest Postwar Suburb
Highlights how low-wage residents have struggled to live and work in a place usually thought of as suburbia.
There is a familiar narrative about American after 1945, white residents left cities for leafy, affluent subdivisions and the prosperity they seemed to embody. In Levittown’s Shadow tells us there’s more to this story, offering an eye-opening account of diverse, poor residents living and working in those same neighborhoods. Tim Keogh shows how public policies produced both suburban plenty and deprivation—and why ignoring suburban poverty doomed efforts to reduce inequality.
Keogh focuses on the suburbs of Long Island, home to Levittown, often considered the archetypal suburb. Here military contracts subsidized well-paid employment welding airplanes or filing paperwork, while weak labor laws impoverished suburbanites who mowed lawns, built houses, scrubbed kitchen floors, and stocked supermarket shelves. Federal mortgage programs helped some families buy orderly single-family homes and enter the middle class but also underwrote landlord efforts to cram poor families into suburban attics, basements, and sheds. Keogh explores how policymakers ignored suburban inequality, addressing housing segregation between cities and suburbs rather than suburbanites’ demands for decent jobs, housing, and schools.
By turning our attention to the suburban poor, Keogh reveals poverty wasn’t just an urban problem but a suburban one, too. In Levittown’s Shadow deepens our understanding of suburbia’s history—and points us toward more effective ways to combat poverty today.
There is a familiar narrative about American after 1945, white residents left cities for leafy, affluent subdivisions and the prosperity they seemed to embody. In Levittown’s Shadow tells us there’s more to this story, offering an eye-opening account of diverse, poor residents living and working in those same neighborhoods. Tim Keogh shows how public policies produced both suburban plenty and deprivation—and why ignoring suburban poverty doomed efforts to reduce inequality.
Keogh focuses on the suburbs of Long Island, home to Levittown, often considered the archetypal suburb. Here military contracts subsidized well-paid employment welding airplanes or filing paperwork, while weak labor laws impoverished suburbanites who mowed lawns, built houses, scrubbed kitchen floors, and stocked supermarket shelves. Federal mortgage programs helped some families buy orderly single-family homes and enter the middle class but also underwrote landlord efforts to cram poor families into suburban attics, basements, and sheds. Keogh explores how policymakers ignored suburban inequality, addressing housing segregation between cities and suburbs rather than suburbanites’ demands for decent jobs, housing, and schools.
By turning our attention to the suburban poor, Keogh reveals poverty wasn’t just an urban problem but a suburban one, too. In Levittown’s Shadow deepens our understanding of suburbia’s history—and points us toward more effective ways to combat poverty today.
- GenresHistoryAmerican History
323 pages, Paperback
Published November 3, 2023
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
August 21, 2024
Great book. Great unusual perspective and focus on this area of Long Island history. It definitely focuses more on the people directly involved and the statistics rather then sweeping details (likely impossible due to the complexity). We get fine details of three hamlets and the Towns that contain them. Most people who pay attention to actual Long Island history will know the high points but realizing that even Town of North Hempstead was unable to push all the poor people out was new to me. Some claims about village incorporation are lacking some nuance and detail. The author focuses on poverty and does mention decisions by many villages to not build infrastructure but fails to mention that some villages refused to build infrastructure as a backdoor to prevent more housing. Bibliography is hard to follow and the author is confused on the definition of unincorporated.
April 9, 2024
A solid introduction to the concept of "suburban exceptionalism" and the underlying causes and effects of suburban poverty. With Long Island as the focus, the author explores in detail various government programs to combat poverty. He also discusses the issues of informal housing and impacts on communities.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews