Author talk: Why the suburbs are failing America’s families

A better home, a better school, a better life — that’s what American suburbia promises to those who relocate there. 

Benjamin Herold’s family experienced a piece of that promise during its golden era. They lived in a suburb of Pittsburgh called Penn Hills, one of the many post-World War II suburbs built with significant housing incentives from the federal government. In his mostly white community, the schools nurtured his love for reading and writing. He graduated in 1994 as one of 24 valedictorians at his high school. 

Years later, as a seasoned journalist, Herold turned his attention back to his hometown and found the dream was over. 

In 2015, his former school district was $172 million in debt. Deep cuts to programs and teaching staff followed. Property tax rates had shot up. As conditions worsened, scores of white families like his own had moved on, flipping the area’s demographics from 72% white to 63% Black. 

This cycle of boom and bust is happening all over the country, with tragic consequences for families of color and their kids, Herold writes in his new book “Disillusioned: Five Families and the Unraveling of America’s Suburbs.” The original inhabitants of suburbia — who were mostly white because of exclusionary zoning and discriminatory lending — enjoyed lower tax rates as their cities took on enormous debt to keep the “illusion” of suburbia alive. Those same families then left when the costs were realized. 

As the nation grows more racially diverse and urban areas grow more expensive, many are moving to suburbs and seeing them for the “ticking time bomb” that they are. In his book, Herold follows five families in five different cities; four are families of color, and all are in search of something better for their kids. But some find that the communities weren’t built for them — several encounter racial discrimination at their schools, high property taxes leftover from a previous generation’s debt and failing infrastructure. 

On Friday, Herold will speak about his book with Education Lab at 7:30 p.m. at Town Hall Seattle’s Wyncote NW Forum. Here is a snippet from a recent conversation with Herold about the insights from his book. 

Tell me a little bit about how your experience guided the writing of this book. 

My white family had a very positive experience (in the suburbs). They’re largely centered around the public schools. I graduated in 1994, and left. I couldn’t wait to get out of the suburbs and wanting to be in the city and see the world … 

In 2015, I started seeing these headlines come out of Penn Hills about a $172 million debt in (my former) school district and the way that was rippling through the community and all of the problems it was causing. (It was) overlaid with this demographic switch from Penn Hills public schools being 72% white when I graduated to 63% Black. And so the first question for me was, what the heck is happening in my hometown? And then the second question was, is this just my hometown? And so I started reading the sociological literature of suburbia. And then it became clear that there were different types of suburbs that are in different stages of development. And that it was a kind of an arc of boom and bust. That’s really hard to see if you focus on a single community at a single point in time, because it really plays out over generations over whole metropolitan areas. 

You probably could’ve probably written this book without focusing so heavily on schools and on students. Why did you feel this had to be a book about education? 

Public schools have always been central to the suburban dream. And it was part of the package deal, this idea that you get the house [that helps you] build wealth, and you get the public schools that give you opportunity and allow you to give your kids a better life. And that those school systems, particularly in postwar suburbs, were built up and designed in the image of the white families who moved there to start with, to reflect their values, histories, priorities, needs, culture — all of that.

Then you have families of color moving into suburbia wanting a chance to build wealth and wanting the chance to have their kid put on a path to middle class security. And they end up running into a system that wasn’t designed for them. In fact, it was actually designed to keep them out. It’s where families end up feeling and experiencing this dynamic [of disillusionment] first. It’s the leading edge because the demographic changes show up in kids first and kids are in schools. 

The families in your book come from California, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Georgia and Texas. What about the Pacific Northwest? What should families here have in mind as they look at their own suburbs? 

I haven’t done much reporting on the Seattle area, specifically. But just looking at the demographic numbers, you can see a rapid decline in white enrollment in suburban school districts in King County. And the rapid diversification of other districts seems to track the same pattern seen in lots of other parts of the country. 

What I hope people walk away from “Disillusioned” with is … this sense that the … struggles and challenges (of suburbia) are connected. One of the things that I walked away with is how in every suburb there were parents organized around these issues — to get roads repaired, wanting a sidewalk put in, all of these kinds of basic quality of life measures. And it often feels just like an individual struggle here and an individual struggle there. But I have come away from this believing that those struggles and those fights and those challenges are linked. 

Would you caution families against moving into a postwar suburb? 

It’s important we go into suburbia with eyes wide open. And so there’s still a lot of great things about suburbia. Again, lots of people are fighting to make suburbia work for the families who live there now. But I think if we don’t understand this history, and we don’t understand the way communities and their institutions — especially public schools — are struggling to confront that history and to change their own culture, we set ourselves up for not only disillusionment, but this sense of economic loss, personal risk and loss of social fabric.