Start at the east end of Southern Boulevard – at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago, one of the country’s poshest private clubs – drive west 38.8 miles on the same road and you reach Belle Glade, a city with some of the worst unemployment and poverty in the country.
Without using your blinker, you go from a 20,000-square-foot Louis XIV ballroom, gilded ceilings and a $100,000 fee just to join the club to overflowing soup kitchens, child poverty at twice the national rate and people capturing rain in buckets because their water was turned off for nonpayment.
Last week, the Census Bureau announced that poverty in the U.S. has spread to 46 million people and that the gap between the wealthiest and the poorest continues to grow.
via As data shows more Americans in poverty, Belle Glade looks for ideas from eastern Palm Beach County.