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Economy Assaults Exurbs

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The New York Times

The Tampa Tribune

Published: February 8, 2009

LEHIGH ACRES - Desperation has entered this once-middle-class exurb of Fort Myers, where hammers used to pound.

Its straight-ahead stare was hidden amid the chatter of 221 families waiting for free bread at Faith Lutheran Church on a recent Friday morning, and it had appeared a block away a few days earlier, as laid-off construction workers in flannel shirts scavenged through trash bags at a home foreclosure, grabbing wires, CDs, anything that could be sold.

"I knew it was coming," said Gloria Chilson, 56, the home's former owner, as she watched strangers pick through her belongings. "You take what you can; you try not to care."

Welcome to the American dream in high reverse. Lehigh Acres is one of countless sprawling exurbs that the housing boom drastically reshaped, and now, the bust is testing whether the shared struggle will pull people together or tear them apart.

The changes in these mostly unincorporated areas outside cities such as Las Vegas; Charlotte, N.C.; and Sacramento, Calif., have been swift and vivid. Their best economic times have been immediately followed by their worst, as they have generally been the last to crest and the first to crash.

In Lehigh Acres, homes are selling at 80 percent off their peak prices. Only two years after there were more jobs than people to work them, fast-food restaurants are laying people off or closing. Crime is up, school enrollment is down, and one in four residents received food stamps in December, nearly a fourfold increase since 2006.

President Barack Obama is scheduled to visit Fort Myers on Tuesday to promote his economic stimulus plan, but residents here tend to view it as the equivalent of an herbal remedy: It can't hurt, but it probably won't heal.

Instead, in church groups and offices, people call for "industry" and repeat one telling question: "What do we want to be when we grow up?"

"That's one of things we struggle with: What is our identity?" said Joseph Whalen, 37, president of the Lehigh Acres Chamber of Commerce. "We don't want to be the bedroom community of Southwest Florida; we don't want to be the foreclosure capital."

Randy Burns, 50, the gregarious owner of Lehigh Discount Furniture, says he now receives 15 to 20 calls a week from people asking him to buy their furniture or help them move out of town - and he said he planned to leave, too.

"Until there's jobs and foreclosures stop," he said, "nothing's going to change."

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