If you’ve lived in Flagstaff long enough, you’ve likely heard the expression “Poverty with a View.” For many, Flagstaff is a great place to live: the view’s phenomenal, the downtown’s quaint, it’s a small, college town, and there are outdoor opportunities galore. But there’s a downside. As more and more people are drawn to Flagstaff for its amenities, housing prices have skyrocketed, and jobs and wages have failed to keep pace. The result is one of the largest gaps between income and housing costs in the mountain west. That means real poverty for some, and severe economic challenges for many others.

KNAU will explore this tension—a growing concern in mountain towns throughout the west—in a groundbreaking, six-day series called Poverty with a View. It begins April 28th, and will air during Morning Edition and All Things Considered.

Reports will focus on:

The series will also include a profile of the river-running community, commentaries, and three hour-long, call-in talk shows: the first on economic development, the second on affordable housing, and a third, wrap-up show looking at where Flagstaff goes from here.

Poverty with a View is a first-of-its-kind collaboration between National Public Radio and a local, NPR member station. Through NPR’s Local News Initiative, KNAU’s local news team is working with an NPR producer (Cindy Carpien, who also produced KNAU’s award-winning Edge of the Rez in 2006), and Maeve McGoran, an editor with NPR’s Morning Edition. KNAU has received funding from the city of Flagstaff, in partnership with Flagstaff Cultural Partners, to produce Poverty with a View.

Downtown, as seen from the balcony of the old Weatherford Hotel

The Babbitt Building, a restored family mercantile built in the late 1880's

Yavapai County Courthouse in Prescott

KNAU’s Geoff Norcross interviews Sue Mattson, a jobless Ph.D

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