The poverty rate of Harris County, which surrounds Houston, rose from 10 percent in 1980 to 17 percent in 2014. That alone is a troubling trend, but equally concerning is the increasing tendency in the Houston area for that poverty to be highly concentrated. Economic segregation appears to be tightening its grip on Harris County and the area’s neighborhoods are increasingly economically polarized. There is a declining number of middle-class neighborhoods in the region, and Greater Houston is experiencing an increasingly stark division between the “haves” and “have nots.”