The Three-Tier Model: How Helping Occurs in Urban, Poor Communities

The organization of provider-client relations in helping processes within urban, poor communities has shifted in accordance with structural shifts in large, American inner cities in the last 30 years. I argue that this set of relations is best understood as a three-tier structure, with each tier composed of networks of individuals, organizations, and social groups that can be differentiated by various factors, including size and capacity and community relations. The three-tier model is a useful heuristic both to understand contemporary patterns of service delivery and to design social policies to strengthen the social fabric of urban, poor communities.