In my personal experience of living in both rural New York and Pennsylvania and NYC for decades, the ratio seems to skew more towards the city. But I can't say as much for the west.
A $2k car is a lot less than higher average taxes and housing costs.
The rural places you lived in probably genuinely didn't have as much extreme poverty. I'm familiar with some of the types of places you probably mean.
I was thinking of the rural South, where maintaining some degree of radical poverty even in the face of all kinds of modern development has been a strange national sport of sorts for hundreds of years. The OP seemed to be pitting southern red state rural vs northern cities based on their list.
$2000 is a lot for plenty of poor people. And it's not even that easy to get a reliable car at that price anymore, you know. I'm glad it's hard for you to imagine that, but having to constantly either deal with the lack of a car (which usually means being unable to get to work, and thus earn money to feed the car...) or struggle to keep a car (worrying about a surprise bill) is a huge, huge pain for the poor.
I’m from the poorest place in the country. Ok, well almost the poorest (right outside the Mississippi delta). You can get a car for less than 2000 and like someone else mentioned, you don’t even need one because you can just ride a bike.
Public transportation? Public transportation to where? Down the road to the grocery store? Someone is about to wait at a bus stop outside the projects to go 500 feet? Just ride a bike or walk.
Can’t get to work? Someone will pick you up and bring you. Overslept? Expect that same person dragging you out of your bed.
You can find shelter for less than $100/month.
Need food? Go out back and get it.
If I ever was destitute, I’d go back to the rural South in a heartbeat and it blows my mind how many people don’t do that very thing.
Bottom line, I’m 99% sure I’ve a better understanding and closer relationship to extreme poverty than you and you have no idea what you’re talking about.
But, I'd also like to point out that much of the southern tier and western NY is a lot like Appalachia economically. We have much higher poverty rates compared to the rest of the state. The town in which I live is double the state average at around 30% poverty.
And despite the fact that we have double the poverty rate of NYC it's nowhere near as apparent.
In the rural areas you have "poor people" who have their own land and may even live off it a bit - which means they have housing and so are not as noticeable as actual homeless.
If you own your hovel outright you can be incredibly far below the poverty line and be "okish" for some value of "ok". Especially if you have a number of people banding together on the same property (very common in rural areas) - some on SSI or SSD, some on welfare, some making some money on odd jobs.
You can't really have that in the city or near it; the land is too valuable.
A $2k car is a lot less than higher average taxes and housing costs.