The US Census Bureau thread

[Clevelumbus]

^ California will add around 65 cities, give or take. Half the current list. Ohio will add 6, Arizona 9, Pennsylvania 4, Wisconsin 3, and Connecticut 5. Based off 2005 estimates, assuming no cities drop below or rise above 100,000 in each respective state.

[hudkina]

It's amazing that Dallas grew by just 9,000 people. Now that there is virtually nowhere left to expand, my guess is that we may see population losses registered as early as the 2020 census. Shrinking household sizes and demographic shifts will certainly counteract any "infill" projects in the core.

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by tech12

We didn't tear down all or even close to all of our projects.

I don't think tearing down of projects has really anything to do with population losses in our urban centers. At very most, the difference is marginal.

HUD requires that a municipality replace lost housing units at a 1:1 level. They don't have to be in the same location, and they don't have to serve the same income segment, but they have to be built, and in the same municipality.

So yes, maybe some of the newer units serve smaller family sizes, and yes, maybe some of the replacement units haven't been built yet. But there's no way project demolition is driving population loss, especially considering that most studies show that relocated residents tend to stay in proximity to their former residence.

[fflint]

Originally Posted by Crawford

HUD requires that a municipality replace lost housing units at a 1:1 level. They don't have to be in the same location, and they don't have to serve the same income segment, but they have to be built, and in the same municipality.

This is news to me, do you have anything authoritative to back up your assertion?

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by fflint

This is news to me, do you have anything authoritative to back up your assertion?

I assume the HUD website has info under Hope VI.

But you can look up the press release under any Hope VI-approved demolition. They will have the demolition count, and the replacement unit count, and they will be somewhere in the neighborhood of 1:1.

HUD won't approve demolition of projects, unless there is a clear plan to replace the units.

[fflint]

It is not obviously true the federal government requires cities to replace demolished public housing at a 1:1 ratio. We'll just file that assertion away until and unless you care to back it up.

[VivaLFuego]

Originally Posted by Crawford

HUD won't approve demolition of projects, unless there is a clear plan to replace the units.

Key word: "plan."

Beyond a shadow of a doubt, Chicago has only built replacements for a tiny fraction of the number of units demolished over the past 15 years.

[lawfin]

Originally Posted by VivaLFuego

Key word: "plan."

Beyond a shadow of a doubt, Chicago has only built replacements for a tiny fraction of the number of units demolished over the past 15 years.

Crawford is wrong about just about everything he posts about....he really has quite a remarkable track record

[Chase Unperson]

Originally Posted by Crawford

I assume the HUD website has info under Hope VI.

But you can look up the press release under any Hope VI-approved demolition. They will have the demolition count, and the replacement unit count, and they will be somewhere in the neighborhood of 1:1.

HUD won't approve demolition of projects, unless there is a clear plan to replace the units.

My friend is a HUD lawyer who works in Chicago and interacted with cha over the last ten years. Yes there is a mandate that the units need to be replaced 1 for 1. The idea was to tear down cabrini green and other "obsolete" housing and spread the people out over the city in mixed income/race developments Developers were incentivized with tax breaks or as part of getting contract to set aside units for low income people. But like all things mandated, it wasn't always followed. THat was part of the lawsuit between Cabrini Green Residents vs the CHA. THey were destroying units without having adequate new housing ready, and the residents of Cabrini-Green won on that basis.

And I completely agree with Crawford. Demoing public housing is not the cause for chicagos loss of 200,000 people. It might be a small fraction but not much more.

A 23 year old mom with five kids and no job is exactly able to pull up stakes and move to Charlotte or Atlanta.

[Thundertubs]

Originally Posted by Chase Unperson

A 23 year old mom with five kids and no job is exactly able to pull up stakes and move to Charlotte or Atlanta.

Maybe not, but they can get on a Greyhound bus to Madison, Bloomington, Rockford, Cedar Rapids, Iowa City, or Dubuque, where the waiting list for Section 8 housing is a lot shorter. That is a demographic shift that is very much in evidence with the 2010 numbers.

The CHA tore down dozens upon dozens of high-rises. The replacements represent only a fraction of the units lost.

[BevoLJ]

Chase, so those tax breaks the developers got do they still have them? Or is this on proposed developments that never got built?

[fflint]

According to the Wikipedia page for HOPE IV, "The one-for-one replacement policy was repealed by Congress in 1998, separately from HUD's implementation of HOPE VI."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HOPE_VI

[dktshb]

I will certainly be curious about Los Angeles. I hope I am wrong but I really don't see the census reflecting the estimated 4.1 million people who live here. I am not even too sure if we will get the 4 million mark. I expect a degree of undercounting just like in the other traditionally large, diverse and dense cities in America. Plus our economy is one of the worst in the country with an unemployment rate of about 13%. I would guess the population coming in around 3.9 million.

I have a hunch Long Beach and many other municipalities in Los Angeles County might have lost population, which is the reversal of what is happening elsewhere in America.

[BevoLJ]

I don't really have anything to back this up, just going off a gut thing but it seems like in the past whenever the economy in the US was in the gutter people went west for a new start. I'm thinking that might be a part of why your unemployment is so high is due to a lot of unemployed people moving there. Sort of like how some of the other cities which have had some of the worse economies and lost the most jobs yet still keep an 8-12% unemployment is a big part due to the unemployed moving out of those cities to find jobs elsewhere. I'm just wondering if maybe LA is having the opposite happen. I guess we will see soon enough. And I think it is more than likely that I am wrong, and LA is right at the 4 mil mark, staying under the earlier estimates.

[edluva]

yeah i definitely don't think la will hit those estimates of 4.1m. it's just not realistic, but who knows. i also think about 3.9m is a reasonably optimistic guesstimate, and even with that one we're talking about a large 200,000 increase over the 2k census numbers of 3.7m. but who knows, we might be in for a surprise

all signs point to major california cities maturing and traditionally explosive growth like were seeing in texas now starting to level off

[Chase Unperson]

With regards to the destruction of the high-rise projects in Chicago, while they may not have replaced them one for one, I think it is reasonable to assume that a majority of the people were relocated within the city. Whether or not it was strictly followed, the people were supposed to be relocated prior to the destruction of their current housing.

And if you look at that map in the Chicago thread showing the population change. About 70% of the neighborhoods had losses of 5% or more. Do people really think that all those neighborhoods were filled with high-rise housing projects?

[LMich]

Not sure why they are releasing Michigan so late, but until they do, here are three pretty wide-ranging estimates from Detroit for the decade.

762,789 - Southeast Michigan Council of Governments (2010)
850,259 - Detroit Economic Growth Corporation courtesy Social Compact (2009)
910,920 - Census Bureau Estimate (2009)

% Change:

-19.8%
-10.6%
-4.2%

It'll be surprising what they'll find. The lower estimate looks far too low, and the high estimate probably unrealistically high. Talk about a difficult city to track.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by LMich

Not sure why they are releasing Michigan so late, but until they do, here are three pretty wide-ranging estimates from Detroit for the decade.

762,789 - Southeast Michigan Council of Governments (2010)
850,259 - Detroit Economic Growth Corporation courtesy Social Compact (2009)
910,920 - Census Bureau Estimate (2009)

% Change:

-19.8%
-10.6%
-4.2%

It'll be surprising what they'll find. The lower estimate looks far too low, and the high estimate probably unrealistically high. Talk about a difficult city to track.

SEMCOG is way off, I'll just say that right now. I think that Social Compact probably got it closest to right, and it's in line with some of the percentage changes that we've seen in similar cities that have already been released.

[iheartthed]

By the way, who got a sneak peak at Pennsylvania's numbers? Someone updated Pittsburgh and Philly's wiki pages already...

[M II A II R II K]

Bad news for cities, good news for urban centers


07 Mar 2011

Robert Steuteville

Read More: http://newurbannetwork.com/news-opinion/.../bad-news-cities-good-news-urban-centers

The recent census figures included some bad news for cities — Chicago and St. Louis, surprisingly, both lost substantial population. For St. Louis, the 8 percent decline extended a trend that has been going on six decades — yet it was hoped, given positive redevelopment trends near downtown, that the city would see a turnaround. In Chicago, the 6.9 percent drop more than reversed gains that took place in the 1990s. Few officials saw that coming.

But if you look closer, the picture does not look so bleak. St. Louis, for example, gained considerable ground in its most urban neighborhoods. “Big winners: the most urban parts of St. Louis. St. Louis's once-desolate downtown gained population in huge numbers, and near-downtown areas like Soulard, Lafayette Square and the Central West End gained population. “The losers? The bad neighborhoods on the North Side and the more pseudo-suburban areas in the South Side. “So what does this tell me? That even in St. Louis, a city that has lost population faster than Detroit over the past few decades, the MOST urban areas are gaining.”

In Philadelphia, a city that appears to have gained population — slightly — for the first time since the 1940s, a similar picture is emerging (see the attached map). As recently as the 1990s, the safe, walkable, Center City area consisted of two square miles sandwiched between the Delaware to the Schuylkill rivers — out of which many people dared not walk. Now the thriving neighborhoods extend four miles west and nearly five miles up and down the Delaware River.

Chicago, also, saw a pattern of the most urban neighborhoods gaining the most population. As Lewyn explains: “Downtown Chicago gained lots of population. Neighborhoods far from downtown lost population.” A similar pattern can be seen on the ground in Washington, DC, which gained nearly 30,000 people. Growth and prosperity are strongest near its multiple urban centers. These cities offer substantial opportunities to grow in the coming decade. St. Louis and Philadelphia still have huge sectors with cheap housing — although Philly overall saw a 116 percent rise in home values in the 2000s.

.....

http://www.phlmetropolis.com/2011/02/neighborhoods-under-stress.php