In today’s Herald, Jay Fitzgerald takes a look at Boston’s census numbers:
People are leaving Boston at a stunning rate of about 27 a day - with nearly 10,000 bolting Suffolk County last year alone, according to new U.S. Census Data….The county’s population was about 654,428 in 2005 - off 5.3 percent, or 36,795, from a recent peak in 2001 of 691,223, according to census estimates. Put another way, more than enough people to fill the entire community of Watertown have left Boston over the past four years.
I’m not sure that’s exactly proof that the city is becoming a worse place to be, but it’s part of the boom and bust I was talking about. The interesting thing is that, presumably, the number of housing units haven’t declined and have even upticked very modestly. (Seth Gitell, the Mayor’s spokeperson boasted of a historic housing construction boom, which must have been hard to say with a straight face.) Vacancy rates don’t seem substantial. So the housing market has essentially displaced people living many-people-to-a-unit and replaced them with people living few-to-a-unit. Without empirical evidence, I’d guess that means an influx of empty-nesters and well-to-do singles (the sort who can afford spare bedrooms, studies and the like) and an outflux of poorer families and younger renters who lived several people to the apartment. Condoizing is part of it, I just don’t know how much.
MORE: Thanks to Adam for the link. To clarify, I don’t see housing prices as the cause of the decline, but more of a mechanism that enables the demographic shift. After all, housing prices rose to begin with because of demand and the amount of money floating around (and borrowing at cheap prices). The influx of well-heeled people willing to buy in the city is part of why prices are rising to begin with. We’re inclined to see population decline as people voting with their feet, when in fact it’s mostly an adjustment of the housing market. Housing prices wouldn’t be high and rising if more and better-paid people didn’t want to live in the city. That’s not to say that a) we can’t build more housing or b) influx of bourgeois people is an unmittigated benefit culturally. But let’s not read too much doomsday into this - or treat this as a Rohrschach in which we see only the culprits we were already inclined to see.
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