Why did Chicago start losing population so suddenly? (Atlanta, Pittsburg: credit card, homes)

[glass_of_merlot]

Originally Posted by Vlajos

The recession ended and job growth picked up nationally providing better opportunities in places with lower cost of living. Lower income people got tired of the out of control violence in certain communities. The population loss is solely attributed to households making less than the area median income. Households making more are than the median are growing in the city.

Somehow people chose to ignore this.

[jfre81]

I'm on the Blue Line right now looking at all these manbun hipster boxes coming up on Milwaukee where a bunch of useless vacant stuff used to be.

The point, I guess, is that some of Chicago is losing population.

[BRU67]

Here's an article in today's Sun-Times on Pilsen's population losses...

https://chicago.suntimes.com/educati...-jungman-casas

More than 3,500 students transferred out of an elementary school in Pilsen into a school district outside Chicago since 2006, according to CPS records obtained by the Sun-Times.

The majority of those students ended up in working-class suburbs like Berwyn and Cicero. Many students moved to nearby states, especially Indiana. About 600 students left the country altogether with almost all of them going to Mexico.

Unfortunately, this article, like many others like it, gets intellectually lazy and fingers those privileged "SINKs and DINKs", and offers that we can be cured of the terrible problem they're creating if we just mandate a lot of affordable housing. That's a popular narrative - perhaps because it's simplistic and feels good - but it's not correct. Per the Census, Pilsen lost 8,300 residents between 2000 and 2010. The article says it lost a total of 11,000 from 2000 to 2017, so the population losses have stablized a bit since 2010 but still, those numbers are alarming.

However, the nice cotton-candy narrative pretty much implodes when you consider that Little Village, also a predomanently Hispanic community right next to Pilsen, lost 11,800 people between 2000 and 2010. Little Village in no way, shape, or form experienced gentrification during the 2000s, and rents are to this day largely very affordable there.

I know that a well-meaning educated progressive living in a low-violence high-amenity area may find this hard to believe, but working class people can be driven by a desire to better their own personal situation by moving to a different place. And that place might not be a dense urban neighborhood with small apartments, high gang activity, and bad streets upon which you get parking and red light tickets all the time. Many of those who left Pilsen simply wanted more space, perceived safety, and in many cases their own house. Berwyn and Cicero, and other working class suburbs, offered them a chance to do this cheaply (particularly Indiana with its lower tax burden). That's what's great about Chicagoland, there's something for everyone!

Hipster SINKs did fill in the gaps in Pilsen, and they are starting to do so now in Little Village. And this has undoubtedly caused rents to rise. But they're not what caused the exodus. I'm not trying to be a smarty britches here. I'm just saying that if you do not understand what's really going on, you do not come from an informed place, and you start answering questions that no one is really asking. I also think it's more than a little bit condescending towards those who have chosen to move.

One thing the article definitely gets right, however, is that turning depopulating schools into specialized magnet schools is an excellent idea. That'll definitely help in keeping good families, of all demographics, in the City. It's very hard to convince middle and upper middle class parents to send their kids to majority-low income/minority schools, and those individuals will leave for suburbs with good schools once their kids hit school age. Having more magnet options will definitely help Chicago retain families who value education, which is a good thing.

[emathias]

Originally Posted by MSchemist80

Democrats happened. They brought us out of control crime, out of control taxes, fiscal ruin, and oppressive nanny state garbage.

The most conclusive mark of failure for any government is when people start moving to get away from them. So great job party of the working people.

What a bunch of horse droppings. Crime was far worse in the 1990s, a period of growth in population after decades of declining population. By the time population started dropping again, crime was half what was in the 1990s, and taxes have really started hitting us hard yet.

What happened was the economic recovery happened, and because of regional and national structural economics, other regions started to recover sooner than the Midwest. Additionally, Chicago had started to pull in more professionals than it has in a long time, which put pricing pressure on certain areas. The recovery happened first for professionals here before manufacturing and service jobs, so working class people moved away for working class opportunities in other regions, while professionals have continued to move here. For better or for worse, there are, both nationally and locally, far more working class people than professional class people, so especially at the start they professionals moving in didn't have the volume to make up for the working class leaving.

Then two other things happened: the recession effectively stopped Latino immigration, which had fueled a lot if the 1990s population growth, and some people even moved back out of country entirely, and then something surprising happened. The urban poor who didn't move away stopped having big families. Why this has happened is up for debate, but it has, which means that the natural growth rate dropped, immigration dropped, and the working class left for the parts of the country that recovered sooner. Trump hasn't helped immigration any, but we are running out of working class people who are motivated and financially capable of moving, so I suspect there losses have slowed if not stopped in the City proper regardless of what the Census estimates are saying.

While I agree with people who say it's important to have an economically diverse population, it's also true that professional class people are less sensitive to some degree of tax increases. I mean, ultimately they have more to lose because their taxes often go up more, but they can also absorb them and have at least a little more leverage to push up salaries. If the City can keep the professional class growing, it will have a fighting chance of at least stabilizing the population and eventually growing it again. If we can get into a growth phase, that can actually feed itself and also generate working class construction and service jobs to keep and attract non-professionals.

[Sunbiz1]

Originally Posted by KoNgFooCj

Chicago gained 11,526 people in 2012. Chicago lost 7,269 people in 2016. 2014 was the year that growth plummeted and 2015 was the first year of decline. What in the local or national economy changed during this time? Does it make sense that Chicago had a period of decent growth around 2009-2014 followed by recent stagnation like most other rust belt cities? What was Chicago's specific situation?

-More competition for decent jobs, there are warmer and cheaper cities with less.
-Cost of living higher than sunbelt cities.
-Poor climate
-Poor schools
-More people working from home, that no longer have to live near work.
-Better job offers
-Overpopulated
-Polluted
Of course, many of these have always existed; the difference is 21st century Americans don't want to put up w/it; and don't have to anymore.

[jfre81]

Originally Posted by Sunbiz1

-More competition for decent jobs, there are warmer and cheaper cities with less.

*raises hand*

Wouldn't there be less competition in a city that everyone's leaving, as opposed to a city that has 50,000 new people showing up every week?

[Chicago_Person]

Originally Posted by jfre81

*raises hand*

Wouldn't there be less competition in a city that everyone's leaving, as opposed to a city that has 50,000 new people showing up every week?

Yeah.And he said it's overcrowded. Which is also false.

[Vlajos]

Originally Posted by glass_of_merlot

Somehow people chose to ignore this.

Thanks, I don't know why though. It is clearly documented by census statistics that lower income African Americans leaving are the driver in the population loss. Every other ethnic group is growing and people with higher incomes are increasing.

[skeddy]

Illinois will be the first state to default. It's going to get uglier soon. Wrong place to live in the future if you have any assets. Can the state troopers buy gas with state credit cards again?

[Sunbiz1]

Originally Posted by jfre81

*raises hand*

Wouldn't there be less competition in a city that everyone's leaving, as opposed to a city that has 50,000 new people showing up every week?

Not when there's less job market growth when compared to cities such as Minneapolis or Atlanta.