Saturday, May 15, 2010

Diversity growing in the suburbs

A new Brookings Institution report highlights the changes that are taking place in America's suburbs:
The idealized vision of suburbia as a homogenous landscape of prosperity built around the nuclear family took another hit over the past decade, as suburbs became home to more poor people, immigrants, minorities, senior citizens and households with no children, according to a Brookings Institution report to be released Sunday.

Although the suburbs remain a destination of choice for families with children, nuclear families are outnumbered. Nationwide, 21 percent of American families are composed of married couples with children. Their ranks declined in more than half of the suburbs...

Demographers at Brookings say suburbs are developing many of the same problems and attractions that are more typically associated with cities. And cities, in turn, have been drawing more residents who are young and affluent, so the traditional income gap between wealthier suburbs and more diverse cities narrowed slightly.

"The decade brought many cities and suburbs still closer together along a series of social, demographic and economic dimensions," said the report, titled "State of Metropolitan America." ...

The report outlines a decade in which several demographic milestones were passed as the nation's population topped 300 million midway through. About two-thirds of Americans live in the nation's 100 largest metropolitan areas, virtually all regions with populations of 500,000 or more.

"We think we're a small-town nation," Berube said. "But small towns exist because they're connected to something bigger, which allows residents to make a living."

The decade saw increasing diversity in the suburbs, even though they remain two-thirds white overall. For the first time, more African Americans live in suburbs than in core cities, a benchmark that Hispanics and Asians had passed by 2000. ... Also for the first time, more than half of all immigrants live in the suburbs. ...

Suburbs already are facing a rising tide of poor residents. Over the past decade, the number of suburban poor increased 25 percent, almost five times faster than the urban poor growth rate. For the first time, suburban poor outnumbered urban poor by 1.5 million. However, suburbanites were far more likely to have incomes just below the poverty line, while residents of cities were more likely to be in deep poverty, with incomes less than half of the poverty level.

In what the report calls a cultural generation gap, the nation's young are racially and ethnically diverse, while the older population is more white.

22 comments:

  1. "And cities, in turn, have been drawing more residents who are young and affluent"

    IMHO, this is the #1 reason the immunozones have proven so immune to the downturn. According to the census data, incomes in Arl, Alex & DC proper are growing almost 2X as fast as they are in Fairfax county & beyond.

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  2. Yeah, at a certain point in the big cities "infill" made alot more sense (financially & otherwise) than continuing to expand outward. You knew it had to come eventually.

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  3. Diversity?
    Here is the mix:
    Broke and broke as a joke.

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  4. So the country is becoming browner!!! Well close the borders and halt all immigration for al least ten years ..... Let the whites increase their birth rate .... Voila! Problem Solved!

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  5. @Anon 6:12,

    That's the fundamental mistake the housing bears made. Meanwhile, the Immunozone proponents look pretty savvy for "shorting the 'burbs":

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/08/AR2010050803330.html

    I made my bet that, regardless of the facts on the ground, suburban voters can *always* be counted on to do the wrong thing at the wrong time. Of course, "streetcar" 'burbs like Arlington/Alexandria/Bethesda are immune from the general idiocy by dint of their density and proximity to the core. Not much Richmond or Annapolis can do to screw them up at this point.

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  6. "And cities, in turn, have been drawing more residents who are young and affluent"

    Its not so much this...as this has ALWAYS been the case. The reason why there is growing diversity is all the "diverse" and illegal immigrants on welfare who got loans to buy homes without jobs or credit.

    Once the banks foreclose on all of this nonsense and put it back on the market for middle class, the numbers will change.

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  7. Its not so much this...as this has ALWAYS been the case.

    Uhhh NO. In Arlington Alexandria & especially DC, that has NOT been the case. For parts of the latter half of the 20th century, the young and educated have been leaving for the burbs in an exodus popularly known as "white flight".

    And so it was, decade after decade, educated (and mostly whites) would leave for the burbs, and be replaced by young poor immigrants from abroad who kept the populations from an all out collapse.

    All this reverse in about 1998. Since then, the census has shown the amount of white flight (which had been slowing for years) finally stopped and reversed itself. Moreover, young poor immigrants are now primarily bypassing the cities and heading straight for the suburbs.

    Since 2000, over 100% of the net population growth in Arlington, Alexandria & DC has come from an influx of largely young educated whites. This is so pervasive that Arl & Alex which had a chance to become majority minority are now solidly white. Further, while DC is still majority minority, it is likely to no longer be so within the next 10 years.

    Moreover, the affluence of these people is unprecedented. Incomes in these areas exceed the rate of growth for the greater DC area, and especially so in Arlington where incomes grew at roughly 2X they did in the burbs.

    THIS is what was missed during the bubble wars. Good demographic data to explain why the immune areas were immune.

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  8. @ Anon 6:21pm:

    Spot on analysis. The future of DC and its far 'burbs is going to look like Paris. DC will be uniformly wealthy, and the suburbs will have a more mixed income demographic profile.

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  9. "spot on analysis" "look like Paris"

    What a laugh!

    The median household income in Arlington is $96k. Ginnie Mae's affordability formula recommends a maximum home purchase value of 3 times household income. Three times $96k equals $288,000. The median value of a home in Arlington is approximatley $586k. Did you ever think that maybe, just maybe, people bought too much home than they could afford. Ask these people how happy they are devoting, in some cases, 45% of their income to a mortgage.

    So tell me, how does the influx of white people explain why the immune areas are immune? I am unaware of any studies that cite white people as fundamental data that support home values. Please cite me the study that supports your idiotic assertion. Please don't tell me that this is some fantastic dream you pass on to prospective home buyers trying to convince them "this area is different". Please tell me you know the distinction between fable and truth.

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  10. Whiteys are a good proxy for desirability. These are the people who have by and large, the means and ability to live wherever they want. When the move in, relative prices rise. When they leave (as they did 1940-1990) relative prices fall.

    In this case, they also serve as a good proxy because with them come their incomes. From 2000-2009, the incomes in places like Arlington rose 2X as fast as they did in the surrounding DC area where the majority of growth came from immigrant & minority communities.

    http://www.census.gov/acs/www/

    As more of them move in, they compete with others for a very limited resource (fee ownership), pricing some out who have accept inferior goods (renting). Thus, in these areas, you have a huge renter population who skew the median price/median income formula to extremes. Its no surprise that the owner/renter ratio in the close in areas is 60%/40% whereas in the burbs the ratio is much closer to 80%/20%.

    The most extreme of these is Manhattan where there are so many renters the price to income ratio has remained ridiculously skewed for decades. During the white flight era, the ratio was about 10X price to income. However as people repopulated the city and competed for resources, that ratio has risen to over 20X and has stayed there for decades. A foolish person would look at this and say, new york is 20X income, therefore, a bunch of people bought what they couldnt afford, therefore, prices will fall back to 3X incomes. These people will be waiting their whole lives for something that will never happen.

    This, on a micro scale is now happening in Arl & other close in places where whites (and their incomes) are returning in record numbers. At the last trough in prices (1996) Arlington got all the way down to 4.5X income before prices started rising again. It was well over 7.5X income at peak, but got down to 6X as prices stagnated and incomes continued to rise (despite the national stats, the ACS indicated they never actually fell in the DC area).

    As prices in Arl are now rising, it looks like 6X is the trough for this go round.

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  11. Does that mean I am going to have to live in my beautiful maintenance-free apartment all of my life? Boooohooooo.....

    I wish I owned a home. I could be somebody. It would define my existence. I could tell all of my family and friends that I own something. I could wait for the next edition of the phone book and when I see my name and address (that I would own) I could jump up and down like Steve Martin in The Jerk. I could come onto this blod gloating about my home ownership and telling all of the peasants that I have something they don't. My pride will shine through and through so everyone on the blog could see how secure I am as a homeowner. Yes, I could be somebody.

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  12. Dow Drops More Than 200 points, or 2%, at Open; VIX Spikes Above 40

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  13. Wow is there anything more pathetic than someone so insecure in their status as a renter that they feel compelled to post anonymously to bash homeowners?

    Dont get me wrong dude, I am a renter too, but lets not kid ourselves, we wouldnt be here unless we wanted to buy, eventually. In fact, I will go out and say it, I WANT TO BUY.

    Spare us the "oh yeah, well if thats the case, then I will just stay in my superior living conditions forever" shtick. You asked a question, the dude answered, and since you didnt like the answer, you urinate on homeownership. Grow the f**k up!

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  15. Im a renter here in the DC area. I came here from FL to do a government job. I have saved enough money to buy 9 houses in my home state, and not enough to even buy a 1 bedroom rat infested condo here....

    Next year or the year after I have saved enough to buy 20 homes in FL, I will move back and buy an entire subdivision and live like a king. Enjoy your "immunozone" you tools.

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  18. James in your updated "comment policy" you might want to include a word or two about vague threats of bodily harm.

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  19. @Anon 10:24:

    So tell me, how does the influx of white people explain why the immune areas are immune? I am unaware of any studies that cite white people as fundamental data that support home values. Please cite me the study that supports your idiotic assertion. Please don't tell me that this is some fantastic dream you pass on to prospective home buyers trying to convince them "this area is different". Please tell me you know the distinction between fable and truth.

    Look, should the PP have used a phrase "middle- to upper-class well-educated" in lieu of "mostly white"? Sure. Their race is incidental: the dynamic is that well-educated well-off cohort is settling in greater numbers in the urban core, and is paying a premium to do so. These well-educated, well-off folks are just as likely to be minority in numbers relative to their representation within the educated, upper-middle class. Obviously for historical reasons having to do with institutionalized racism, they are underrepresented in that cohort.

    Not sure what you're quoting of the median income is supposed to tell us. Other than the fact that the households of poor folks are substantially larger than those of middle-class and wealthy folks. :)

    Anyway, it's fun to speculate, isn't it? Almost as fun as watching people try to apply the most naive-case analysis to areas in rapid demographic flux as though we were talking about some homogenous middle-class suburb of Rapid City, IA...

    Bottom line is this. Here's the current demographic profile of DC proper, compared to *all* of MD and VA.

    http://spreadsheets0.google.com/oimg?key=0AuPLqI8p4QJgdDc0MWkwazJDWTJJV2pUREY1RERLYXc&oid=1&zx=e2hkyw-1jl7sh

    And here's the profile of NYC compared to all of the state of NY:

    http://spreadsheets0.google.com/oimg?key=0AuPLqI8p4QJgdDc0MWkwazJDWTJJV2pUREY1RERLYXc&oid=2&zx=mxjua2-pg2jfq

    As the thoroughly documented process of suburbanization of poverty continues apace, our profile's going to start looking like NYC's profile (NY county that is). That's one of the reasons I bought in the Immunozone 6-7 years ago: to "short" suburbia.

    I'm not sure what it is exactly that you find controversial about this. If you've found my argument convincing, let me know when you're ready to buy, and I'll print up flyers and charge you an inordinate amount of money!!

    [That last part was a joke; I am not a RE professional. I am willing to take your money though.]

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  20. SHUT THEM DOWN! STOP THE BLEEDING!

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  22. Anonymous said...
    "James in your updated 'comment policy' you might want to include a word or two about vague threats of bodily harm."

    No, that kind of behavior is so obviously over the line that I'll just delete the comments, as I just have (belatedly).

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