NYC Population Barely Grew in the ’00s, Census Finds

[mawilson 2,133]

New York City’s population reached a record high for a 10-year census of more than 8,175,133, according to the 2010 census released on Thursday, but fell far short of what had been forecast.

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg immediately challenged the count, saying it was “inconceivable” that Queens barely grew since 2000 and suggesting that the profusion of apartments listed as vacant in places like Flushing and in a swath of Brooklyn means the census missed many immigrants.

The 2010 census did, however, confirm a number of other benchmarks that were detailed in the Census Bureau’s 2009 American Community Survey:

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• For the first time since the draft riots during the Civil War, the number of black New Yorkers has declined, by 5 percent. Non-Hispanic blacks now account for 23 percent of New Yorkers.
  
• The number of Asians increased 32 percent since 2000, passing the one million mark and now constituting 13 percent of the population.
  
• The Hispanic population rose 8 percent and now makes up 29 percent of the total.
  
• Non-Hispanic whites registered a 3 percent decline, the smallest in decades.
  
  

City officials said Thursday they had not decided whether to pursue a legal appeal of the census’s population findings. The city made a successful appeal of the census’s finding in 1990.

If the 2010 official count is sustained, it would suggest that the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, coupled with the impact of the nationwide economic collapse during the second half of the decade, produced much slower growth since 2000 than in the 1990s — even as the recession and housing crisis prompted more New Yorkers to remain in the city rather than retire elsewhere or move to usual job magnets in the South and West.

City demographers offered a number of explanations for the disappointingly low figure, ranging from the possibility that the 2000 census had overestimated the population to the likelihood that many addresses where tenants live in overcrowded and illegally divided apartments and basement cubicles, particularly in Queens and Brooklyn, were overlooked even after aggressive efforts last year by census takers.

While population growth is not always good, it is considered a byproduct of a robust economy. Fewer people also can mean less federal aid and political representation when Congressional and legislative districts are reapportioned.

Five years ago, city demographers persuaded the Census Bureau to raise its July 1, 2005 estimate to 8.2 million.

And the 2009 American Community Survey had placed the population at 8,391,881.

“If you say to yourself it looks like an undercount of 2.6 to 2.8 percent, that’s not out of line with what happened in 1990,” said Joseph J. Salvo, director of the City Planning Department’s population division.

While the 2010 Census counted about 166,000 more people than in 2000, Mr. Salvo said, the number of homes and apartments in the city swelled by 170,000.

“Immediately, you’re suspicious,” Mr. Salvo said.

Moreover, he said, there were neighborhoods in which the census found a disproportionately large number of vacant housing. According to the census, Queens registered a net loss in occupied homes and apartments since 2000 and a 59 percent increase in vacancies. Brooklyn recorded a 66 percent rise in vacancies.

“Huge swaths of housing have essentially been depopulated” in the eyes of the census, Mr. Salvo said.

The neighborhoods with high vacancy rates were not necessarily where new housing had been built, or where many foreclosures had taken place. “They’re in corridors of immigration,” Mr. Salvo said. “These are areas that are transitioning to newer immigrants. When the bureau went out they came up dry, could not interview people in those places and declared them vacant. Without regard to immigration status these are people who are afraid to come out.”

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[^_^ 5,021]

There is only so much space. The outward expansion of the metro area is inevitable. Buy land near Scranton now!

[Saddle Bronc 124]

And "barely growing" is an improvement over shrinking as it did from mid-1960's to mid-1980's.