A Cold Detroit
By Mitch Berg
Hennepin County’s population – which is mostly Minneapolis – is down. And while that is not the only factor depressing home values for the first time since the 2008 recession.
This is affecting the funding of (what we will still refer to as) public services in Minnesota’s largest county and city.
In fact, the demographics of Minnesota as a whole are a little troublesome.
The annual “natural change” in Minnesota’s population (births minus deaths) is not enough to compensate for the number of people moving out of the state. In the little over three years from the last census (April 1, 2020) to July 1, 2023, Minnesota saw a natural increase in residents of about 40,400. These gains were wiped out by the net domestic outmigration (people leaving Minnesota for other states) of 46,000. If not for the net “international migration” of 34,600, Minnesota’s overall population would have fallen over this period.
Young people are leaving the state – which is a huge change from when I first moved here, when the Twin Cities were a destination to a lot of recent grads stepping out into adult live.
But hey, maybe protecting criminals while jamming people into ticky-tack multi unit boxes will fix the problem:
That’s the problem with progressive politics. Reality always wins.
March 28th, 2024 at 6:21 am
This explains the declining enrollment in the school systems in both Minneapolis and St. Paul.
A couple of weeks ago, I saw an article stating that Hennepin County has lost more than 50,000 residents. Trying to find it.
March 28th, 2024 at 7:13 am
Sorry, I guess I don’t understand. Building small apartment buildings is bad?
March 28th, 2024 at 7:14 am
Zoning multi-family dwellings in formerly single-family areas is a great idea – just not in my neighborhood.
March 28th, 2024 at 8:24 am
Is owning a house an investment or an obligation? Liberals can’t decide.
On the one hand, they want to promote home ownership so people can get on the escalator of wealth and ride price appreciation to the top. They offer First Time Homebuyer programs and forgivable Low Interest Loans to favored groups.
On the other hand, they won’t protect the value of those homes by keeping the nice neighborhoods intact. Nobody wants a home next door to a meat packing plant. Nobody wants to live next to The Projects. But Liberals insist that zoning is evil because it keeps nice neighborhoods intact, as if there was some social obligation to transform every nice neighborhood into a ghetto. They give money to developers to build low-income housing, then impose rent controls, give free lawyers to tenants and automatically expunge eviction records, which makes it impossible for landlords to keep the place nice. Lowlives have all the rights and they don’t care if they destroy the nice new building – they didn’t put down a deposit and they’re getting evicted anyway.
Get out now.
March 28th, 2024 at 9:01 am
No objection to small apartment buildings, but you’ve got to make them with adequate parking so the residents don’t take up all the street space in the neighborhood. In a world where the most efficient way of getting around is the passenger automobile (far more efficient than buses or trains in practice), there is a limit to the resident density that ought to be allowed in a development. Each unit really ought to have about 500 square feet of parking space, enough for two cars.
March 28th, 2024 at 11:35 am
“Net international migration”? In other words …