Global Courant 2023-05-24 18:00:31
Cities in Northern California saw greater population declines during the pandemic than those in Southern California, new census data shows, with Bay Area communities hit particularly hard.
The same data shows that many of the cities that grew the most between July 2020 and July 2022 were in Southern California.
Experts said several factors could explain the north-south divide. But one likely reason is the Bay Area’s technology-rich economy. Many tech companies allowed employees to work from home and it’s likely that “remote work has impacted the Bay Area more,” leading to an exodus of workers in Northern California, said Dowell Myers, a professor of policy, planning and demography at USC.
San Francisco has recently made headlines for its dramatic population loss over the past two years, but other Bay Area cities also ranked as having some of the highest population losses.
San Jose lost nearly 40,000 residents and fell out of the top 10 most populous cities in the country.
Highest population loss among major cities
San Francisco, -7.1%Daly City, -4.4%Berkeley, -4.2%San Mateo, -4.1%San Jose, -3.8%
Experts expect population loss in major cities to slow as the pandemic fades into the past, but they say the state’s housing crisis — another driving factor — won’t go away any time soon.
The lion’s share of the cities that gained the most people between July 2020 and July 2022 were in suburban and extra-urban areas in the state. A Times analysis showed that these areas, largely in the Central Valley, also led the way in housing gains.
Cities in Northern California were also likely hit by “less construction and higher prices” for housing, Myers said.
The census data underscores some of the trends observed during the COVID-19 crisis. Urban centers like downtown San Francisco emptied when techies stopped coming to work, causing local economic problems. Some more remote areas, such as Placer County and the Lake Tahoe region, saw an influx of people from cities able to work remotely.
Susanville, California, lost more than 15% of its population between July 2020 and July 2022, but that was likely due to the 2021 Dixie fire.
(Gary Coronado/Los Angeles Times)
High housing costs were another key factor in the population shift, experts say. With housing costs rising, some Californians used the pandemic as an excuse to sell and move to less expensive areas. But the boom in property prices made it more difficult for others to move in.
“Hundreds of thousands more people would want to live in the Bay Area — if not millions — and Southern California,” said Michael Lens, a professor of urban planning and public policy at UCLA, “if we made it easier to accommodate those people by more housing units and presumably more affordable housing.”
Of the 30 cities, counties, and unincorporated areas in California that shrank the most, only two were in the southern part of the state, in Kern County: Taft, which lost 5.8% of its population, and Tehachapi, which lost 4. lost .6%.
Cities and counties in metropolitan Southern California were absent from the top 30 list, with the cities of Commerce and Cerritos losing about 4% each, placing 36th and 41st, respectively, in that ranking.
Of the cities with populations greater than 100,000, three of the five cities with the highest increase were in Southern California, and the other two in the suburbs of Sacramento and Fresno.
Highest population growth among major cities
Menifee, 6.0% Roseville, 4.3% Clovis, 3.2% Murrieta, 2.2% Jurupa Valley, 2.2%
Menifee, which added more than 4,500 homes between 2019 and 2022, has been determined to grow, city manager Armando Villa told The Times in March.
Meanwhile, a number of smaller towns with populations less than 100,000 — many in Northern California — saw similar losses.
Susanville lost more than 15% of its population in two years, but that was likely due to the 2021 Dixie fire, which burned more than a million acres and destroyed more than 1,400 homes and other structures, according to the California Department of Forestry and fire protection. The city is also expected to lose one of its largest employers, with the impending closure of the California Correctional Center.
Fire was also a likely factor in the city with the highest population increase in that range: Paradise.
The city showed signs of rebuilding after the 2018 camp fire, gaining nearly 2,000 people after losing about 20,000 – nearly 85% of its total population – following the deadliest conflagration in state history.
But Lens said an increase in population – often linked to an increase in housing – “is not what we hope for” in less densely populated areas.
While growth in less densely populated areas isn’t necessarily a bad thing, he explains, the major cities are the areas that need housing the most and can grow more efficiently.
In a housing crisis, places like Lathrop or Calimesa “are not where demand is strongest,” so new housing may not be needed as much, and the rural areas that are seeing growth are “not the most economically productive areas of the state,” he said. said.
Also from a climate perspective, Lens noted that less densely populated areas lead to longer commutes and “are not the ideal places to place housing”.
