[Mpls] Interesting fact

[Steve Brandt]

More for stats geeks on the relationship between households and
household size, from several 2001 Star Tribune articles:

 Gains despite demolition
   Minneapolis entered this census with a booming residential 
riverfront district near downtown and immigrants squeezing into its 
housing stock. It gained despite the removal of about 1,200 housing 
units for schools, flood-control ponds and other civic renewal 
efforts, including the razing of about 700 units at its North Side 
housing projects, plus scattered demolitions of boarded housing.  
Immigrants' search for housing apparently pushed the number of 
people per household up far above the expectations of regional and 
federal demographers. "A lot more people are doubled or tripled or 
quadrupled up," said Laura Lambert, a Minneapolis planner...


 Concentrated growth   Clearly, public investment in areas such as the
downtown 
Minneapolis riverfront is creating growth. City leaders have touted 
pricey riverfront housing units as a magnet for suburban empty 
nesters. Yet that area contributed growth of fewer than 1,000 
people, a small share of the city's total of 14,235, in part 
because many of the units weren't finished by April's census.   Seven
of the city's 81 neighborhoods accounted for 80 percent of 
the gain. Most of them haven't gotten the public redevelopment 
attention or financing that downtown residential projects have, 
even though some of them lie on downtown's tattier edges.   Some of the
seven, such as Phillips and Cedar-Riverside, have 
been portals for immigrants for more than a century. More recently, 
places such as Whittier and Jordan have become gateways for 
minorities pulled from other states by the strong local economy. 
The other neighborhoods accounting for the most new people are 
Elliot Park, Folwell and Powderhorn....


That's not to say that Phillips didn't grow. It added almost 
2,600 people, for a 15 percent growth rate since 1990. But that 
came largely within the existing housing stock, as larger immigrant 
families and groups of single workers squeezed into whatever space 
they could find in the region's tight housing market. Demand for 
Phillips' housing was swollen by prices that until recently were 
depressed by concern about crime and blight...


Meanwhile, landlords report a trend of tenants doubling up both 
among young singles and immigrants scrimping to send money to their 
families abroad.   This is the hardest factor for demographers to
track, much less 
quantifiable than housing units or their occupancy rates. During 
the last census, Minneapolis recorded more than 11,000 vacant 
units, leaving considerable room for population growth.



Steve Brandt
Staff writer
Star Tribune
Phone: 612-673-4438
Fax:  612-673-4359
425 Portland Av.
Minneapolis, MN 55488