We are still losing population. This is one, if not the biggest, issue facing St. Louis.
I’ve been revisiting neighborhoods on the city’s North Side to update my neighborhood profiles originally posted over a decade ago. The results are obvious.
North City is emptying out. Not just people, but the occupied or available housing stock is fading too.
Black people, especially younger Blacks, are leaving St. Louis in droves.
The last 30 or so years has seen a mass exodus of Black people out of North City. This is likely a combination of older folks either dying or moving to assisted living in the suburbs. But, I’ve noticed a severe lack of young families in North City in my long scooter rides all over the city.
I see a lot of young Black kids in South City around Dutchtown, Gravois Park, Benton Park West, Fox Park, etc. But rapidly decreasing numbers north of Delmar.
Is this a St. Louis issue or a broader trend amongst Black folks?
St. Louis used to see massive amounts of White Flight after WWII through the 1990s. Now Black people are headed to the burbs as well. But why?
Per a 2022 story “What’s Causing Black Flight” by Jerusalem Demsas in the Atlantic:
“In the U.S., the terms inner city and urban have long been code words for Black areas. They are used to evoke the stereotype of a Black underclass, confined to public-housing units or low-income housing, entrenching the belief that this population is somehow inherently meant for city life while also denigrating city life as dirty, crowded, and utterly undesirable. During the 2016 presidential debates, for instance, then-candidate Donald Trump repeatedly referred to African Americans living in “the inner cities.” When asked about the nation’s racial divide or being a president to “all the people in the United States,” he repeatedly evoked the stereotype that Black people largely live in inner cities wracked by crime.
To make this stereotype work in the 21st century requires overlooking one key fact: Black families have been absconding from cities for decades. In a recent paper, the economists Alex Bartik and Evan Mast note that over the past 50 years, the share of the Black population living in the 40 most populous central cities in the U.S. fell from 40 percent to 24 percent. They are not the first to highlight this phenomenon. Demographers and sociologists in particular have been noting this trend for decades. As the Brookings Institution demographer William Frey has documented, from 2000 to 2010, the Black population of the central cities in America’s 100 largest metro areas decreased by 300,000. Detroit, Chicago, and New York (prime destinations during the Great Migration) as well as Atlanta, Dallas, and Los Angeles all saw declines in their Black populations.
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And yes, St. Louis is included in the 40 most populous cities referenced above (even though they are referencing the Metro, not cities. This is a clear inaccuracy in the reporting. Always be critical and skeptical when reading about St. Louis. We are unique, but grouped in with other much larger cities.
The Bartik and Mast paper is an interesting read. Here’s the abstract if you are interested:
“Since 1970, the share of Black individuals living in suburbs of large cities has risen from 16 to
36 percent. This shift is as large as the post-World War II wave of the Great Migration. We first
show that Black suburbanization has led to major changes in neighborhoods, accounting for a
large share of recent increases in both the average Black individual’s neighborhood quality and
within-Black income segregation. We then show that changes in relative suburban amenities and
housing prices explain about 60 and 30 percent, respectively, of Black suburbanization, while
regional reallocation, changing educational attainment, and gentrification play only minor roles. ”
The numbers don’t lie, Black people are less interested in cities and prone to the suburbs. Or, opportunities and ideals are no longer concentrated in cities and generational wealth building has led to the American dream of a car, garage, yard and distance from density is becoming a reality for Blacks as it has always been for whites post-WWII.
Note that gentrification is not a key driver of Blacks moving to the burbs. Unless an ideology is being leveraged for personal gain/opinion, the studies typically don’t corroborate it.
Wherever you fall on that debate, it is worth at least acknowledging the academic findings to add to the colloquial inferences.
Finally, from Bartik and Mast:
“We study how Black suburbanization has reshaped the geography of race in America. Black households have rapidly shifted to the suburbs and located in a wide variety of suburban neighborhoods. A model-based decomposition suggests that they have been drawn largely by improving relative amenities and falling relative housing costs in the suburbs. In addition, Black suburbanizers are positively selected, in part due to the expensive suburban housing stock, and White fight in response to their arrival has been relatively muted. Meanwhile, these same changes in relative amenities have led to slow or negative Black population growth in central cities, particularly in neighborhoods that were majority Black in 1970. Together, Black suburbanization has not only reduced residential segregation as documented in Cutler, Glaeser and Vigdor (1999), but has also led to a divergence in which higher-income Black suburbanites increasingly live in more integrated neighborhoods with higher quality indicators and lower-income Black city dwellers have seen their neighborhood characteristics stagnate.”
Black people desire the suburbs just as other races in modern, post-WWII America. Maybe Black populations or majorities in cities is a thing of the past post-1970.
I know we are seeing it here in St. Louis where white people have overtaken the numerical majority for the first time in decades where the latest US Census data estimates 46% white, 45% Black, 4% Hispanic/Latino and 3% Asian.
While St. Louis is largely binary, white and Black, I will not be surprised if this trend continues. So much so, that North City which was built and settled by whites and almost entirely Black for 1 or 2 generations, even 3 generations in historically Black areas like the Ville, will become mixed race once again. I don’t think I’ll live long enough to see this, but if you follow the trends, the data suggest as much.
Remember, St. Louis is bleeding population, both white and Black. However, the data is clear, Black people are leaving/aging out at a higher rate.
While retention of current residents is ideal, maybe people don’t want to stay put in a city and want to try the burbs.
Immigrants may be our greatest growth potential to stabilize the ongoing loss of people from this beautiful city.
We also going to need lots of infill housing to rebuild the neighborhoods and add citizens. So much has been lost due to deferred maintenance, complicated ownership/property transfer and straight up disinvestment and speculative land banking.
Look at the damage just one suburbanite land banker/slum lord like Paul McKee inflicted. That is a large scale, fast level of deferred maintenance and disinvestment. It’s been happening at the resident level for much longer.
The Riverfront Times Ryan Krull just published an interview with Ness Sandoval, St. Louis University professor and demographer speaking to the topic with a bit of a different angle, focusing on the suburbs outside of St. Louis.
In the article, “We Need to Talk About St. Louis Losing Its Black Residents”, Sandoval was quoted saying: "I'll tell you right now, the county is in big trouble."
He goes on to support his stance that this historic St. Louis problem of population loss, especially Black population loss is worsening, this time affecting the small towns in the suburbs.
White flight went from mainly North City, yet eventually the rest of the city to populate the suburban cities in St. Louis County following WW-II. Then white flight continued out of North County cities to St. Charles, Jefferson and other surrounding far flung suburbs. Black people are following and even leaving the region all together. White people only rooted down in North County cities for a generation or two. Then they were off again.
Sandoval corroborates this saying: “…to only focus on the city is to miss the bigger issue bedeviling St. Louis, and that is people leaving the region altogether — specifically, Black families.”
The author asked where Black families are going while St. Louis is gaining white single people and couples with no kids.
“They're moving out to St. Charles, to some extent. Definitely St. Louis County. A little bit to Jefferson, but not much. But I always say this city-county boundary, for me as a demographer, is really a fake boundary, there's constant movement [back and forth] everyday. So when you see population loss in the city, and they're just moving half a mile to the county, that's not a concern at all.
It's when the families start leaving the region, then you have to start to realize you cannot be a major metropolitan region and say that you're going to grow if you have a declining Black population. I can't think of one region that claims to be a major metropolitan region, that's a destination, that has negative growth in the Black population.”
Now, Sandoval lives in Chesterfield, MO, so it’s easy for hime to dismiss the reality that people in St. Louis live in. St. Louis people know that people, non-profits and businesses leaving St. Louis for the suburbs is devastating. Our tax base, our electorate, our level of activity/vibrancy in neighborhoods, supporting local businesses, etc., the “imaginary line” that so many dismiss has very real consequences for St. Louis. Just imagine if the NGA or In-Bev or St. Louis University or the hundreds of other St. Louis assets moved to Lemay, Clayton, Ferguson, Granite City, you name it. It would damage St. Louis. No other way to see it.
A win for the region doesn’t alway equate to a win for St. Louis and vice versa. In an era of unbridled growth like we had in the past, sure we need win-wins for the city and the suburbs. We are no longer there. We need to rebuild our city first, then worry about the staid suburbs and lesser historic/beautiful housing and neighborhoods.
Sandoval goes on saying: “The city gets a bad rap. Because it's always, "Oh, the city! The city!" But the county is smaller in 2023 than it was in 1990. And nobody talks about it at all. I think you need to hold the leadership in the county accountable. Because they have failed.
I live in Chesterfield. There are issues in the county that are problematic as well. But people seem to give it a pass. "Well, it's the city's fault." It's very complicated. But I'll tell you right now, the county is in big trouble. It leads the state in people dying compared to people being born.
Missouri is showing up as losing Black population precisely because St. Louis County is losing its Black population. So the state has every reason to be concerned or should be concerned at what's happened to St. Louis County, because the losses are so great that it's making the state number look bad.”
Here’s the rest of the interview which begs contemplation.
You have spoken about people who leave the region going to places like Dallas, Charlotte, Atlanta. Why are folks headed south?
“Access to opportunity. With the opening of the South — especially Atlanta, Orlando, Charlotte — when these opportunities emerged to move there, and you realize, “I don't have to live in a segregated neighborhood. I can live in an integrated neighborhood.” I think most young people [living in a place like St. Louis] are going to say, "I'm out."
Dallas, San Antonio, Austin — these cities evolved after 1970 after the Supreme Court ruled that segregation was illegal. So there was not a history of segregation in the city and the housing market with [restricted] covenants. They kind of started off with a very different infrastructure than St. Louis.”
What are some things we can do to reverse all this?
“We do not tell our story very well. I'm from Nebraska. I've lived in California and D.C. The St. Louis region itself has a lot to offer. But if you always lead with "the cost of living," you're going to lose the majority of people. What I try to tell people is that cost of living is the last thing this younger generation looks at. My students graduating SLU are going to San Francisco, and are willing to spend $8,000 a month to live there. Because it's San Francisco. The cost of living is not even a factor. They want to live in the Bay Area. They want access to the mountains and are going to go to Denver and they're willing to pay for it. And so when you lead with "you can live here cheaply," that's not the calling card for this generation.“
I know your expertise is demographics, not PR. But what would be a better story than living cheap?
“We don't tell our story about what you can do recreationally here in the region. We don't talk about the water access that we have to the rivers, the hiking activities that are around us. There should be some marketing saying that we're the 25-minute city. I had a meeting in Downtown yesterday, and even in rush hour I was home in 25 minutes in Chesterfield. That was a traffic jam for me. We don't tell that story.”
You spoke to aldermen. I've heard you on the radio. You're speaking with me. Do you feel like the people in power are taking what you say seriously? Will they act on it?
“It's not like people are not aware of these issues. You have the International Institute, the Mosaic Project, that are trying to create marketing programs to bring Latinos to the region. This was not an issue that was created today. These challenges were present in 1990. You made this comment, like, “Oh, people just shrug it off.” That's what happened in 1990. If I was a demographer in 1990, I would have been ringing the alarm bells. Because it was there in 1990. That St. Louis, of all the metropolitan regions, was the anomaly. And nobody did anything.”
And maybe the Bosnian population in the 1990s bought our demographics a little time?
“Not really. I mean some time, but not much. But there was no concern. By 2000, the governor should have got involved and said, “Because St. Louis is so important to the state, we need to figure this out now.” You needed to intervene 20 years ago. Any benefits we see from what we're doing today, it's probably a decade away.
And it's coming. The Latinos are coming. But what we're doing today should have
happened in 1990.”
Either way, I continue to return to the fact that retention is priority number one with immigration next.
This could all be paved with dedicated improvement to services and equitable policing, law enforcement, roads, parks, etc. That would be a good first step to leveling the playing field with the suburbs and growth areas in the South.
