Posts about Census

Medians also don't consider desperately poor households, unless a place is so poor that half of its households are in poverty. When the news broke that the DC area has the highest median income of any metropolitan area, most of the news coverage about how DC is insulated from the economic downturn ignored that fact that there's serious unemployment and poverty in much of the region.

The unemployment rate might be lower than the national average, for sure, and far lower than in some parts of the country, but that's little comfort to the people without jobs.

Much of the disparity goes hand in hand with a higher cost of living. The national median household income in 2010 was $50,046, and the median in the DC region $84,623. But real estate prices are significantly higher here and have been climbing as well. For the 4th quarter of 2011, the median single-family home sales price was $325,400 and the median condo sales price $230,000, according to the National Association of Realtors. Nationally, the average house price was $166,200 and the average condo price $165,100.

Thanks in part to the higher housing costs and limits on the quantity of housing in walkable areas with good transit access, many professionals share housing in the DC region. When Rob lived in a group house in Arlington, the household income was about $160,000. That sounds like a lot on paper, and it's definitely above the area median, but 3 entry-level professionals and a grad student shared that income, and none considered themselves individually wealthy. On the other hand, a husband/wife household with no kids and a $160,000 combined income might feel a lot wealthier.

If these statistics aren't about the super-rich 1%, who is the median? To figure this out, Rob analyzed 2007-2009 American Community Survey microdata for people in households making within 5% of the median income (or in the range of $80,538-$89,014). There are 197,831 people living in such households, which represents a bit less than 4% of the total metro area population.

The average age in this median household income cohort is 43 years. 48% are non-Hispanic white, 26% non-Hispanic black, 13% Hispanic, and 10% non-Hispanic Asian. 21% work for the government, 66% work outside the government, and 13% are not working, out of the labor force or fall into another category. 69% live in owner-occupied homes, while 31% reside in rented homes.

It's great that the economy in the Washington region is doing well, at least for many people, and that median incomes are high, even if that means housing is expensive too. But reporters, when you write about these income statistics, please leave the references to fancy dinners and pictures of houses with gilded gates out of it.

DC's population grew from 572,060 in the 2000 Census to 601,723 in the 2010. If every ward were equal size, they'd be one-eighth of the 2010 total, or 75,215.

The redistricting law requires each ward to be within 5% of the average. That means a ward could be as large as 78,796 people, or as small as 71,455. The red dotted lines in the image above show the acceptable limits. The blue dotted lines represent the limits in the 2000 Census, and the blue bars the sizes of the wards after redistricting in 2001.

Ward 2, which finished the 2000 Census the 2001 redistricting smaller in population than many other wards, grew 16%, putting it at 79.915, just a bit too large. Meanwhile, Wards 7 and 8 were about average after 2000 2001 and stayed roughly constant, with Ward 7 growing by about 0.7% and Ward 8 shrinking by about 0.3%.

Since DC grew overall, that means they're now smaller than the average, and Ward 7's population of 71,068 and Ward 8's of 70,712 make them too small for the cutoff, meaning they will have to pick up territory. Currently, Ward 7 includes a small area west of the Anacostia (Kingman Park), meaning that one or both will have to add more territory west of the river.

Since we know the Census tends to undercount poorer and minority areas, there's a good chance Wards 7 and 8 are actually larger than these numbers claim, but this is the official data which DC must use for its redistricting.

Ward 6 also grew rapidly, gaining 13% in population. However, it was the smallest ward after the last Census, and its gain wasn't quite enough to put it over the cutoff.

Wards 1, 3, and 5 all grew about 4-5%, and yes, that means that our ACS-based estimate was not correct. That also didn't show ward 2's rapid growth at all.

Ward 2 doesn't border 7 or 8, except at Hains Point. That means that it's not possible to take people from 2 and add them to 7 and 8 directly, short of a bizarre scenario like Ward 8 grabbing most of the Mall and surrounding parks and some people from Foggy Bottom or Georgetown. Ward 5 may need to have its boundary adjusted, and ward 6 almost surely will move west in some fashion.

This DC Watch article on redistricting includes a section called "City Council Principles." The source of these principles is unclear, but if they are taken at face value, it's safe to assume that they haven't always been followed closely. The sixth principle states that the ANCs should be of approximately equal size, but ANC 2D has two commissioners, while each of the ANCs in Ward 5 (5A, 5B, and 5C) have 12 commissioners each.

With such large ANCs, commissioners are often voting on local quality of life issues very distant from their own homes. During last year's debates over a Big Bear liquor license in Bloomingdale, for example, commissioners from near Fort Totten Park—as far away from Bloomingdale as the White House is from Columbia Heights—were casting votes about whether Big Bear would create too much noise.

Very small ANCs can create their own problems. ANC 2C, which covers part of Shaw, has four commissioners. In recent years, it had numerous deadlocked 2-2 votes, including votes for chair, due to the presence of two factions overtly at odds with each other. Over the years, incidentally, ANC 2C has shrunk from 22 to 11 to 4 single member districts (SMDs), according to long-time resident Ray Milefsky.

Last fall, I spoke with Mary Eva Candon, formerly of ANC 2D in Sheridan-Kalorama, about the unique situation of being a commissioner on the only two-member ANC in the city. When asked if compromise is required to avoid deadlocked 1-1 votes, she responded, "We don't have tie votes; we work through our neighborhood's issues thoroughly and thoughtfully, open to all neighbors/residents input. In the eight years I have been one of a two-member ANC, we have never had a tie vote." This may be the only example of complete agreement in an American governmental body I've ever come across.

The ANCs in Ward 2 generally mirror neighborhoods, and in fact they are often called the "Dupont Circle ANC" (2B), "Georgetown ANC" (2E), and so forth. In other wards, there is little connection between and ANC and its neighborhood. Brookland, in Ward 5, is actually split between two ANCs (5A and 5B). ANC 4A contains neighborhoods between Georgia Avenue and Rock Creek Park in the northermost part of the city, and then also Crestwood, separated from the others by parkland.

There are currently 286 SMDs in the city. If the average size of an SMD continues to include 2,000 residents, as has been the practice in the past, the city's new population of 601,723 will yield approximately 301 commissioners. That means 15 new SMDs will be added in the parts of the city that have seen significant population growth.

One of the most controversial parts of drawing SMDs may be around universities. Some districts include large numbers of students, but they have little voice on the area's ANC.

New ANC boundaries should take into account how neighborhoods have changed and how relationships between commercial and residential space in the city have evolved, while also considering how those relationships are planned to continue to change in the coming decade. The city's population has grown for the first time since the 1940s, and new ANCs that accurately mirror that growth are needed.

I will discuss ideas for potential new ANCs in a future post.

Geoff Hatchard is an employee of the US Census Bureau, but the opinions in this article are his personal views alone and do not represent the Bureau's opinion or position on any issues.

Throughout the city, 2005-2009 ACS estimates indicate that approximately 1.9% of DC workers commute to their jobs by bicycle, but examining the data by Census tract tells a different story. The highest rates of bicycle commuting tend to be concentrated in areas adjacent to Downtown, as well as in Northwest Washington and on Capitol Hill.

The highest rates of bicycle commuting also tend to be correlated with those neighborhoods where the city has invested in bicycle infrastructure and facilities. For example, the map shows strong rates of bicycling along the 14th and 15th Street corridors, where bike lanes, and now a cycle track, run north and south.

Bicycling is also strong on Capitol Hill, where bike lanes run both north/south and east/west. In Northwest, the Capital Crescent and Rock Creek trails provide safe means for bicyclists to get into the city.

Anecdotally, this confirms the hypothesis that "if you build it, they will ride," and suggests that further investment in bike facilities would help boost the bicycling rate in neighborhoods where it currently isn't very high.

Though it's concerning to see a number of Census tracts register 0.0%, it's also important to understand that these numbers don't necessarily mean that no one rides a bike in any particular geography. The 2009 ACS questionnaire specifically asks: "How did this person usually get to work LAST WEEK?"

In practice, this means that a person who commuted to work primarily by another means, like automobile or public transportation, but still rode a bicycle that previous week, wasn't counted. Nor was a person who just happened not to bike to work the previous week, for whatever reason; nor was a person who wasn't working that previous week.

While the Census Bureau's metric isn't perfect, it's one of the few proxies for understanding rates of bicycling. Washington has made great strides in making the District a good place to ride a bike. As long as it's working, that progress should continue.

Car ownership

When I first looked into this, I found a surprising amount of households in Georgetown without any cars. That number has increased.

Here are the numbers from 2000:

• Total households without any car: 20%
• Total households with just one car: 57%
• Total households with two or more cars: 23%

Here are what the ACS was the average from 2005-2009:

• Total households without any car: 22%
• Total households with just one car: 50%
• Total households with two or more cars: 28%

In one way this is good news, since 2% more household are going without cars, but in another way it's worse since 5% of households have become multi-car households. It's important to remember that there are rather high margins of error on these numbers, so it's tough to say what's changed, if anything, since 2000.

What I see as most important is that the numbers appear to confirm that somewhere around 1 in 5 Georgetown households gets along without a car.

The numbers aren't even from the east to the west side. The east side has way more carless households (26%!) but has a lot more multi-car households, too (32%). The west side's numbers are more balanced (15% no car households and 23% multi-car).

In 2000, Georgetown was estimated to have 4936 cars. The ACS now estimates Georgetown has 4559 cars. That would appear to be an 8% drop in cars. If that's the only true statistic, that would be good enough news.

Commuting mode share

According to the 2000 census, here's how Georgetowners got to work:

• Drive to work: 46% (38% drive alone, 7% carpool)
• Transit: 16%
• Bike: 4%
• Walk: 25%
• Other: 9%

Here are the updated numbers:

• Drive to work: 40% (35% drive alone, 4% carpool)
• Transit: 22%
• Bike: 3%
• Walk: 25%
• Other: 10% (mostly people who work at home)

If these numbers are accurate, they represent a big shift towards transit. People driving to work fell 13% and transit use increased by 38%(!) The ACS now estimates that fifty percent of Georgetowners get to work by bus, bike or foot.

Perhaps this shift can be attributed to the introduction of the popular Circulator bus, or perhaps it's simply a shift in population. Either way, it demonstrates that the car is not king in Georgetown anymore.

Cross-posted at the Georgetown Metropolitan.

The change in housing units is a important number because it signals where residential real estate development is occurring in the city. The greater the net increase in units, the greater the investment during the past decade.

While each of the eight wards must by law contain one-eighth of the city's population, the graph above shows that the number of housing units per ward varies significantly. The greater the number of units in a ward, the smaller the average household size. Despite the fact that Ward 1 gained housing units, the same ACS data found that the ward's population and occupied housing units actually fell, thus suggesting the replacement of large families with small families and singles and a slow transition of residents into new housing units.

The latest data also reveal that the greatest increases in housing are occurring in some of the densest areas of the city. Since DC is nearly all built out, new housing usually appears when bigger buildings are built on old sites and where existing buildings (often rowhouses) are converted into multi-unit residences.

Whereas much of the housing growth in the suburbs and exurbs comes in the form of single-family houses, DC's big growth centers are adding apartment and condo buildings.

A single project has the ability to increase the population of one city block significantly, especially in the areas where zoning laws permit taller buildings. Recall that much of the city is zoned to restrict building heights far below the Federally set height limit.

Downtown, for instance, is far better known for its restaurants, offices, and entertainment venues than for its housing. Even still, the two tracts that cover Metro Center, Penn Quarter, Chinatown, and Judiciary Square were some of the biggest winners of new units.

The neighborhoods immediately north of Massachusetts Avenue NW and east of 16th Street NW saw big gains, too. These areas include Logan Circle, Mount Vernon Triangle, parts of U Street, and the area west of the Convention Center.

These neighborhoods are already walkable and well served by transit and an emerging bike infrastructure. The reason that the number of units increased sharply in places like Logan Circle but very little in Dupont Circle and Georgetown is that these latter areas have been built-up for several decades now. The past decade, in contrast, has seen development expand eastward and these housing numbers reflect this shift.

Keep in mind that these numbers only reflect the averages for the years 2005-2009. When the Census Bureau releases tract-level data for Census 2010 in the coming months, we expect to see areas like the Navy Yard posting sharp gains.