Library of Congress/Dorothea Lange - A famous Dust Bowl image of "Migrant Mother"
Library of Congress/Dorothea Lange - A famous Dust Bowl image of "Migrant Mother"
We’re less mobile and more place-bound, and it’s not just the recession that’s slowing restless America’s nomadic habits. This is good news for Seattle, the environment, and mossbacks.
by Knute Berger | Crosscut | January 20, 2010
Developers love predicting that growth isunstoppable and inevitable, but the Great Recession is showing how untrue this really is. Some previously booming areas of the country are now declining in population, especially the Sun Belt and parts of the West. More people are now moving out of Florida, Nevada and California than are moving in. The huge growth in recent decades was driven not by their inherent desirability but by bad banking and loan practices that artificially goosed development and made growth a business in and of itself. Americans were encouraged to be on the move because their mobility was exploitable by banks, builders and Wall Street.
But the Great American Slowdown is a bigger trend. A new Brookings Institution study finds that domestic migration is at post-war lows and has been steadily sliding for the last half century. In the 1950s and ’60s, 20 percent of Americans changed homes every year. In the boom 1990s, it was 16 percent. But in the last two years, it’s dropped to just over 12 percent. Americans are becoming more place-bound. It’s partly due to an aging population, and higher rates of homeownership. But the current downturn has speeded the trend having “cemented” many people in place, says the Washington Post. You can’t sell a home, buy a home, or find a job, so make the best of where you are.