Brooklyn's population growth question

[traininthedistance]

The biggest component of Brooklyn's population growth is likely, as Linus has already pointed out, Hasidic babies and immigrants– mostly from China and the West Indes.  Hipsters moving in (and I guess I count as one of them for the purposes of this exercise) do have an effect on some neighborhoods, but their absolute numbers can't be that high, given the net negative domestic migration #s.*  Where are the areas where natives are leaving, you might ask?  Well, some of the more outlying minority areas (East Flatbush, Flatlands, Canarsie, Cypress Hills, East NY– which I don't actually believe is growing) are still straight-up losing population, that's the first place to look.  I'd also expect negative domestic migration in areas like Bensonhurst where old-timer "white ethnics" are being replaced by, largely, Chinese immigrants.** The bad old "white flight" mindset is not completely dead yet.  Probably not in the gentrifying areas: the numbers would be neutral there even if it was purely a process of displacement, and especially in areas like Williamsburg the housing supply is increasing, so it's not.

*I'm sure a lot of those hipster invaders, of course, are folks who were priced out of Manhattan.

**Also many of the black-majority areas have a similar process going on, where native-born blacks are leaving, and being replaced by Caribbean immigrants.

[traininthedistance]

Isn't East New York having a massive real estate boom at the moment.

There's been some discussion about rezoning for growth (with a lot of that rezoning being set aside for affordable housing). That's very recent, though.

Hm:



This seems to indicate that East New York has actually been growing since the turn of the millennium (it's the large medium-blue splotch on the east edge of Brooklyn).  I stand corrected!  I think most of that growth is immigration from the Caribbean, with perhaps a side-helping of people displaced from closer-in neighborhoods.  It's one of the more depressed areas out there; I would assume that a lot of the growth so far is filling in vacancies without a need for much new construction, though that slack appears to be disappearing.

This map also does not show any sort of Hasidic baby boom, which seems implausible...

[traininthedistance]

This map also does not show any sort of Hasidic baby boom, which seems implausible...

See I understood the Asian boom in Bensonhurst but the Hasidic baby boom made less sense to me. I'm sure they're growing slightly, but they've had large families forever. The 12 kids in the last generation are being replaced by say 10 in this one. But it can't possibly be that they all remain in Brooklyn. That's just unsustainable without spreading out to other parts of Brooklyn which is near unthinkable since they stay as a community. A surprising amount may actually move to Lakewood - it may be anecdotal but I worked at a park last summer where they accounted for nearly all the guests. Conversed with a ton of them and it seemed to be that a lot had moved from Brooklyn (and oddly SI?). I expected a lot more to have been born and raised there.

I'd imagine many also go the other way to Long Island, but I'm not as familiar with the makeup of all the areas out there. I'd also wager some go to places around the world - UK, South Africa, surely many others from what I've seen.

So basically the large families are nothing new and there isn't any type of multiplication factor because it's not feasible. That's my theory. I know it's not grounded in numbers so if I have any history wrong the intuition would be rendered worthless.

Yeah, that makes sense.  Move out to Lakewood, Five Towns, Kiryas Joel, New Square...

Would also help explain why the domestic net migration remains so stubbornly negative even in the face of Brooklyn's "hipness".

[traininthedistance]

Following up on LVP's point, no borough has gained population from domestic migration over the past five years. By the same measure, the Census estimate for Brooklyn (-92k) only lags behind Manhattan (-487k).

Isn't that like 30% of Manhattan's population moving away and getting replaced? Seems incredibly high.

Young ambitious and/or dreamy kids move to the Big Apple after college or whatever, and then get hitched, can't cut it or afford it, or whatever, and move out? Hasn't that been happening since rocks cooled?  Anyway, it seems that half of the population of Hudson sometimes is from Manhattan (with Brooklyn now showing up on the radar screen).  I have yet to find anyone else from Orange County, CA living here however.

But if they're moving in and then moving out, that's zero net migration?  I agree that those numbers don't seem to pass the smell test– the only thing I can think of is, actually, looking at the neighborhood map I posted earlier, Dominicans and Puerto Ricans moving out of Washington Heights faster than they move in these days?  That area seems to actually be losing population.