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The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
For decades, the suburbs drew people and money — and especially people with money — out of the city of Atlanta. That was then, this is now.
.Many communities outside the city, particularly those to the south such as College Park or Clayton County, are struggling to maintain their standard of living, while the city's fortunes have taken a dramatic turn for the better, according to data released Tuesday by the Census Bureau. In many categories, such as median household income, communities in the northern suburbs still outperform the central city, but the gap has narrowed dramatically.
That could reflect either long-time Atlantans experiencing economic progress or new people moving into town as part of a back-to-the-city trend, said Georgia State University public management and policy associate professor Cathy Yang Liu.
“These days with higher gas prices, younger residents are arriving looking to live in city center,” Liu said. “It may have to do with proximity to jobs, shorter commutes, and greater accessibility to more amenities like restaurants, the theater or cultural activities.
“<span style="font-weight: bold">We don’t know exactly whether the original residents are improving in terms of their socioeconomic status, or if it’s the new residents moving to Atlanta who have higher socioeconomic status</span>,” Liu said.
Whatever the underlying cause, median income in the city rose from $34,770 to $50,243, a 54 percent increase. At the same time, the percentage of city residents with at least a bachelor's degree increased by one-third, to 46 percent.
Amber Rigsby moved to Atlanta in February 2009 seeking a change. The 26-year-old public relations manager was tired of her hour-and-a-half commute from Milton to her Midtown job.
She settled in Loring Heights to be close to her office and feels she’s found a mix of urban energy and a comfortable atmosphere.
“It’s thriving here and there is a real sense of excitement,” said Rigsby.
When moving into the city of Atlanta from Cobb County, Ana Maria and Mario Martinez chose a west side neighborhood on the Chattahoochee for its ample space and easy commute to her job in Midtown.
Many of her neighbors -- largely young, upper-middle class workers -- bought into the neighborhood with plans to move to the suburbs once their kids started school, she said. But with housing prices in the gutter, that plan has changed for many in her community.
“On the upside, I think this will mean lots of kids from well-educated families, with very involved parents, will end up in the public schools," she said.
Unlike the not-yet-published data from the 2010 census, the numbers released Tuesday, called the American Community Survey, are just that: a survey of a relatively small number of residents within each community. The Census Bureau cautions against using these data to talk about total population counts for each area.
Instead, the agency says, the survey "shows how people live." It is best used to examine demographic, social, economic, and housing trends.
Some of those trends were universal across the metro area. The percentage of foreign born residents, especially people of Hispanic origin, has spiked upward. For the metro region as a whole, the percentage of Hispanic or Latino residents increased 43 percent between the 2000 Census and the latest numbers, which cover the period 2005-2009.
Gwinnett County, a leader in this category,<span style="font-weight: bold"> saw a 36 percent increase in the number of foreign-born residents. </span>Though the numbers were smaller in Cherokee County, the pace of change was even greater; Cherokee experienced a 55 percent increase in foreign-born residents.
University of Georgia demographer Doug Bachtel<span style="font-weight: bold"> said the rise in foreign-born residents in the suburbs is a continuing trend, driven by lower-wage service jobs that some in the workforce might be reluctant to take.</span>“The suburban areas really lend themselves to the type of jobs that immigrants would go for and qualify for,” Bachtel said. “It’s really nothing out of the ordinary, whether migrants are Hispanic or Swedish, they’re moving to job the opportunities. Those jobs would be ready and available, and would go begging because they would pay less than most.”
Another universal phenomenon was the explosion of vacant housing units — a byproduct of the nation's economic woes. Across the metro area, the number of vacant units has more than doubled.
Dire as those figures are, the nature of Tuesday's data, which are averages of data gathered over the past five years, means that they may underplay the severity and repercussions of the financial downturn that started in late 2007. The advantage of using five-year averages is that the large sample size makes this the most accurate look at how individual counties, cities and even neighborhoods have changed since the 2000 census.
Virtually no part of the region was immune from signs of economic distress. Relatively affluent counties such as Cobb and Gwinnett and cities such as Dunwoody and Sandy Springs saw the percentage of people in poverty rise (to 7 percent and 5 percent, respectively). Those numbers were eclipsed, though, by the poverty figures seen in areas such as Lawrenceville (17 percent) or Stone Mountain (23 percent).
For a family of four, the poverty level is $22,050.
Shirley Cabe, head of the Norcross Cooperative Ministry, said more and more people — as many as 90 a day — line up each morning for charity assistance. She sees two scenarios occurring again and again.
“There are the people facing eviction, who need rent assistance, and the people who have already been evicted, who need assistance for a hotel,” she said.
In the meantime, donations are down. So this Christmas, the charity can’t provide toys for as many children, and those that do receive gifts will see fewer of them.
Although 21 percent of Atlanta residents lived in poverty during the period 2005-2009, that was a 14 percent decrease from the 2000 census.
The economic and social shifts in Atlanta were accompanied by substantial changes in the racial and ethnic composition of the city's population. The number of white residents rose by 30 percent, eclipsing even the 18 percent increase in the number of people of Hispanic origin. The number of black residents fell by 18 percent.
According to the data, Atlanta is on the verge of no longer being a majority black city — a major shift in its cultural identity. Averaging the samples from 2005 to 2009, Atlanta's population was 50.1 percent black and 43.1 percent white. The rest were either Asian, Native American or a combination of two or more races. (Hispanic is an ethnic rather than a racial category; Hispanic people may be of any race.)
At the same time, northern <span style="font-weight: bold">communities saw substantial increases in the number of black residents as well as Hispanics.</span>Both Cobb and Gwinnett counties remained predominantly white, but the trend was strongly toward greater diversity. In Cobb County, the number of black residents rose by 20 percent and the number of Hispanics by 47 percent. In Gwinnett County, those figures were 52 percent and 54 percent, respectively.
Staff writer Victoria Loe Hicks contributed to this article.