If District sidewalks seem modestly more crowded and the wait for a table just a spot longer, chalk it up to 31,528 city residents the U.S. Census Bureau decided last week actually exist.
Mayor Anthony Williams, who has long claimed his economic policies are behind a residential boom, last year quickly appealed the Census Bureau’s July 1, 2005, estimate of the city’s population, which it pegged at 550,521 — continuing a multidecade decline.
A year later, the census has yielded, Williams said Friday, raising the city’s population to 582,049, the highest since the early 1990s and the first increase since 1950.
“I am deeply gratified that the Census Bureau agrees that, after a 56-year decline in population, we have finally turned the corner and begun the increase in the District’s population I have pushed for throughout my time as mayor,” Williams said in a statement. “The fact that the city’s population is growing again after decades of decline makes it essential to have a plan in place, and with the recent completion of the District’s Comprehensive Plan … we are well-situated to manage this growth.”
The population increase will translate into more federal dollars, the mayor said, and it confirms his programs have lured new residents.
“D.C. has gotten to be a fashionable place for young people to move to, for professionals to want to live in, and even some empty-nesters to come back to,” said William Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution. “Clearly this is a hot real estate market, so it’s not surprising.”
Years of “buzz” about the city’s popularity, Frey said, were often offset by census estimates. The new numbers, he said, give a “note of encouragement” and “psychic boost.”
The estimate throws a wrench into other census projections. For example, the bureau predicted last year the District would lose 138,000 residents between 2005 and 2030 — another quarter of its population — a forecast Williams deemed “laughably wrong.”
“We are keeping residents of all income levels in our city while we are successfully recruiting business to fill out our downtown,” Williams said.
D.C. Census counts
» 2005: 582,049 (estimate)
» 2000: 572,059
» 1990: 606,900
» 1980: 638,333
» 1970: 756,668
