9,000 D.C. Residents May Have Left Permanently During The Pandemic, Data Shows [View all]

NPR, July 9, 2021.

Dropping rents in downtown D.C. and rising home prices in the suburbs are just two signs that the nation's capital hemorrhaged residents during the pandemic in 2020. And newly analyzed data from the U.S. Postal Service provides a clearer understanding of how significant the population loss may have been.

The city lost 2.6 times more people in 2020 than it did in 2019, with 17,882 more "net moves" recorded during the pandemic than the prior year, according to USPS numbers crunched by D.C.'s Office of Revenue Analysis. ("Net moves" refers to the difference between move-ins and move-outs.) Most moves took place after the city put in place COVID-19 restrictions, and an estimated 9,335 of them appear to be permanent.

According to the U.S. Census, in 2020 D.C.'s total population was 689,545.

But the numbers of moves — which are drawn from change-of-address forms that individuals and households file with USPS — also show a sharp increase in temporary relocations, writes Ginger Moored, a fiscal analyst with the Office of Chief Financial Officer, in a new blog post.

"When someone submits a change of address form they mark the move as permanent or temporary, and the data clearly shows a higher portion of moves than usual were temporary in 2020," Moored writes. There were an estimated 186 temporary move-outs from the city in 2019. In 2020, the number soared to 8,733..

So where did everyone go?...

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https://www.npr.org/local/305/2021/07/09/1014575503/9-000-d-c-residents-may-have-left-permanently-during-the-pandemic-data-shows