Population decline is already here. The major reason making USA population grow has been international emigration. But with Trump’s deportations of people and the end to international emigration that is why the USA population will be shrinking.
The number of immigrants in the United States appears to be shrinking for the first time since the 1960s — though the population of unauthorized immigrants reached a record-setting 14 million just two years ago, the Pew Research Center said in new reports released Thursday.
In January, the U.S. immigrant population hit 53.3 million, the largest in the country’s history. Six months later, it appears to have shrunk by a million people, to 51.9 million.
“The data we are looking at represented a dramatic change,” said Jeffrey Passel, the Pew Research Center’s senior demographer.
The reduction is reflected in the labor force, which lost over 750,000 workers since January, according to Pew, a nonprofit, nonpartisan research and data analysis institute.
“The U.S. population of working-age people isn’t growing. That means the only way the workforce can grow is from new immigrants coming in,” Passel said. “If the workforce isn’t growing, it’s harder for the economy.”
Hence we see that labor reports shows below average growth of works.
What Happened to Mexico City’s Food Scene? Americans.
As restaurants change to reflect new tastes, local reactions have ranged from fascination to fury.
It started with the salsas.
At some taquerías, locals grumbled that their beloved condiments were less spicy because of the growing presence of foreigners. Then it was pizzerias opening on seemingly every corner. And third-wave coffee shops charging 100 pesos for a croissant.
The boom in global tourism since the pandemic has proved both unrelenting and unbearable to many of the people who live in destinations like Barcelona, Kyoto and Paris. Some have grown so frustrated by the influx of seasonal visitors and the strain placed on city infrastructure that they have marched in the streets and even sprayed tourists with water guns.
I have noticed the salsa dilemma here in New Mexico. The salsa at La Posta has been gringoized for decades. La Posta was written up in Life magazine in 1948. A tourist trap. Now Chope’s in a small villages of La Mesa is a different story. When they bring the chips and salsa; I slide it toward my Hispanic friends. It is way too hot for me. Their salsa and Mexican food has been made the same way for probably 75 years. And they ain’t changing for nobody!
Chope’s! I love that place. When we lived in Las Cruces, we’d frequently go there for some food, served with a 40 oz. The bouncer outside the bar side sported a bandalero with a couple of ivory gripped pistols. That dude must be 126 years old by now…
But isn’t that the exact point? The people who OWN the assets are the ones who decide on the character of the neighborhood. Not random people who happen to live there at any given time. Want to determine/maintain the character of a neighborhood, well, you’re going to have to own a good portion of it.
That is one answer to the question, “Who is a city for?” That answer is, “the city is for the people who legally own the real property in the city.” There are plenty of folks who believe that’s the proper answer.
Not everyone does. Some people believe the city is for the people who live there. Some people believe the city is for the people who both live there and work there. Or the people that visit there, or the people that pass through the city - or the people that rely on the city for economic activity but might not actually go there. Or for the people who pay the taxes that fund major parts of the city, even if they don’t fall into any of the above categories. Or for people who don’t yet live in the city but will one day. Etc.
I’m not saying your answer is wrong - but it’s certainly disputed. And it’s probably incomplete, because we don’t ever ever EVER govern a city based on ownership. The people who get to vote for the governance of the city are the residents, not the owners - which clearly reflects a determination that the city is for the people who live in the city (at least in part), whether they own real property or not.
But that’s not what I said. It’s not even close to what I said. I said that the owners determine the character, not that they are the character, not that they choose a particular character that THEY want to live within, just that they DETERMINE the character. So, for example, an owner of a large rental complex may determine the character as - “people with over 640 FICO score”, “people with no pets”, etc. So too, with a neighborhood of single-family homes, when a bunch of affiliated people (maybe they mostly attend the same church, or maybe they mostly work for Gigantus Corporation in that town, etc) own most of those homes, then they will determine the character of that neighborhood. But when others own those homes, those others will determine the character of the neighborhood - they will rent to an assortment of people, some of whom may attend that church, and some of whom may not attend that church. And sometimes those owners may choose to rent on a short-term basis (AirBNB for example). But in the end, it is the owners of the property that will make most of the determination of character. It couldn’t be any other way. Sometimes the locals vote for people who are willing to pass laws limiting the use of owned property, and that almost always results in lower property values. Most of time, sooner or later, the locals vote that kind of stuff out, because they WANT their property values to rise, especially before they leave.
There are two marinas I’ve seen where the old timers have been complaining bitterly about newcomers who’ve completely changed the character of the marina. Used to be that pretty much everything stayed the same, and many of the guys there would have beers every Friday afternoon, and everyone knew which boat went where, and everyone knew who can fix what, and all sorts of other stuff that had been “that way” for decades. But then the “rich folk” started moving in at them new fancy condos down the road, and a bunch of them bought some boats. And they’re changing the character of the marina. And there’s some guy buying up slips one by one - just last week Joe sold his two slips (double length) to the guy. And that guy wants to build full sheds over most of his slips! We don’t have full sheds at this marina, only sheds over the maintenance area! I heard that he lives up north in a huge penthouse condo. He plans to rent out his slips at 3 times the current price. Ain’t nobody gonna be able to afford those kinds of prices ‘cept the new rich folks movin’ down here. But the old timers keep selling their slips to this guy … they like the money.
But that’s not entirely true - or at least, it’s incomplete. Owners are generally forbidden by law to choose their residential tenants (absent a few things like “no pets” or FICO scores). We’ve already decided that owners are significantly restricted in some of the things that they can do to “determine the character” of a neighborhood. They don’t get to decide that it’s a black or Italian or Lutheran neighborhood.
They have more leeway in choosing commercial tenants, but market forces limit their choices. If the only folks who want to rent your restaurant space are Albabian restaurants, you can’t conjure an upscale Italian-Norwegian fusion joint instead. So if your surrounding neighborhood is mostly low-income Albabian immigrants, you’re going to have a certain universe of potential tenants.
Owners absolutely have a lot of control over their properties’ physical characteristics, though. If I have an old building full of ratty apartments, I can vacate the building (subject to leases expiring), tear it down, and build a new fancy apartment building. That will change the character of the neighborhood. I mean, not my building alone, of course - but the decisions of all of us who own buildings in the area will have that effect. The reverse is true as well. If I decide to stop investing in the upkeep of my somewhat older fancy building, and amortize out the value by letting it get rundown, that also has an impact.
That’s the sort of thing that the people who live in the neighborhood will sometimes get upset about. They believe that it’s their neighborhood - or at a minimum, that it’s their neighborhood also. They want their local officials to interfere with those decisions - to either prevent the redevelopment of the old building (“no gentrification!”) or to prevent the landlord from letting the fancy building go to see (“property maintenance standards!”). It’s a contested question whether owners should have the right to just determine that, or whether the folks who live there should have a say in those choices.
“Instead, she advocates for policies that will incentivize and allow developers to build more housing. The trade-off caused by single-family rentals — that they benefit some low-income renters but hurt some aspiring homebuyers — is “because we are restricting the number of homes that can be built in neighborhoods.”
Exactly. You’re essentially saying the same thing. The owners are NOT permitted to only rent to a certain ethnicity, and therefore they legally CANNOT maintain the neighborhood as an “Italian neighborhood”, or as an “African -American neighborhood”, or as a “Chinese neighborhood”.
So if a neighborhood historically was owned primarily by Americans of Italian descent, but as the folks grew older more and more of them sold to other owners, of all types, and including some investors, by virtue of [selling] inertia and the law, that neighborhood is bound to lose it’s character as an “Italian neighborhood”. In the 60s and early 70s, I lived in a neighborhood that was in the process of changing from an Italian neighborhood to a mixed neighborhood. And in the 90s, after my family moved to the suburbs, it changed yet again into a mostly Jewish neighborhood.
Right. The owners can’t. That doesn’t mean the City government can’t take action to try to preserve the character of the neighborhood. Or that the residents themselves can’t. Or that other stakeholders in the community can’t.
That’s how “anti-gentrification” movements usually function. They’re efforts by stakeholders other than owners (typically) that try to restrict the actions of owners to prevent (or at least slow) the change of a neighborhood’s character.
The same happens when communities push back against tourism (to go back to the thread title). Owners might want to do things that cater to tourists, and the residents of the neighborhood use their “non-ownership” powers (typically political or suasion) to try to prevent that from happening. Often to mixed or no result, but that’s what you see.
But all it takes is a catalyst sometimes. I remember the days of developers scaring white residents out of neighborhoods by telling them that a black family was moving in and their property values were going to plummet. Blockbusting, it was called, and it worked - at least for several years.
In a somewhat similar vein, a mosque on Long Island has been stalled for years because they want to move out of their abandoned store front room and build a new, 3 story tall “proper” mosque. Locals are agin it, needless to say, and have thrown up every conceivable roadblock imaginable, from environmental studies to parking lot requirements to, well…
They “neighbors” know that with a new improved, highly visible mosque, will come more “community”, what with shops and stores catering to “them”, and before you know it, they’ll be on the outside looking in.
It’s been bottled up for years, but now the mosque is taking it to federal court.
***A Town Reluctantly Let a Mosque Expand. Then Came the Backlash.***
When a Long Island town last month agreed to settle a lawsuit over a mosque’s plans to upgrade its modest facilities, it appeared to end a seven-year fight in which the town had opposed basic renovations at every turn.
Two weeks later, the battle began anew.
By Aug. 29, after a fierce, familiar backlash from residents, the Town of Oyster Bay had abruptly backed out of an agreement with the mosque, Masjid Al-Baqi, that would have allowed the demolition of its buildings and the construction of a three-level structure. Lawyers for the mosque blamed a “fresh wave of anti-Muslim agitation.”
Oh, sure. Fair housing act violations are thick on the ground. And before the FHA and modern enforcement, it was anything goes.
But we have decided societally that owners shouldn’t have the power to just dictate the character of a neighborhood (for a wide range of issues) by virtue of their ownership. While that decision isn’t always consistently or perfectly enforced, for the most part owners are fairly restricted in what they can do on that front these days. There’s a pretty solid determination that part of that power has been wrested from the property owners and assigned to the general public through the exercise of regulatory authority.
