Portland and other cities in the metro area saw narrower population losses last year, new census data showed, a sign that an exodus of residents might be slowing.
The city still lost 4,170 residents between July 2022 and July 2023, according to U.S. Census Bureau estimates released Thursday, a 0.7% decrease to 630,500 residents.
That’s smaller than the prior year’s 1.5% decline, a loss of roughly 8,500 people.
Portland’s population, however, remains 3.7% below its 2019 peak, down roughly 24,000 people.
The slowing decline is welcome news for Portland officials and businesses hoping to see progress in the city’s recovery from pandemic-related shutdowns, an upswing in violent crime and many business closures.
Other cities including Gresham, Beaverton and Lake Oswego also shed residents at a slower rate last year. Gresham saw the metro area’s largest population decline of 0.8% to 110,700, while Beaverton saw a 0.4% loss to 96,900 and Lake Oswego had a 0.5% drop to 39,900. Those are improvements from a year ago, when each of those cities saw population losses of over 1%.
Meanwhile, some suburban areas and exurban communities saw population gains. Happy Valley gained 7.5% during the year, or 1,970 people, bringing its population to 28,400. Woodburn gained 1,740 residents, a 6.4% increase to 29,000. While Ridgefield, Washington, just north of Vancouver, grew 5.6%, adding nearly 800 people during the same time period and topped 15,000.
Pat O’Connor, a regional economist for the Oregon Employment Department, said the growth of Woodburn and other surrounding cities in mid-Willamette Valley has coincided with higher rates of commuting. For example, he said nearly half of the working residents in Newberg commute to the Portland tri-county area for work, with the majority in Washington County.
“A big part of why we’re seeing people move out to the suburbs or exurbs is housing,” he said. “Housing affordability is a big issue across the state, but it’s especially a challenge in the bigger cities like Portland.”
O’Connor said the lack of affordable housing in the Portland area is driven in part by empty-nesters remaining in homes, particularly large homes, while more millennials are starting families and looking to buy a home.
“We kind of have a traffic jam here of older Oregonians staying in their houses longer than they may have 20 or 30 years ago and the millennials at their prime of their life having kids and looking to buy a home,” he said.
Aside from housing, O’Connor said population growth in Woodburn and the surrounding area has been driven by the agricultural workforce, which has kept stable employment even during economic downturns.
Michael Walton, community development director for Happy Valley, said the city’s growth is largely thanks to land availability. He said the Metro regional government expansion of its urban growth boundary in 2002 expanded the city’s eastern limits, where new home construction has been brisk.
“The amount of building is very robust,” Walton said. “The strength of our local school system, proximity to the city center and a major airport, as well as being near a lot of outdoor recreation draws people here.”
Land availability and affordable housing are also among the factors that contribute to Woodburn’s growth, according to Jim Row, assistant city administrator. He said Woodburn’s proximity to Salem and Portland, along with the addition of more industrial and residential land added in 2015 have helped attract more housing and commercial development.
“We have added land by expanding our urban growth boundary, and that housing is more affordable compared to the Portland area,” he said. “We are a growing and developing community that has a lot to offer.”
Row said that the city has seen an influx of residents from the Salem and Portland area who work at least part-time from home. He also said many households were multigenerational in previous years but have since split up into separate housing, which he said could be driving some of the higher numbers.
Claire Lust, community development for Ridgefield, also attributed the city’s population gain to increased housing and commercial development. For example, the city is welcoming a new In-and-Out location and a Costco warehouse.
“When we’ve seen this really dramatic growth, a lot of it just goes down to there being land available, which isn’t always the case in a lot of the surrounding cities,” Lust said. “The other thing we hear a lot is that Ridgefield has this small town community feel even though it’s grown a lot and has a solid downtown core.”
The trend portrayed by the Census Bureau’s numbers contrasts with another key estimate of the region’s population.
Portland State University’s Population Research Center, the numbers relied upon by the state government, estimates Portland grew by 17,600 residents over the same period. Portland State University estimates that the population of Oregon’s largest city stands at 648,082 as of July 2023. The center and the Census Bureau use different methodologies and data sources.
-- Kristine de Leon covers the retail industry, small business and data enterprise stories. Reach her at kdeleon@oregonian.com.
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