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General Mar 26, 2026 at 1:01 PM

Growth rate slowed in US metro areas in 2025, with steepest drops along the southern border

Posted by xfxxml

https://apnews.com/article/census-bureau-immigration-florida-texas-arizona-california-0ac6c5b9773417d36bb465da22b1ec75
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mhornberger Mar 26, 2026 +127
The US has a distinctly sub-replacement fertility rate (under 1.6 now), so if you cut immigration our growth rate is going to plummet. Which doesn't translate directly into lower housing costs (unless you build a lot of housing, thus increasing supply), because people continue to move out of rural areas to cities, for economic opportunity, education, cultural activities, etc.
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ArrowsOfFate Mar 26, 2026 +45
In my state of Oregon, housing supply is ultra low because contractors became much more nervous about construction after the 2008 crises. Now they don’t even build enough to meet demand, which increases the profit of each house they build by increasing home prices as well as real estates equity.
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mhornberger Mar 26, 2026 +34
Well, contractors have to be contracted to build. If municipalities are blocking density to allow NIMBYs to monetize scarcity, I can't put that all on the contractors. - https://oregonpropertyowners.org/killing-the-american-dream-oregon-nimby-style/ If contractors are only allowed to build detached SFHs, it's a given that they're going to focus on those with higher margins. But the issue is the limiting of building to SFHs, via zoning and similar regulation meant to limit supply so NIMBYs can monetize scarcity and preserve the "look and feel" of their equity value.
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ArrowsOfFate Mar 26, 2026 +5
Contractors, developers and others who fund house building aren’t even building enough single family homes though, compared to pre 2008 levels. As for multi family homes the issues are mostly that a lot of current homeowners are greedy and don’t want to change zoning laws in various cities like you said. It is an issue which is being addressed by the state since 2019, but you are correct that it’s not entirely contractors fault. But they do hold the lions share of responsibility alongside residents of cities who block MFH at every turn they can. https://www.oregon.gov/lcd/Housing/Documents/OAR660046_EXHIBIT_B-Large_Cities_Middle_Housing_Model_Code_20201209.pdf
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cavegrind Mar 26, 2026 +6
Portland’s shift to encouraging ADU’s may be why it’s one of the metro areas on this map that’s actually growing.
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lost-picking-flowers Mar 26, 2026 +4
Out in Pennsylvania, we have quite a bit of c**** old housing. I'm moving back from Canada for a couple years to go back to school (I know, I know), and it's like reverse sticker shock because I'm looking at lower cost of living areas where 800-1200 bucks a month can get you a whole ass house 2-4+ bedroom house to rent with a basement, a yard, usually a den or attic room of some kind. The problem is all of our utilities are privatized and our infrastructure is absolutely crumbling. The housing is old. If I rent a rowhome for 1000 bucks a month I'll pay that much or more in utilities - this is before data centers have been priced in (but our main electric provider has reported record profits that they love to turn into executive bonuses instead of making infrastructure upgrades). Plus, a lot of these c**** low cost of living areas are in coal country where there have been environmental disasters around every corner. So even in low cost of living areas with a good bit of housing surplus, you still get shafted in so many ways. Not to mention, the work in those areas tends to pay significantly less too. Idk what the point of all this was except to say shit's fucked.
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ArrowsOfFate Mar 26, 2026 +2
Yeah, that’s common all over I think. (Degraded infrastructure). Infrastructure has been underinvested in significantly since the 80s when the SEC and Reagan changed things so shareholders are all a company cares about and so companies are considered people which can donate infinite money to elect officials and lobby for their causes. Their causes are what drive legislation, not voters causes. There are performative actions, but virtually never meaningful changes by any political party. They will happily fire 30,000 workers just to raise their stocks right before their yearly cash outs, and hire c**** interns later on if needed.
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creative_net_usr Mar 27, 2026 +1
There's a limit to density, Colorado is FAFO'ing on that, houses literally 5ft apart in wild fire zones... what could possibly go wrong. 1ish acre per house anything else is far far too tight. I grew up on top of my neighbors hate it.
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BrainBlowX Mar 26, 2026 +8
Increasing housing doesn't affect the price when a majority of the housing gets scooped up by landlords and corporations who will gladly just sit on it.
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[deleted] Mar 26, 2026 +1
[deleted]
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mhornberger Mar 26, 2026 +1
And where does that actually happen, when "a *majority*" of housing just sits empty, just because? For any given municipality being spoken of, look into the home vacancy rate.
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BarCompetitive7220 Mar 26, 2026 +18
Next up will be the Census report and all those Border Areas which are normally RED districts will lose Congressional representation based on the GOP demand that Census should be only "citizens". oops
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Malaix Mar 26, 2026 +34
Conservatives finally won on that end. They made the US such a shitty insane doomed placed to live not only are people leaving in record numbers but no one wants to move here. Now we get to suffer population shrinkage and the economic fallout that comes with that. A lot of conservatives are mad their small rural red towns are dying ghost towns. So their solution was to export those politics onto the national scale. Somehow they thought that would fix their small dying town. Now America in its entirety is just becoming a small dying town.
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savvy-misanthrope Mar 27, 2026 +2
Not a bad thing, considering overpopulation is the root cause of so many evils in the modern world: pollution, disease, etc.
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Koseph Mar 27, 2026
Over population is a myth. The planet had enough caloric output to supply 2k calorie diets to 11 billion people every day before the Ukraine war. Was starvation absent before the Ukraine war? Has the mass forced adoption of electric vehicles in communist China reduced the greenhouse gas emissions of communist China?
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creative_net_usr Mar 27, 2026 +1
I just got out of a taxi, he said welcome to the 3rd world. He's not wrong looking at the amount of homeless on the streets and state of roads and infrastructure.
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