There was a question from my radio appearance today about the number of renters compared with the number of owners in Grand Forks. At least, I think it was Grand Forks that the emailer asked about. If it was a different geography and they look at this post they can tell me it was something different.
The 2012 American Community Survey gives us statistics about this. As I mentioned on the radio, current statistics can be highly inaccurate due to life transitions so we generally want to use an older vintage.
The Census Bureau estimated there were 61,564 people over 1 year of age in the Grand Forks metropolitan area. Of that number 36,544 were living in owner-occupied housing units. There were 25,020 living in renter-occupied housing units. So 59.36% were in the owner-occupied housing units with 40.64% therefore residing in renter-occupied units.
To get to the issues I was mentioning on air, 19.82% of those people did not live in the same unit as one year ago. How many moved within the county? 11.12%. How many moved from somewhere else in the state? 1.93%. How many moved from a different state? 5.55%.
The fluidity between categories is really difficult to control, particularly when you consider the University town attributes of Grand Forks. It does not mean we should not try, but what is required is a look at new data releases compared to revised releases to determine likely corrections. This would be an improvement, but I think we will still go back to looking at long term trends in these types of measures.
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