According to the Washington Post’s article “DC Down, VA, MD up” the District lost about 4,000 people , less than 1% of the District’s total population. I’m going to blame gentrification as part of the reasoning.
Looking at my block alone, houses that once held multigenerational families now hold singles and childless couples. There are a few people having kids or families that have remained, but not that many. Before I moved in there was a woman and her son living in my house. Some houses where stuffed to the gills with family, friends, boarders and what have you before new watchful neighbors helped crackdown on the overcrowding.
Mr. Bowtie, our lovely Mayor Tony Williams wanted 100,000 new residents over a period of 10 years. If Tony is the cool calculating accountant I think he is, he doesn’t want families anyway. Families might be a bit more stable than we feelwheeling singles who can get up and move in a blink, but those families want schools and other services, services that cost money. No I think Tony wants a tax base that will generate money for taxing out the wazzoo and ask for very little (like snow plowed streets and garbage picked up) in return. So maybe in the back of his little mind he might be happy families are leaving the city, chased out by poor schools and higher costs of living.