In a significant demographic shift, two-thirds of Brooklyn’s 18 community districts showed a decline in the black population, according to the latest census figures. The shifts appear to be closely related to rising housing prices in many of those neighborhoods.
Districts 2 and 14, including neighborhoods such as Fort Green and Flatbush respectively, are among those with the most dramatic change. Community District 2 had a 30 percent drop in the black non-Hispanic population and Community District 14 had a 14 percent decline from 10 years ago. Both districts now have white majorities for the first time in 20 years. The Asian population also increased over the past 10 years.
The only district with a significant increase in blacks was District 18, which is composed mostly of the Canarsie neighborhood. Its black population increased 16 percent.
The reasons behind the changing demographics and their potential economic and social effects are unclear. Gentrification, as usual, is a popular theory for why the population has changed. Some have suggested there may be a reversal of the Great Migration, with blacks returning to the south, according to a researcher at Brooklyn College.
“The questions [about why there are changes] are very subjective,” said Gretchen Maneval, director of the Center for the Study of Brooklyn, “The data have limitations as well.”
However, an analysis of a New York University-based study and census figures shows a correlation in many community districts between rising property value and declining black population.
Housing prices dropped across the board in 2009 because of the recession and Brooklyn has generally seen that decline continue into 2010. But the community districts where housing prices have recovered have been those that have had declines in the black population.
The Flatbush, Midwood and Kensington neighborhoods, for example, have seen the best recovery in housing prices. Those neighborhoods comprise District 14, which has seen a 14 percent decline in the black population over the past decade. Median sales prices rose to $750,000 in 2010, according to the Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy at NYU, which compiles housing data by district each year. That is a nearly $120,000 increase from 2009, the largest appreciation in Brooklyn.
District 2, composed of the Fort Greene and Brooklyn Heights area, couples Brooklyn’s largest decline in black population with the second-best sales price for houses. After property values took a significant hit in the 2009 recession, the district has rebounded with a rise in value of about $6,000 to go along with its 35 percent increase in the white population.
Likewise, the Canarsie and Flatlands-comprised District 18, the only district to see a significant increase in the black population, had a more than $8,000 drop in sales prices in 2010.
While the data show a strong correlation of housing prices and changes in black population, it is less clear whether one factor is a cause of changes in the other. Still, the changing demographics and fluctuating property values, no matter the reasons, seem to portray a borough in flux.
“[The neighborhood’s] not changing for the worse, but it is changing,” said long-time Crown Heights resident Sylvia Coley about the declining number of blacks. The black population in Crown Height’s District 8 declined nearly 16 percent. However, the more than 63,000 blacks is still the vast majority, comprising 65 percent of the total population.
The Furman Center suggested that the “shift was driven mostly by an influx of Asians; the Asian population increased by more than 75,000 people between 2000-2010.”
Asians still rank below blacks, whites and Hispanics in most districts in Brooklyn. The factors leading to white population majorities in districts 2 and 14 are also unclear.
The answer may be that blacks are simply leaving Brooklyn. Each of the 12 districts that saw a decrease in blacks did so not only proportionally, but also in absolute terms. District 14, for example, lost about 10,000 blacks over the last decade.
Edward Morlock, a researcher at the Center for the Study of Brooklyn, said the borough is undergoing a reversal of the Great Migration that occurred between the world wars.
“It’s hard to say where people are moving to,” Morlock said. “The top states people are moving to are in the south.”
Coley is one of several Brooklyn residents who said he has observed many of his neighbors relocating to the south.
“A lot of people are moving to Georgia and Florida,” Coley said.
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