Feb 27, 2021
Source: The Ronake Times
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Among the marginalized of society, are transits. Transits are particularly interesting to Virginia. In the Hampton Roads area the military and colleges give the area its distinctive transit characteristic with few having been born, raised and remained in the area. With the military, service members are often relocated every 3-5 years. Colleges students are out of state as it is. Many moving between their college state and home state.
Northern Virginia, like the Hampton Roads, Virginia area has a large military population as well as larger colleges. Additionally, those who serve in the Washington, DC area, not too far from the Northern Virginia area have a high rate of people who's employment is impacted by terms i.e. a congress person is only elected for a term. Thus making the area a highly transit area on many levels. Additionally, unlike areas such as Vermont or Main, Virginia has a more temperate climate increasing the number of homelessness and those who maybe living on the streets as a pose to areas such as Vermont. These areas simply can not have people living on the street in below zero temperatures because death would be assured. Consequently, street bond homelessness is less likely nearly unheard of. While climates such as California, see more street bond homeless simply because of the difference in weather.
The marginalized whether those who are more transits or those who society may not "see" are typically preyed upon by criminals of all sorts from the petty criminal to the medical "professional". As evident in cases such as the Nazi to those addicted to the prescription drug: opiods. Often, transitiveness or the act of frequent movement is cultivated or merely apart of culture or circumstance. During Nazi Germany Jews were often moved. Performers or pilots may often find themselves in several locations because of their profession. Others yet may relocated as a result of a extreme weather events such as Hurricane Katrina. Regardless, the transit behavior may for some be opportunity to commit wicked acts.
Virginia’s hidden exodus continues. We say hidden because Virginia is gaining population, just not as fast as it once was.
However, beneath the statistical surface, more people are moving out of Virginia than moving in. Virginia is only gaining population because births outnumber deaths — and also the net loss of people moving out.
Let’s talk about this because it has some interesting policy implications for Virginia. The immediate impetus for writing about this is the annual United Van Lines Movers Study where the moving van company tallies up all its data and reports which states see more people moving out and which states see more people moving in. This is a clever little promotional device for the company — see, we’ve already mentioned their name without them having to buy a dollar’s worth of advertising. It also, by definition, simply reflects the company’s customers, not everyone in the country who has moved during the past year. However, actual demographers tell us it’s a reasonably accurate reflection of the overall reality — although it likely undercounts young adults and low-income people who might be more likely to call up a friend with a pickup truck than hire a moving company. That United Van Lines report for 2020 showed that the top outbound state was New Jersey, which has held that dubious ranking for three years in a row. Nearly 70% of the moves involving New Jersey were people moving out of state. What’s a-matter? You don’t like Joisy? The top inbound state was Idaho, where 70% of the moves involved people moving in. We are still living out what the French traveler Alexis de Tocqueville saw in the 1830s: “All around you everything is on the move.” United ranks Virginia as a “balanced” state, but that balance tips slightly to the outbound side — 53% of the company’s moves involving Virginia were headed out of state, 47% into the state. This tracks data collected by the Internal Revenue Service — the tax collectors know where you live — which shows that since 2013 Virginia has had more out-migration than in-migration. That’s kind of a big deal because it represents a demographic shift we haven’t seen since the IRS started that kind of record-keeping on migration in the 1970s. It prompts the obvious question: Why? Why are more people moving out of Virginia than in? Some like to give a political answer to this. Depending on the flavor of their politics, they conclude that Virginia must be failing somehow. Actually, it might be because Virginia is succeeding too well. “Out-migration from Virginia is largely being driven by Northern Virginia and to a lesser extent Hampton Roads,” says Hamilton Lombard, a demographer with the Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service at the University of Virginia. “Before the 2010s, out-migration from Northern Virginia was more likely to be to the rest of Virginia than out of state. During the early 2010s this trend reversed … Virginia’s slower population growth in recent years has principally been due to the fact that more people moving out of Northern Virginia are going to other states than other parts of Virginia.”
That prompts two questions. First, why are people moving out of Northern Virginia? That’s the part where Northern Virginia is doing a little too well. “I think the biggest driver has been the growth in housing prices in Northern Virginia and the D.C. area as a whole,” Lombard says. “Parts of the country with much higher home prices (such as the Northeast or California) typically lose retirees, who often move to lower cost areas, as well as young families who are looking for more affordable homes to raise their children. Age data for people leaving Virginia indicates that these are the two main groups leaving Virginia.” To that extent, Amazon might both drive Northern Virginia’s technology sector but also drive people out of the D.C. suburbs as housing prices heat up. We’ve seen that happen in Silicon Valley, where astronomical housing prices have caused some people to decamp for cheaper cities — the aforementioned Boise being one of the big winners. Las Vegas has been another. Indeed, California as a whole is one of the big “losers” in the United report — nearly 59% of the moves involving California are people moving out of the state. The second question is why aren’t more of those leaving Northern Virginia simply moving to “the rest of Virginia”? To truly know the answer to that, you’d have to interview everyone who’s moving out but we can draw some clues through statistics. United says nearly 42% of its customers who are moving out of Virginia are doing so for job-related reasons, compared to 27% for family reasons, 22% because they’re retiring elsewhere, 9% for lifestyle reasons and 5% for health reasons. (There’s no option for “because the place is too expensive” which might or might not undergird many of these answers). In any case, that 42% seems a pretty high percentage of job-related moves. By contrast, only 23% of the New Jersey out-bounders were job-related moves. Instead, retirement (32%) and family reasons (28%) topped jobs as the main reason for leaving New Jersey. Virginia’s high percentage of job-related moves out of state tracks more those of Rust Belt states — exactly the same as Wisconsin although not as high as the 46% in Ohio, the 47% in Pennsylvania, the 53% in Michigan or the 57% in Indiana. Now, Virginia’s high number of job-related out-bounders is surely inflated by young military families in Hampton Roads who may have had no intention of staying in the state once their tour of duty is over. Still, once a lot of people leaving Northern Virginia moved downstate and now they’re moving out-of-state instead. Why is this? One answer might be the “great divergence” in the economy. Many of the jobs that exist in Northern Virginia simply don’t exist in Southside and Southwest Virginia, so if you’re making a job-related move out of Northern Virginia you’re more likely to move to the Research Triangle than to Roanoke. Here’s the policy dimension: If Virginia doesn’t want to lose all those Northern Virginia refugees to other states, then it needs to figure out how to build a more robust (and modern) economy in the rest of Virginia. That’s hardly a new thought, but here are some new statistics to make that point yet again.
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