GRAND RAPIDS, MI — Over the past 23 years, Tony and Tracy Martin have watched as the number of Black people in their Grand Rapids neighborhood has dwindled.
In 1999, when the couple moved to Thomas Street in the city’s Eastown neighborhood, Black children playing on the sidewalk was a common sight, and homes owned by African American families were more abundant.
Today, it’s a different story.
“The diversity is gone,” said Tracy Martin, 50. “That’s the biggest loss to the neighborhood.”
While Grand Rapids is growing, with new businesses and housing developments planned throughout the city, the same cannot be said of its African American population. Citywide, the number of Black people fell to 36,493 in 2020, down 4% from a decade ago. Besides Native Americans, it was the only racial or ethnic group to see a decline over the 10-year period.
It was the second consecutive decade the city lost more Black residents than it gained.
City leaders, residents and affordable housing advocates say the trend is concerning.
“The more that we lose real authentic diversity, especially in regard to ethnic diversity, we lose out on opportunities to be all that more attractive to new residents or individuals seeking a place to live,” said Grand Rapids City Commissioner Joe Jones, who formerly served as CEO of the Grand Rapids Urban League.
A variety of factors could be contributing to the decline.
Rising rent and higher home prices could be one factor. On the other hand, some Black residents have moved to suburban communities such as Kentwood or Wyoming — both of which have seen their African American population climb — to be closer to work, or for the newer housing stock in those communities.
Others have left in search of better opportunities.
“You have more and more African Americans who are moving down south,” Jones said. “They have either found a job in the South or they have hoped that they can find work at some of the fastest growing cities in the south.”
The trend, which has been called the New Great Migration, has touched other large, northern cities such as Detroit and Chicago, news reports show. Jones said he’s aware of 20 to 30 people who have left Grand Rapids over the past five years or so and moved to states such as Georgia, Texas, Florida, and North Carolina.
“I’ve heard from a number of folks who’ve decided to leave cities like Grand Rapids and Chicago and Detroit and head down south because of the search for affordable housing and the desire for families to really focus on creating generational wealth,” he said.
Losses across the state
Grand Rapids was not alone in losing Black residents in 2020.
Statewide, the Black population fell 2%, and other cities throughout the state, including Muskegon, Ann Arbor, Detroit, Flint, Ypsilanti and Saginaw also saw declines.
Ann Arbor, for example, grew by 9% overall but saw its Black population fall 5%.
William Frey, a demographer at Brookings Institution, a nonprofit public policy organization, said the trend among Grand Rapids’ Black population is similar to what’s happening in many U.S. cities.
“There’s a gain in the metro area, but a decline in the city,” he said. “I think that’s fairly pervasive in a lot of places.”
It’s a continuation of a trend that played out the prior decade as well, when the city’s Black population fell 4% between 2000 and 2010.
For Chris Woods, proximity to work and affordable housing is what convinced him to move from Grand Rapids to suburban Wyoming.
Woods, the owner of No Limit Fitness in Kentwood, moved to an apartment near the very southeastern edge of Grand Rapids, on the Kentwood border, about 10 years ago to be closer to work.
Last year, he began searching for a home nearby in Kentwood. But, amid a hot real estate market, he and his wife kept getting outbid. Eventually, the couple found a home near 44th Street SW and Byron Center Avenue in Wyoming.
“The housing in Kentwood costs way more than anywhere,” said Woods, 50. “We just kept getting outbid.”
Another resident, Latricia Lomax, left Grand Rapids to move to Kentwood in 2019. Her reason: She wanted to downsize from her single-family home in the Millbrook neighborhood, near the Kentwood border, to a condominium on 44th Street SE.
“I love the area,” said Lomax, who owns Business Exchange Center, a company in Grand Rapids that provides services to businesses. She says her condo also provides easier access to the airport for work-related trips to Ohio and Arizona.
Overall, Grand Rapids’ population climbed to 198,917 in 2020, up 5.8 percent from a decade ago. While the Black population fell in the city, the number of White, Hispanic, and Asian residents climbed. People who identified as two or more races also increased.
In March, the Census Bureau announced Black, Hispanic and Native American residents were undercounted in the 2020 census. Nationally, the net undercount rate for Blacks was 3.3%. That was higher than the 2010 undercount rate of 2.1%. However, the difference between the two rates was not considered statistically different, according to the report.
The city of Grand Rapids said it’s not at this time requesting a recount in response to the Census Bureau’s reported undercount.
“The Census Bureau has very limited parameters for what may be challenged – primarily incorrect City boundaries or incorrect housing units,” the city said in a statement. “Notably, demographic change is not, on its own, a basis for a recount case. While the City has yet to fully examine those two eligible factors to request a count be reviewed by the Bureau, preliminarily, there is no reason to think these were issues that impacted the City’s official count.”
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Big loss near Eastown
Nowhere in Grand Rapids saw a bigger decline in Black residents than Martin’s neighborhood.
Touching a portion of Eastown, and stretching south of Wealthy Street to Hall Street, a census tract encompassing the couple’s neighborhood lost 556 Black residents over the 10-year period, a 43% decline. The neighborhood’s diversity index, a measure of whether two people chosen at random will be from different racial and ethnic groups, also fell.
Tony Martin, who owns a remodeling and construction company, says rising home prices and rental rates could be partly to blame.
“It’s becoming unaffordable,” said Martin, a former Eastown Community Association board member.
He lives less than a half-mile south of Wealthy Street in Eastown, where a host of bars, restaurants and retailers have opened over the past fifteen years or more. As development in the area has increased, he’s watched the real estate market take off.
Martin estimates his home has seen its value jump sixfold since he bought it for roughly $50,000 two decades ago. Other homes in the neighborhood, many of which were built in the early 1900s, have sold for more than $300,000. Meanwhile, the average monthly rent for a one-bedroom apartment in Eastown is now $1,275, according to the website zumper.com.
Martin’s neighborhood wasn’t alone in seeing a drop in Black residents.
A census tract encompassing the Highland Park neighborhood lost 234 Black residents, a 42% decline. The neighborhood, on the Northeast Side, is located north of I-196 and is bordered to the east and west by Fuller and College avenues.
Elsewhere, many of the neighborhoods that experienced declines were clustered on the Southeast Side.
A large proportion of the city’s Black population lives on the Southeast Side, and neighborhoods there such as Boston Square and Madison Square lost hundreds of Black residents, census data show.
Victor Williams, co-founder of Boston Square Neighborhood Association, said part of the decline could be due to elderly residents selling their homes to real estate investors and others working to scoop up properties in the area.
“We noticed a lot of elderly people were doing that,” he said.
Boston Square is the site of a proposed, large-scale development by Amplify GR that’s expected to include income-restricted and market-rate housing, commercial space, and infrastructure improvements. Williams said property values are expected to rise because of the development.
One longtime Grand Rapids realtor says another factor may be at play in the loss of Black residents.
“Southeast Grand Rapids is made up of older housing stock, and it’s made up of older folks,” said Doretha Ardoin, a realtor who has worked in Grand Rapids for 40 years. “There’s a large percentage of people dying off, and those households are not necessarily being passed down to each generation.”
She saw that trend play out recently.
A woman who for decades lived on Union Avenue SE, south of Wealthy Street, recently moved out of her home and into an assisted living center. When the woman’s son put the home on the market, a bidding war broke out.
Eventually, the home was sold for thousands over its asking price to a young, white professional who worked in the medical field, Ardoin said.
“It was like mad crazy,” she said. “People were fighting over it.”
Back in Eastown, speaking in the living room of their three-bedroom home on Thomas Street, the Martins say they want the loss of Black residents in their neighborhood to stop. While they like to see neighborhood homes being renovated and new businesses opening, they want the area to be affordable to all people, they said.
“Don’t get me wrong — I want a better neighborhood, I want a better-looking neighborhood,” Tony Martin said. “But it’s just the way things happened. The people that were here should have had more help … to stay in the neighborhood.”
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