Rising Houston population bucks trend

Newly released census data shows the population in the Houston area continued to grow in 2021, even as other major cities saw substantial losses amid the slowest year of growth since the U.S. was founded.

The Greater Houston area added 69,094 new residents between July 2020 and July 2021, boosting its population from 7,137,747 to 7,206,841. Only the Dallas and Phoenix metro areas grew more, according to the U.S.

Census Bureau’s population estimates for 2021.

Meanwhile, other major cities — New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and San Francisco — lost about 712,000 residents between them, nearly half of those from New York City alone.

Although the nation overall grew by 392,665 people, the 0.1 percent growth is the lowest annual rate in the nation’s history. The Census Bureau attributes the stagnation to slowing immigration rates and “natural decrease” — when more people die than are born — in nearly threequarters of the nation’s counties. Both were exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, which contributed to nearly 474,000 deaths in that time span. The U.S. border closures and court delays related to the pandemic may have also contributed to the slower rate of immigration.

“Population growth has been slowing for years because of lower birth rates and decreasing net international migration, all while mortality rates are rising due to the aging of the nation’s population,” said Kristie Wilder, a demographer in the population division at the Census Bureau.

“Now, with the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, this combination has resulted in a historically slow pace of growth,” Wilder said.

Many people leaving the nation’s largest cities, like New York and Los Angeles, ended up

in teeming metropolises such as Houston, or in places the Census Bureau calls “micro areas” — cities with less than 50,000 residents.

Caroline Austin, 25, moved to Houston in October from Alexandria, Va., — a part of the greater Washington, D.C. area, which lost over 29,000 residents between July 2020 and July 2021. A theater publicist, Austin lost her job during the pandemic and jumped at the opportunity to work in Houston at the renowned Alley Theatre downtown when it reopened.

Austin has family in the area but had only ever spent one night in Houston, while waiting for a cruise out of Galveston. Coming from a liberalleaning area, Austin was initially nervous about “not-so-accurate Texas stereotypes,” but any reservations were quickly wiped out as she developed a love for the city’s diversity, culture and cuisine.

Its affordability, compared to the Washington, D.C., area, didn’t hurt either.

“My friends in D.C. are amazed that I can afford a one-bedroom by myself,” Austin said. “They couldn’t wrap their heads around it, and frankly, I couldn’t either.”

Though Austin moved to the Heights, within Houston city limits, the majority of newcomers to the area moved into the surrounding suburbs. The city of Houston grew by 9.8 percent between 2010 and 2020, but the city proper appears to have actually lost residents between 2020 and 2021, according to Bill Fulton, director of the Kinder Institute for Urban Research at Rice University.

Despite the surge in residents throughout the Greater Houston area, Harris County lost more than 4,000 residents, the new data shows, leaving places such as Fort Bend and Montgomery counties to pick up the slack. Fulton said he expects to see the trend continue.

“As Houston continues to grow, it continues to sprawl, and the population continues to spread out,” Fulton said.

“One thing that Houston has that other cities don’t is that ability to sprawl.”

Fulton pointed to the strong Texas home building industry as one reason that places like Houston, Dallas and Austin have grown, while the high cost of living forces people out of other major cities.

Still the Houston area’s sprawl makes it unlikely that the city itself will surpass Chicago for thirdlargest in the country anytime soon, he said.

“I think on a metro level, areas like Houston and Dallas will continue to ascend, but the City of Houston probably won’t add any more population,” Fulton said.