'Detroit is a vibrant and growing city again'; population grows for first time since 1957

Detroit’s population declined consistently through the last several decades, according to data from the U.S. Census Bureau — until this week.

Mayor Mike Duggan’s administration publicly fought the federal agency’s count of Detroit residents and sued the Census Bureau multiple times seeking what the city considers accurate figures. He has even described the agency as a “national clown show” for previously reporting a decrease in the city’s population estimates. But new figures show Detroit grew from 631,366 in 2022 to 633,218 residents in 2023, according to the bureau’s annual population estimate released Thursday.

“This is the news we’ve been waiting for for 10 years,” Duggan said. "This is the first time since 1957 that the Census Bureau has put Detroit in the category of a growing city in population, so it probably means more to our national brand than the NFL draft did. Many big cities in the country have been losing population year after year. To have Detroit be growing is a pretty major change."

Detroit reached its highest population point of nearly 2 million in 1950.

Amid the lawsuits, the city dived into ways to understand how the bureau arrives at its estimates. Officials were upset after the 2020 decennial census revealed a population decline of 10.5% in Detroit, numbers that Kurt Metzger, founder of Data Driven Detroit, called "abysmal and problematic." Although Metzger said he has not seen a population increase in Detroit since 1957, the bureau has been penalizing the city for its demolitions.

'The city has never gotten credit for rehab'

"What we've been arguing is the city doesn’t demolish buildings that were occupied. There are buildings that were unoccupied and uninhabitable for years in many cases. Just because we're demolishing, does not mean we should lose population," Metzger said.

The city's latest lawsuit argues that for each demolished structure, the agency subtracts about two residents from its population estimate.

"There's been a lot of work at the city level to look at those homes that were demolished. What was their status prior? Were they occupied?" Metzger said. "The city has never gotten credit for rehab. A lot of the work coming through the (Detroit) Land Bank (Authority), where you have homes that were fixed up and sold. There's been a lot of work done to better understand how the bureau works with housing, and get the bureau to understand what's going on in the city."

The city challenged the 2021 and 2022 population estimates, to which the agency responded by increasing its figures. Numbers can fluctuate year after year. Population estimates come via a third-party data program through the federal agency that does not involve surveying respondents but uses administrative data sources to create estimates, according to Kristina Barrett, spokesperson for the Census Bureau.

"These third-party data sources include vital statistics data for government agencies, Medicare, IRA, etc. We have a set deadline for data in order to produce estimates according to our schedule. Sometimes these data do not reach us in time to be included in our release. This is why we revise previous year's data. Only the previous year is revised if needed," Barrett said in an email.

Michigan population surprise

Said Duggan, "They added 11,000 to last year, but the more important thing is they reported that we grew by 1,800 last year, even over and above that. For many years, Detroit led Michigan in population loss. In 2023, Detroit led Michigan in population gain. That’s something I never thought I’d see."

The state's population grew last year by 3,980 people, up 0.04% from 2022 to 10,037,261, according to the Census Bureau. However, Michigan's total population remains lower than it was in 2020 when the decennial census recorded 10,077,331 residents.

Metzger has predicted population increases for several years, though the city is often "dinged by these demolitions," he said.

"I'm thinking the city is somewhere between 650,000 to 670,000 (residents). I'm not putting us back at 700,000 yet," Metzger said, adding that he bases his data on housing-related numbers.

'Detroit is a vibrant and growing city again'

That mayor has centered the success of his administration on regrowing Detroit's population upon taking office amid the city's bankruptcy.

"It's been happening," Duggan said. "We've had more than 10,000 vacant houses in neighborhoods get renovated and moving in families. There's apartments being built all around this city. You can go pick any neighborhood you want today, drive down the street and you'll see people on ladders working on fixing up houses. Detroit is a vibrant and growing city again, we’ve known that. But it's very helpful to our national brand to get the Census Bureau to classify us as growing."

Duggan said that despite commercial development slowing due to companies scaling back on office spaces nationally, the city has had a housing boom, partially due to businesses boosting neighborhoods.

"The 2,000 vacant houses a year are getting renovated and people are moving in," Duggan said. "Motor City Match has 167 new businesses open in this city, basically in neighborhoods where they pulled plywood off vacant storefronts. Go down East Warren near Cadieux and see what's happening. Go down McNichols, west of Livernois and see what's happening. There's one storefront after another being opened. As that happens, people move into the neighborhoods even faster because of the quality of neighborhood commercial corridor nearby."

The next move is to fight the county cap rule, Metzger added. The "county cap" determines numbers based on population estimates of all towns and cities within the county. It "cannot exceed the county’s population estimate" even if Detroit's population is growing.

"The county cap punishes the City of Detroit by reducing the city’s population estimate, not because of an actual decrease in Detroit’s population, but because of population lost in other Wayne County cities or because of the Census Bureau’s failure to properly estimate Wayne County’s population," according to the federal lawsuit.

Dana Afana is the Detroit city hall reporter for the Free Press. Contact: dafana@freepress.com. Follow her: @DanaAfana.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Census Bureau report shows Detroit population increases