Census Data Shows Diverging Population Trends in Cleveland Neighborhoods, With Some Adding Housing Units But Losing Residents

A recent Cleveland Planning Commission analysis of 2020 Census data showed that, while some neighborhoods in Cleveland gained hundreds of housing units in the past decade, several of them still lost hundreds of people.

The diverging trend was evident in Tremont, Detroit-Shoreway, Goodrich-Kirtland Park and Central, all neighborhoods which lost, on average, 2 to 3 percent of their population from 2010 to 2020.

Conversely, the four neighborhoods saw a slight uptick in housing units.

Detroit-Shoreway, the highest diverging neighborhood, added 497 units while losing 251 people; Goodrich-Kirtland added 112 while losing 283 people; and Central, one of the most stagnant neighborhoods housing-wise, lost 351 people while gaining a meager 30 units in 10 years, the decennial Census showed.

In Tremont, where contemporary townhomes and $1 million flat-roofs began to rise before the Great Recession, the notion of the popular neighborhood losing 177 people—while adding 227 homes—might not make sense at first.

In the CPC’s analysis, such seemingly contradictory trends are understood at a kind of micro level.

“In some neighborhoods, there was significant disinvestment and depopulation occurring in one part of the neighborhood,” it reads, “while new housing and residents came to another part.” That, and Cleveland’s “continued decrease in household sizes.”

Cory Riodan, the executive director of Tremont West Development Corporation, said that such tract-level changes in how homes were built, and who they were serving, is key to understanding the data.

He pointed quickly to the fact that from the mid-1960s to the early 2010s, Tremont built zero new units at all. (The Manhattan Tower on West 14th, Riodan said, was the last complex constructed in Tremont in the 20th century.)

“It’s less people per unit than what’s happening demographically,” Riodan told Scene on Monday. He believes that the shifting from duplexes to (pricey) single-family homes, like those on Thurman Ave. and West 7th, have a lot to do with what Census numbers demonstrate. “You can be gaining units and doing really well in neighborhood attraction and still be losing people because the family size is changing and all of that.”

New apartment projects should begin to change that, however. Driftwood, 100 units of luxury apartments in progress off Fairfield Ave. and West 11th St., and the Lincoln Park Flats, a five-story low-rise near Kenilworth and West 14th St., are two prime examples of what Riodan told Scene will redirect the divergence.

“We’re turning that corner,” he said.

The same could be happening in other divergent neighborhoods.

According to a 244-page housing study published in early May by the Downtown Cleveland Alliance, the ongoing construction of new housing, especially those in Downtown itself, will nurture the already blossoming neighborhoods. Especially those in what the report dubs Greater Downtown, the small donut around the city center—where all the diverging neighborhoods are located.

As far as the fastest growing since 2010, Downtown took the cake with its massive 41 percent increase in population, and an 80 percent jump in housing added. In contrast, Glenville was the hardest hit, losing 6,097 people and 3,546 housing units.

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