So, No One is From DC, Huh?

• December 13th 2018

by Nena Perry-Brown

While DC has traditionally hosted a large share of residents who moved here from across the country, there is the mistaken impression that it is a city of transplants rather than a place with a distinct culture where people have inter-generational roots. Now, the DC Policy Center (DCPC) has receipts to disprove the notion that no one from DC lives in DC.

A new report from the DCPC, based on Census data from 1990 and 2000, estimates that native-born residents make up about 31 percent of the city's population. From 2013 to 2017, however, between the displacement of lower-income residents and the influx of new residents, roughly 28.6 percent of adult DC residents were born here (37 percent if children are counted). 

In Wards 7 and 8, the native-born population makes up about 80 percent of the population. The pendulum swings decidedly in the other direction on the west side of the city. Native-born Washingtonians make up about 10 percent of the population in Northwest DC on average; in neighborhoods like Foggy Bottom and West End, the percentage is near zero. 

As for areas where the share of native-born Washingtonians has declined in recent years, some of the most dramatic drops from 2010-2016 were in Brookland off Rhode Island Avenue (down 35 percent), in Trinidad (down 26 percent) and toward the east end of the H Street Corridor (down 29 percent). 

DC-born residents still represent the largest bloc of the city's population, followed by 17.6 percent of residents who were born abroad. New York-born residents come in third, representing 6.1 percent of the population, and Virginia and Maryland lag just behind, representing a respective 4.6 and 4.3 of DC residents. 

This article originally published at https://dc.urbanturf.com/articles/blog/so-no-one-from-dc-huh/14805.