The population of St. Louis City has been hovering around 300,000 for a while — but what happens if we dip below that threshold? According to Neal Richardson, executive director of St. Louis Development Corporation, population loss could cause the city to lose out on grants, funding, and more.
The 300,000 figure is important for decisions the government makes around distribution of ARPA funds, for example, Richardson said.
“When they did an assessment on the city of St. Louis, spanning the city and county, they identified that we had over 300,000 residents, which puts us in a different bucket,” he explained.
The 2020 census showed that St. Louis had lost 17,000 residents since 2010, and there’s a specific lack in the Black population. And so if we're going to continue to grow our city and make it more diverse, which we're very supportive of, we cannot continue to lose population of folks that have been committed to the city into the region for for decades and even generation,” Richardson said.
He adds that a lot of the city’s housing is old and doesn’t attract young professionals — especially young Black professionals.
“A lot of Black professionals, they want to see opportunities, they want to see entertainment, they want to see safe schools, quality education and quality food,” he said. “And so not having those amenities not only has a decline in the population, but it has a negative impact on our tax base.”
That negative tax impact then leads to a lack of funding for infrastructure and education. “So it’s a poor cycle that we’re seeing,” Richardson said.
As the country becomes more diverse every day, he said, St. Louis has to help people of color want to live here if we want to grow our population.
“We have to make it acceptable and help those that are people of color to have opportunities, to be able to see St. Louis as a destination where they can live their fullest life. And so that's the type of environment that we want to create.”
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