America's Top 10 Fastest-Declining Cities - What They All Have in Common
There is one thing that the 10 fastest-declining cities in the U.S. have in common: They all voted for Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election.
Not only that, but they are all Democratic strongholds in their respective states, with all the wokeness that goes along with it.
Last fall, the financial advice website FinanceBuzz released a list of the fastest-declining and fastest-growing cities of 200,000 or more across the country between 2019 and 2022.
The list was based on various criteria, including population change, unemployment rate change, per capita income increase compared to peer cities, new home construction, new businesses, percentage of vacant homes, and home value increase compared to peer cities.
1. San Francisco
Population 808,400 as of 2022.
And the winner for America’s fastest-declining city is San Francisco.
San Francisco County voted 85 percent for Biden compared to former President Donald Trump’s total of 13 percent.
Between 2019 and 2022, San Francisco saw an 8.29 percent decline in population, the largest of any of the 117 cities in the FinanceBuzz study. Additionally, home value increases trailed the national average by 73 percent.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who previously served as mayor of the City by the Bay, found himself on the defensive when Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis displayed a San Francisco “poop map” during a debate last year.
“This is an app where they plot the human feces that are found on the streets of San Francisco,” DeSantis said. “And you see how almost the whole thing is covered.”
This is a map of San Francisco. There’s a lot of plots on that. You may be asking ‘what is that plotting?’
This is an app where they plot the human feces that are found on the streets of San Francisco.
That is what has happened in one of the previous greatest cities this… pic.twitter.com/otOz7dQxei
— Ron DeSantis (@RonDeSantis) December 1, 2023
In October, comedian Rob Schneider talked about his decision to leave San Francisco — where he thought he’d “live forever” because he loved it so much — to move to Arizona.
“I don’t want the Democratic Party trying to run my life. And there’s not one aspect of your life that they don’t want to interfere with. I had it with them,” Schneider told Fox News, adding, “I just don’t think your life gets better there. It gets worse.”
The comedian quipped, “San Francisco either has a huge homeless problem or a gigantic camping success story.”
2. New Orleans
Population 370,000 as of 2022.
Orleans Parish voted for Biden over Trump 83-15 percent.
New Orleans experienced a population decline of 5 percent and had the highest rate of vacant houses (22.9 percent) of any city in the study.
The Big Easy was also one of the worst places in the country when it came to homicides.
“New Orleans’ per capita homicide rate of 70 per 100,000 in 2022 exceeded any other large American city’s, approaching the record-setting violence of the mid-1990s,” NOLA.com reported.
The good news is that the number of murders in the city did drop 25 percent in 2023 to 190.
3. New York
Population 8.3 million as of 2022.
Manhattan voted for Biden approximately 87-12 percent, while the Bronx was 83-16 percent. The Democratic president also won over 70 percent of the vote in Queens and Brooklyn.
New York’s unemployment rate rose 1.2 percent between 2019 and 2022, which matched Detroit for the highest increase among the top 10 declining cities. The Big Apple’s home values also rose at a rate 71 percent slower than peer cities.
To illustrate just how Democratic the city is, New York judges have hit Trump with $537 million in damages in civil suits decided against him in recent weeks.
The lawsuits — along with other legal actions brought by the Biden administration and Democratic officials around the country — appeared timed to hurt the former president’s 2024 re-election bid.
4. Boston
Population 651,000 as of 2022.
Boston voted for Biden 83-16 percent.
The city saw a population decline of 6 percent from 2019 to 2022, while home value increases were 62 percent below the U.S. average.
Democratic Mayor Michelle Wu came under fire in December for hosting a holiday party for “electeds of color.”
The invitation mistakenly went out to all members of the City Council, including its seven white members, who were subsequently disinvited.
5. Detroit
Population 620,000 as of 2022.
Wayne County, which includes Detroit, voted for Biden 68-30 percent.
Detroit’s population declined 7.4 percent between 2019 and 2022, making it second only to San Francisco. The city’s per capita income rose 75 percent slower than the national average.
In 2022, Detroit’s school board voted to remove Dr. Ben Carson’s name from a local high school. Carson served as Trump’s secretary of housing and urban development.
He grew up in inner-city Detroit and went on to become a world-renowned surgeon, holding the position of chief of pediatric neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins.
6. Chicago
Population 2.7 million as of 2022.
Cook County, which includes Chicago, went for Biden 74-24 percent.
Chicago saw the second-largest net population decline of any U.S. city between July 2021 and July 2022 — nearly 33,000 people, according to the Illinois Policy Institute. Only New York lost more residents at approximately 123,000.
From 2019 to 2022, the Windy City’s home values rose 58 percent slower than other cities, and per capita income grew 36 percent slower.
Chicago also had the highest number of homicides in the nation in 2022 with 697, compared to 516 in Philadelphia and 438 in New York, WTVO-TV reported.
7. Anchorage, Alaska
Population 287,000 as of 2022.
Anchorage’s population was just over 300,000 in 2014, but it has lost residents nearly every year since then, according to Neilsberg.
Alaska’s voting results are broken down by electoral districts. Multiple districts in and around Anchorage voted for Biden over Trump.
Anchorage made a list of the most liberal cities in Alaska in 2019, coming in at No. 4 behind Ketchikan (home to moderate GOP Sen. Lisa Murkowski), Sitka and Kodiak.
The mayor of Anchorage is Republican David Bronson, who eked out a 2 percentage point victory in a 2021 special election after Democrat Ethan Berkowitz resigned amid scandal in the middle of his second term.
8. Portland, Oregon
Population 635,000 as of 2022.
Biden won Multnomah County, which includes Portland, with 80 percent of the vote to Trump’s 18 percent.
The City of Roses saw a 3 percent population decline between 2019 and 2022. Meanwhile, its home values and per capita income have both risen slower than the national average.
Portland, of course, made headlines during the 2020 “summer of love,” with months of antifa riots centered on the city’s federal courthouse.
On tonight’s @NBCNightlyNews coverage of the Portland riots, @ErinNBCNews covered up how terrorists barricaded federal agents inside the courthouse and tried to set it on fire.
But she did interview one “protester” she failed to disclose was charged with assaulting a fed agent. pic.twitter.com/p76RYd3aZh— Nicholas Fondacaro (@NickFondacaro) July 23, 2020
KPTV-TV reported last year that downtown businesses have struggled to bounce back after the riots and protests in 2020 and others that followed in 2021.
“This area was like a war zone during the riots,” business owner Saadi Nikoo told the news outlet.
9. Honolulu
Population of Honolulu County 996,000 as of 2022.
Honolulu County, which includes the entire island of Oahu, voted for Biden 63-36 percent.
Honolulu has one of the lowest rates of new home construction in the country, with only 135 homes built per 100,000 residents in 2022. Further, existing home values increased at a 51 percent slower rate than in other cities.
KHON-TV reported in October that Hawaii saw a spike in fentanyl-related deaths between 2021 and 2022, and the trend showed no signs of slowing.
Last year, the nonprofit Families Against Fentanyl ranked Hawaii No. 7 on a list of states with the largest increases in fentanyl deaths, according to KITV-TV.
10. Baton Rouge, Louisiana
Population 221,000 as of 2022.
East Baton Rouge Parish, which includes the city of Baton Rouge, voted for Biden 56-43 percent.
Income rose 51 percent slower in Baton Rouge than the national average between 2019 and 2022. Meanwhile, home values increased 57 percent slower than in peer cities.
Baton Rouge is not far behind New Orleans with one of the highest murder rates in the country, KPEL-FM reported this month.
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