The U.S. Census Bureau has some of its 2010 Census data up and available for review. Check out the American Factfinder to look for information about Claremont and just about any other American city.
There's some interesting Claremont data, by the way. For one thing, our population grew more slowly than the Census Bureau had estimated in 2009, when Claremont's population was supposed to be a little over 35,400. Instead, the 2010 Census listed the city of Claremont population as 34,998. That's a gain of only 928 people in 10 years, a number that supports the notion that we're a built out city.
Furthermore, Claremont's graying trend continued, a point we've come back to over the years. In 2000, 7,031 Claremonters - about 21.7% of the population - were under the age of 18. Last year, Claremont's under-18 population had dropped both in total numbers and as a percent of the population, down to 6,459 or 18.5%.
Despite those numbers, Claremont over the past decade has continued to live in a Fantasyland devised by the Claremont 400. In their separate domains, the City and the Claremont Unified School District have both refused to face our demographic reality and continue to devote millions of dollars to things like Padua Sports Park or to maintaining an overabundance of school district facilities and staff rather than allowing for the population trends in their decisions.
The City could have better spent its money on senior programs or more senior facilities, since that is where the greater need seems to be. In the school district's case, as we've argued before, they've done things like propping up enrollment figures by allowing an ever-larger number of interdistrict transfers - now nearly 20% of CUSD's enrollment. The families of that 20%, by the way, do not have to pay for CUSD bonds, and their attendance is underwritten by CUSD taxpayers.
We've learned through years of observation that no amount of hard data can change minds that long ago committed to wrongheaded courses of action. The City's staff may know better, but they're often held hostage by people saying things like, "We just have to have a downtown trolley." We can hope for change, but there's been little evidence to date of much willingness on the part of the Claremonsters to incorporate reality-based thinking into our local policy decisions.
Some other trivia:
- Claremont has become a little more diverse since 2000. The city's Hispanic population now numbers 6,919 or 19.8%, compared to 5,221 and 15.4% in 2000.
- Similarly, Asians now account for a larger segment of Claremont's population than before. In 2010, Asians numbered 4,564, or 13.1% of the total. In 2000, those number were 3,912 and 11.5%.
- On the other hand, the numbers of blacks/African-American dropped slightly, from 1,962 in 2000 to 1,951 in 2010.
- Claremont had an increase in housing units, thanks to the real estate boom that ended around 2008. 10 years ago, the Census listed Claremont as having 11,559 housing units. In 2010, there were 12,156.
- In a sign of the times, 548 of those housing units were unoccupied in 2010. That's 4.5% of the total, up from 2.4% in 2000.
Here are the Census figures, new and old:
From the 2010 Census
Posts
