The Cedarbrook, Stenton and Ivy Hill sections of East Mount Airy - a rectangular pocket of Northwest Philly bordered by Montgomery County, Stenton Avenue and Washington Lane - lost 2,164 residents, or about 8 percent of its population, from 2000 to 2010, according to census data released last month.
During that decade, this bedroom community of mostly middle-class African-American families lost 2,192 black residents and 181 white residents. The gain of other population segments and ethnicities did little to offset the loss.
But just as telling as the neighborhood's population loss is the roughly 18 percent decline in average household income from 1999 to the 2005-09 period, a time when the nation suffered a major recession. Income dipped to about $53,000 in 2005-09, according to census sampling, compared with about $65,000 in 1999, after adjusting for inflation to 2009 figures.
Neighboring parts of Northwest Philly also saw similar population declines. West Oak Lane and East Mount Airy south of Stenton Avenue each lost about 1,200 people, and East Germantown lost about 1,600 people.
The pull to elsewhere
Some residents in and around Cedarbrook attribute the population loss to older folks whose kids have grown up and moved out, who then decided to move to the suburbs, Center City or even the South. Others attribute the decline to people moving out because of a perceived increase in crime, to more youths hanging out on street corners, to a deterioration of the stable family unit.
That migration from the neighborhood in some ways mirrors a national trend. Black families from cities in the Northeast and Midwest have been moving to the South for better economic opportunities, or to the wealthier suburbs, as their white counterparts did in the post-World War II era.
