Star Tribune
Minnesota’s urban core boomed over the past decade. Momentum is now shifting back to the suburbs.
As population growth slows across the state and the country, some Twin Cities’ outer-ring suburbs are seeing growth rates accelerate in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, new regional estimates show.
It’s a marked shift from the 2010s, when the biggest gains occurred in the urban core. Population growth in Minneapolis, St. Paul and many inner-ring suburbs has stagnated in recent years, or even declined.
In farther-out suburbs, however, construction of new housing — primarily single-family homes and townhomes — is driving faster growth. The northwest metro city of Dayton saw its population increase by 40% between 2020 and 2023, according to new estimates from the Metropolitan Council. Lakeville added 5,700 new residents over the same time period, the most of any city in the metro.
It’s a revival of trends seen at the turn of the century.
“Our growth levels and the distribution of growth in the region look pretty much like they did in the 2000s,” said Matt Schroeder, senior researcher for the Met Council. “But the underlying dynamics are somewhat different.”
Demographers have been predicting slowed growth in the region for a long time due to lower birth rates, aging and a decline in international immigration. Some of those trends quickened at the peak of the pandemic, as mortality rates increased and immigration dropped off more steeply, Schroeder said.
But the agency’s population estimates, calculated each year between the Census Bureau’s decennial headcount, rely heavily on housing data.
The average size of a household has been shrinking for some time, at least partly in response to aging and lower birth rates. The decline is more drastic in the urban center, where many of the units added in recent years have been studios and one-bedrooms that may be less attractive to families.
Data also showed occupancy rates dropping across the metro in 2023, Schroeder said, especially among multifamily units. That could be partly because it’s taking a bit to fill up all the new apartment buildings constructed in recent years, he said.
Building permits for multifamily development — an indicator of future construction — also plummeted in 2023 after interest rates spiked.
“One of the things that we are really watching is development,” Schroeder said. “Just based on trends in development, it does seem like the growth will continue to be tilted more toward the outlying suburbs than Minneapolis, St. Paul and more first-ring suburbs.”
The end of the urban boom?
Last decade’s population growth in Minneapolis, St. Paul and big cities across the country was driven by young adult millennials flocking to newly built apartments and condos. Because the generation is one of the largest, its shifts have a more seismic effect.
Multifamily development was quicker to rebound from the Great Recession, outpacing the development of single-family homes for several years. Moves to the suburbs, typical for young adults of previous generations, were postponed.
Now as more millennials age and become homeowners, growth has dissipated from the center cities to suburbs, said Susan Brower, Minnesota’s state demographer.
“That was something that started happening before the pandemic,” she said. “Minneapolis and St. Paul are very much in line with what’s happening nationally.”
International immigration also dropped off during Donald Trump’s presidency and the pandemic, a trend that had a bigger impact on the center cities that new immigrants have historically favored, Brower said.
She emphasized that the suburbs are not now seeing the levels of growth the urban core experienced last decade.
“We’re seeing dampened growth all around,” Brower said.
But the growth that is happening is more concentrated in the suburbs.
While Dayton’s 40% growth rate is the fastest in the metro between 2020 and 2023, neighboring Corcoran saw its population increase by nearly a third, according to Metropolitan Council numbers. Lexington in the northern suburbs and Lake Elmo to the east each grew by about a quarter.
While these suburbs have relatively small populations, their rates of growth are faster than the metro core. Overall, the seven-county Twin Cities metro area grew about 2%.
Growth in these suburbs coincides with accelerated residential construction. For example, of all the new construction permits for single-family housing and townhomes since 1970, more than 30% in Dayton and in Corcoran have been issued since 2020. That percentage was about 25% in Lake Elmo and about 12% in Lakeville — all far above the 6% regional rate.
Demographic headwinds vs. housing
Schroeder said it’s important to realize that the Met Council’s figures are estimates.
There are still uncertainties about how the pandemic affected the 2020 Census, the starting point for the estimates. Fast-moving housing trends can also take a while to capture since the Met Council relies on five-year averages in data.
Many questions remain about how further social shifts could shape population trends moving forward. William Frey, a demographer for Brookings Metro, said in a recent article that the future of remote work, new immigrant waves and the preferences of younger generations could all have impacts.
Take Brooklyn Park. The city lost an estimated 2,600 residents between 2020 and 2023, according to the Met Council.
Single-family housing was a longtime driver of growth in the suburb, though production slowed substantially after the Great Recession. The city began adding units in a burst of multifamily projects starting around 2015, according to Met Council building permits, but that type of development has also slowed in the wake of the pandemic.
Brooklyn Park “has not built as much as it needed to kind of offset those demographic headwinds” in recent years, Schroeder said. City officials said that’s a point of conversation, not a point of concern.
“Over a longer period of time, we’re still seeing growth,” said John Nerge, the city’s GIS and Data Analysis Coordinator.
And they expect more to come.
Paul Mogush, Brooklyn Park’s planning director, said the city has about 1,000 acres of undeveloped land, as well as ample opportunities for infill and redevelopment. City officials also believe the planned extension of the Blue Line light rail, expected to bring five new stations to the city, will spark more growth.
“It’s going to be a different flavor of development,” he said — more apartment buildings, mixed-use properties, walkable communities.
“It’s not just potential — it will be realized. We will continue to grow,” Mogush said. “It’s just about the timing, you know. When will it happen?”
Authorities are piecing together details of a suspected murder in or around Pine County.
Jail records show the Pine County Sheriff’s Office arrested a 31-year-old man Friday on suspicion of second-degree murder. The Star Tribune typically does not name suspects until they are charged.
It was unclear when the incident occurred or whether it occurred in Pine County. Authorities said they planned to release more details after investigators gather information.
Pine County is about 60 miles north of the Twin Cities.
This is a developing story. Check back with startribune.com for more information.
While the headlines about the lawsuit discussed the crux of Haynes’ claim, it’s also important to understand the totality of his request from the actual lawsuit, which calls his wrongful conviction “an egregious miscarriage of justice. “
“Claimant Marvin Haynes spent nearly two decades wrongfully incarcerated for a murder and assault he did not commit. He was wrongfully arrested as a teenager of only sixteen years old, later thrust into life-threatening conditions in adult prison, and robbed of the formative years of his youth and young adulthood,” the lawsuit states. “Mr. Haynes was finally exonerated and released at the age of thirty-six. During his wrongful incarceration, Mr. Haynes lost the opportunity to graduate high school alongside his peers, to see his maternal grandparents — with whom he had a close relationship — before they passed away, and to spend valuable years with his mother before a stroke rendered her unable to speak or care for herself. During the years when most teenagers find their independence and define their sense of self, Mr. Haynes was forced to spend his days worrying about his safety and fighting to prove his innocence. And while Mr. Haynes worked hard to achieve his high school diploma during his wrongful incarceration, any thought of further education had to be pushed aside in favor of tireless efforts to gain his freedom.”
There are “wounds,” mentioned in the lawsuit, in Haynes’ family that changed him and those around him. Only Haynes and those close to him will ever understand that dynamic. But the $2 million he’s earned won’t remove those scars.
It is also, unfortunately, no guarantee that he will get what he’s requested.
For those in Haynes’ position, the battle for compensation is often fruitless. In a study of 1,800 exonerees, only 42% were compensated, according to Most Policy Initiative, a Missouri-based think tank.
Haynes has every right to live his life with an embittered demeanor. He could be angry. And I think, if I were in his shoes, I would be. But I also don’t know what it’s like to be Marvin Haynes. I do, however, wonder how he acquired the grace that’s allowed him to begin the journey to reclaim his life.
There, Jojean Ziegler, the financial assistance supervisor, and other staff members review the person’s income and assets, including life insurance and money in bank accounts. In the case of married couples or a minor, the county also looks at family members’ assets. Funeral businesses can also ask families to contribute a sum of money, capped at $830 for funerals and cremations, and $1,300 for cemeteries.
Ziegler said the rate increase comes as she’s heard from businesses that their costs are rising. The county last increased its rates in 2016.
In recent years, the number of Ramsey County burial assistance cases has gone up and down. Last year, there were 522 approved, at a cost of $616,000. So far this year, there have been more than 420, costing more than $508,000.
“I provide county-assisted burials to families that are in my community, in the Maplewood area, and families that I’ve served,” said JR Jaskulske, shown at Oakwod Funeral Home in Maplewood. “Sometimes there’s just hardships in families and you just have to take care of them.” (Jeff Wheeler/The Minnesota Star Tribune)
Other counties are bracing for an increase in county assistance cases.
Years ago, Hennepin County raised its burial assistance to $3,000, with up to $2,000 in additional family contributions permitted for enhanced services, spokesperson Carolyn Marinan said. “Suffice it to say we are definitely seeing an increase [in requests for burial assistance],” she wrote in an email, citing the opioid epidemic and COVID as factors driving an increase in demand in recent years.
However, the number of people dying of opioid overdoses has declined recently, partly attributed to more widespread availability of overdose-reversal drug naloxone.
