How many "yuppies" have actually moved to Detroit the past couple of years?

[Jason]

It doesn't matter what anyone says or what numbers anyone finds. He thinks all the major newspapers where you might find these numbers are biased.

Obviously if some non profit or government agency produces some numbers those will be biased sources too.

And the crushingly obvious truth that since the last census there's been a population increase isn't convincing to him [[quickly rising rents despite 100s+ of new units being created, etc.) it's because he doesn't want it to be true.

If a census had been done and new numbers were released today that showed an increase he'd think of some reason for them to be "biased".

[gvidas]

Here's some hard, albeit narrow, data on the tendency of young kids to move downtown but keep their official address in the burbs.

http://bridgemi.com/2013/03/auto-rat...s-into-hiding/

Alok Sharma analyzes data for a living. In 2010, he had a client, a politician, who was running for office and wanted to know if it was worth his time to campaign door-to-door in Detroit’s high-rise apartment buildings. Sharma thought the answer might be found by running a high-rise address through the Qualified Voter File, a public document of every registered voter in Michigan. He chose his own: the Kales Building, with 18 floors overlooking Grand Circus Park and 116 one- and two-bedroom apartments.

It is, Sharma said, full of young professionals like him, as well as empty-nesters — just the type of middle-class people who are likely to be engaged, active voters. When Sharma looked, the building was fully occupied.

Yet he found only nine names in the Qualified Voter File – counting his own.

For those keeping score at home, 9 registered voters out of 116 apartments is 7.75%. The percentage goes even lower if you factor in the two bedroom apartments. Statewide, in 2012, 97.8% of voting-age individuals were registered to vote.