CATSKILL — Greene County’s population surged over the first 15 months of the pandemic, trailing only Sullivan County in growth throughout the state from April 2020 to July 2021.
According to a new analysis of U.S. Census data from the year 2021 from the Cornell Jeb E. Brooks School of Public Policy, 46 of the 62 counties in New York experienced population losses since the last census.
From April 2020 to July 2021, the state lost nearly 400,000 people due to net migration, with more people moving out of the state than moving in.
While New York City lost nearly 350,000 people during that time, Greene County was a beneficiary, gaining 568 residents over that period, a 1.2% population increase.
The county trails only Sullivan County in population increase over that period, as Sullivan gained 1,182 new residents, a 1.5% increase. From April 2020 to July 2021, Columbia County gained 208 residents, a 0.3% increase.
Leslie Reynolds, research support specialist from the Cornell Program on Applied Demographics, said the Cornell analysis indicates upstate communities saw an influx of new residents from the New York City metropolitan area during the first year of the pandemic.
“That is what our conclusion is so far,” Reynolds said Wednesday. “The maps show the flow of domestic migration to a lot of counties just outside of the city, such as the Capital Region. It kind of flows outside of the city. They lost a lot of population in the city due to domestic migration. Greene had the highest gains due to domestic migration. So that seems to be the sweet spot up there in the Catskills area and a little bit in the Adirondacks. We’re seeing the diffusion out from the big concentrated city areas into places that are still populated, but less so than the big city.”
Greene County saw a 1.84% increase in domestic migration, with more people moving into the county than moving out.
With hundreds of thousands of residents leaving New York City over the past two years and endless options for relocation available, Greene County Administrator Shaun Groden cited the local real estate market as a key contributor to making Greene an attractive destination for people looking to move.
“I would say real estate is probably the biggest thing,” Groden said. “Also the Thruway proximity and you have Albany close by. You have the entire Albany metro area nearby, including Saratoga and Lake George. And for us, you have the Catskills. We’re in the middle of the Catskill Preserve, so there’s a quality-of-life issue that people are able to see from wherever they’re coming from. Plus just our local economy. We have good main streets, good businesses, so we’re attractive, apparently.”
As the state lost nearly 400,000 residents due to net migration between April 2020 and July 2021, the Capital Region was the only one out of 10 in the state to gain population.
“This one is particularly a landmark census, especially with New York state,” Reynolds said. “It was actually increasing in numbers for a short while, especially with international migration very high (in New York City). It was higher above all of the other counties and regions in New York. It’s actually decreased to the level of the other counties, which is certainly a COVID issue. We may see that these numbers bounce back up. We have colleagues in the New York City Department of Planning and they’ve already seen these numbers start to reverse, like the domestic migration. People are starting to move back into the city. So it’s very possible in these estimates next year that it could be completely different.”
While Groden said the population increase in Greene County is a positive development, an increased flow of residents could exacerbate the lack of affordable housing the county faces.
“The real estate squeeze is already here, that happened last year,” Groden said Wednesday. “I still wonder if we’ve seen the ebb but will we eventually see the flow? Will people return to either pre-COVID geography or lifestyles or business life? Or has COVID fundamentally changed things? I hear a lot of people talking about how Aunt Sally will never go back to the office because now she can always work from home. How is that going to change? If it does change, does that mean we then have a net loss at some point because people are heading back to where they were before? I think there’s been a fundamental change.”
Greene County experienced a natural decrease of 272 residents from April 2020 to July 2021, with 637 deaths and 365 births estimated during that time period.