Is Somerville losing?
By George P. Hassett

Somerville lost 2,642 residents in the first half of this decade, more than any other municipality in Massachusetts aside from Boston, according to US Census Bureau estimates released this month.
  The loss represented a 2.9 percent fall from the city‚Äôs 2000 population. But the population figures have drawn skepticism from Somerville officials and local census experts.

  ‚ÄúI‚Äôm dubious about the loss,‚Äù said Alderman-at-Large Denise Provost. ‚ÄúSomerville has two populations that are notoriously difficult to track, immigrants and college students.‚Äù
  Michael Goodman, director of economic and public policy research at the University of Massachusetts‚Äô Donahue Institute, said the methods of the census bureau are imperfect, especially in cities such as Somerville.
  ‚ÄúParticularly in cities such as Somerville, Cambridge and Boston, the
census bureau could be overstating the decline,” Goodman said.
   The bureau assumes that units in very old buildings are destroyed. But because of the high cost of land in Somerville, such buildings are often re-developed and their units remain intact, Goodman said. The census bureau also assumes that the number of people in college dorms stays the same when, in many cases, they have recently grown, he said.
  ‚ÄúPeople living in dorms, immigrants and building unit estimates can cause this overstatement of a decline,‚Äù he said.
   The census bureau begins with an estimate of a county’s population, based on birth and death records, change of address forms from IRS tax records, an annual mail-in survey intended in part to count immigrants, and tallies of a county’s housing units built and demolished, said Greg Harper, a Census Bureau demographer. Then the figures are divided by city and town.
“We do believe that the estimates are as best as they can be with the data out. But any estimate is only as accurate as the data reported" Harper said.
  Still, Goodman warned that despite possible overestimates in the decline, the census bureau‚Äôs numbers should be taken seriously.
  ‚ÄúThe population loss may be overstated but there are still significant issues with job growth in Somerville and the entire Greater Boston area. Population loss can be a real threat to the economic value of a region. Somerville has been competitive recently because of its high number of skilled workers, but the {information technology} industries were hard hit by the recession in the first half of this decade. It has been difficult for people to find work locally, and combine that with the increasingly high cost of living in Somerville, people feel compelled to find greener economic pastures and vote with their feet and leave town,‚Äù Goodman said.
  Goodman said cities such as Somerville must create more affordable and market rate housing opportunities, particularly for young people.