More than 81,000 people moved from Cleveland in the last 10 years,

bringing the city’s population to just under 400,000.  That’s a more than 17% decrease, though the city remains the second biggest in the

state.
Mark Salling is the director of the Northern Ohio Data and

Information Service at Cleveland State University. He says most of the

people moving were lured by newer housing, in suburbs, leaving behind

vacancies for folks moving up the economic ladder within Cleveland. The

population decline slowed in the second half of the decade, a move

Salling attributes mostly to the housing crisis.

“(SALLING)…With the horrible real estate market, that means that new

housing out on that fringe is not being built as fast, which keeps

people in place. So in a sense, the housing problem, and bad economic

times, helped preserve population in central cities, not just Cleveland

but elsewhere. But it’s hard to say how much of that is happening

because we have a lot of vacancies even in other suburbs, so it’s going

to continue to draw population out of Cleveland…”

Salling had estimated a population of 410,000, and while there's no

grant money or federal funding automatically tied to that number, he

says the effect on citizens is mostly psychological.