Minority growth surges in suburbs
Four of five counties surrounding Minneapolis and St. Paul have seen the percentage of minorities jump past 10%.
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Every one of the five main suburban counties ringing the Twin Cities area started this decade more than 90 percent white. But only Carver remains so today, the federal estimates suggest.
Minnesota's change, however, is but the faint echo of what is sweeping the nation. More than half of the children born in California each year are now Latino, and minorities make up more than half of the population of nearly 10 percent of the nation's more than 3,000 counties.
In Twin Cities suburbs, the arrival of minorities is "largely about affordable housing," said Andre Koen, cultural coordinator for Anoka County. "We happen to be a good place to live; but the fact is that I personally live in south Minneapolis, and the same housing stock there in some cases costs almost twice what people can get in our county."
The growth of minorities, he said, also is a sign that attitudes are changing in a county still known as a white ethnic enclave. "Historically, there wasn't the opportunity here for minorities to find good-paying jobs," he said, "but those doors are starting to open as employers realize that African immigrants, to take one example, are hard, eager workers."
Minority growth is tapering off in this decade in Ramsey and Hennepin counties. The two largely urban counties saw 15 percent growth in minority numbers from 2000 to 2006, or an extra 52,000 people.
That rate was just a fraction of the 77 percent growth in the five suburban counties -- Dakota, Washington, Anoka, Scott and Carver. Those five collectively saw growth of 63,000 people, some moving in and others being born to existing residents.
And those counties' growth rate is smaller than the one being experienced by the four exurban counties within the metro area: Wright, Sherburne, Isanti and Chisago. Numbers there more than doubled, though from a smaller starting point: from about 7,000 among the four, to about 15,000.
Still, the change is perceptible, said Margaret Longie, longtime executive director of Community Aid Elk River, a food shelf and source of other assistance in parts of Sherburne and Wright counties.
"We're definitely seeing more diversity in our clients," she said. "... It's only been in the last year or two that we've seen an increase."
Dakota and Anoka counties, experts agree, attract the biggest numbers because they're the closest in, with inner-ring suburbs full of aging 1950s ramblers and 1970s apartment complexes. And they're changing the look of communities such as Columbia Heights, just north of Minneapolis in Anoka County.
"There's a Mexican restaurant where the Bridgeman's once was," said Walt Fehst, city manager in Columbia Heights. "There's Korean, Indian, Mideastern -- you can smoke a hookah in one, maybe two."
David Peterson • 612-673-4440 • dapeterson@startribune.com
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