Seattle Times: State sees surge in gay couples, especially outside Seattle
The Seattle Times has dug into the latest round of 2010 census data released this week to look at the increase in the number of gay couples in the city. The paper’s findings? There is a higher percentage of gay couples on Capitol Hill than anywhere else in Seattle — but, according to the data, the rest of the city is growing faster:
New census data show that the number of gay and lesbian couples on pricey Capitol Hill barely budged over the last decade, growing only slightly for male couples and not at all for females.
The number of gay couples surged elsewhere: across the state, where it far outpaced general population growth — and in neighborhoods like West Seattle, where it grew 55 percent. In fact, West Seattle has become so popular among gays that some have started calling it Capitol Hill West.
The article goes on to discuss affordability being a driver for growth in areas like West Seattle — or Yakima, Pasco and Wenatchee. It might be interesting to consider how much of the growth might be attributed to under-reporting in 2000.
We’ll take a look at the newly released datasets soon to see what else we can glean from the numbers. CHS looked at the overall Capitol Hill population changes revealed by the 2010 census data here.
One thing to note is that this is a reflection of only a slice of the populations. Of the households reporting that they *are* couples, this is the percentage that are reporting themselves as same sex. Doesn’t necessarily give an accurate representation of something like gay identified households.
That being said, this is pretty interesting. And way to go Cap Hill.