TERRE HAUTE — The U.S. housing bust did not spare Vigo County. As a drive around the area shows, the number of vacant and abandoned homes is significantly greater than 10 years ago.
From 2000 to 2010, the number of vacant homes in Vigo County rose to 4,645 from 4,205 — an increase of 10 percent.
At the same time, owner-occupied homes fell to 26,374 in 2010 from 27,658 in 2000. Meanwhile, not surprisingly, the number of people renting their homes in Vigo County rose significantly.
This mirrors what’s been going on around the United States since the burst of the housing bubble a few years ago, said Matt Kinghorn, a demographer for the Indiana Business Research Center at the Indiana University Kelley School of Business.
Nationwide, “there has been a serious drop in the home ownership rate in the last few years,” Kinghorn said. Home ownership “had been rising steadily since the early 1990s … and had increased through the mid-part of this decade. But then, it dropped … Home ownership has really declined.”
At the same time, however, the number of people renting their homes has seen a big increase.
In Vigo County in 2000, 13,240 households rented their homes. By 2010, that number had risen to 14,087 — an increase of 6 percent.
Another area where Vigo County matches national and state trends is a decline in households led by married couples with children under 18.
In 2000, 20 percent of Vigo County households had husbands and wives with children. By 2010, that percentage had fallen to 16.1 percent, according to Census data. This puts Vigo County well below the state and national averages. While 16.1 percent of Vigo households fit the “married with children” label, statewide the percentage is 21.2 percent and nationally it is 21.4 percent.
Among Vigo County single-parent homes, there were 1,147 in the 2010 Census headed by fathers and 3,212 headed by mothers.
Vigo County also saw in the most-recent census count a slight increase in the number of residents living alone. There were 12,282 Vigo County residents living alone in 2000, making for 30 percent of the population. By 2010, that figure had risen to 12,659, about 30.6 percent. That was more than 3 percent above the national average of 27 percent, according to 2010 Census data.
The presence of Indiana State University may play a role in the relatively large percentage of people in the county living alone, Kinghorn said. Students living on the ISU campus are not counted in that figure, but many students live off campus, he noted.
Also, a relatively older population might contribute to a higher-than-average number of people living alone. Vigo County’s population age 65 and older is 13.5 percent, compared with 12.9 percent for the country as a whole, according to U.S. Census Bureau figures.
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