engagement
Residential stability
Why this matters
Residential stability measures the share of residents who lived in the same home one year ago. It is a widely used proxy for rootedness: conditions associated with stronger social ties, local knowledge, and civic participation.
It is an indirect measure: it reflects who stays put, not whether people vote, volunteer, or join groups, which this survey does not capture. And high turnover is not inherently bad: moving can mean a new job, a better home, or a growing family, just as it can mean instability or being priced out.
Read in context, this number helps show where neighborhoods are settled and where churn is high. In fast-growing parts of the Charlotte region, lower stability often reflects rapid in-migration and new construction; elsewhere it can signal housing pressure and frequent forced moves.
About the Charlotte region
This explorer covers the 14-county, two-state Charlotte region (11 North Carolina and 3 South Carolina counties). Many of these indicators connect to a defining regional story: a landmark Harvard study ranked Charlotte last, 50th of the 50 largest U.S. metros for economic mobility (a child raised in the poorest fifth had about a 4.4% chance of reaching the top fifth), a finding that launched the region's Leading on Opportunity agenda. Updated 2024 data show Charlotte has since climbed to 38th.
Opportunity here is also unevenly mapped. An affluent “wedge” fanning southeast from uptown holds a large majority of the city's wealth on under a quarter of its land, while a ”crescent” to the north, west, and east carries higher poverty, a legacy of redlining, exclusionary zoning, and highway routing that recurs across the race, income, health, tree-canopy, and school maps in this tool. No single indicator is good or bad on its own; together they describe how the region sorted opportunity.
Companion resources: Charlotte-Mecklenburg Quality of Life Explorer · UNC Charlotte Urban Institute · Opportunity Atlas · Methods & sources
Learn more
- U.S. Census Bureau — Why We Ask: Migration census.gov
How the "residence one year ago" question is collected and used.
- U.S. Census Bureau — Geographic Mobility / Migration census.gov
Data on how often Americans move and the reasons they give.
- Charlotte-Mecklenburg Quality of Life Explorer ui.charlotte.edu
Mecklenburg County’s neighborhood indicator system — 462 Neighborhood Profile Areas (a City of Charlotte, Mecklenburg County, and UNC Charlotte Urban Institute partnership).
About the data
Calculated from the U.S. Census Bureau's American Community Survey 5-Year Estimates (2014–2024), at the Census-tract level, with margins of error. ACS 5-year vintages overlap year to year, so the series is a rolling estimate; compare only non-overlapping periods.
Source: U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey 5-Year Estimates.