Hampton Roads residents report the lowest quality of life in nearly a decade, according to a new survey from Old Dominion University.
The latest Life in Hampton Roads survey tracks a continued downward trend in how people view quality of life in the region. Now, 60% of residents say life is good or excellent in the area. That’s compared to with around 70% in the years before the COVID-19 pandemic.
But the dissatisfaction isn’t equally distributed.
About a quarter of residents in Portsmouth described life there as good or excellent, compared to 85% in neighboring Chesapeake.
Jesse Richman, a political science professor at ODU, said things like varying perceptions of crime can lead to different views of quality of life across city lines.
“The turmoil that (Portsmouth) has experienced over recent years in city government, I think that has taken some toll. The city has also suffered for some time from the increased transportation costs driven by tolls for travel to other cities,” Richman said.
Those who think life isn’t good in Hampton Roads told researchers the best ways to make life better are improving infrastructure, increasing social services and affordable housing, as well as reducing crime.
Here are some of the other things the survey asked about, and how residents answered:
The good
The region’s food scene got the highest marks among the amenities surveyed, with 76.5% of respondents saying the region’s restaurants are good or very good.
Other highly-rated elements include higher education offerings and the quality of shopping and entertainment.
Though they still rank high, almost everything was rated lower in 2024 than in 2023.
Richman said one of the only categories that improved is attitudes on transportation.
“We've seen some major investments in transportation infrastructure … we're still in the midst of this major effort to upgrade the Hampton Roads Bridge Tunnel, but I think people are seeing some impact from that,” Richman said.
However, he notes the gains in positive perceptions are modest and less than a third rate transportation in the area is good or very good.
Still, it’s a silver lining in a report where views of nearly everything else trended more negative compared to previous years.
Economics
Just 38.4% of the survey’s respondents said the economic conditions in the region are good or excellent, continuing another downward trend since 2019.
In 2015, 55% said the region’s economy was at least “good,” while today just 38.4% do. The perceptions of Hampton Roads’ economy don’t follow national sentiments that have generally seen things as improving over the last few years, according to national polls by Pew and Gallup.
Respondents were the least optimistic about wages and costs of living. Just 20.6% said the cost of living was good or very good andonly 24.1% said wages were good or very good in the region.
Regionalism
The report authors revisited several questions about regionalism that ODU first posed 25 years ago.
They found that substantially fewer people are interested in merging cities or combining services than they were in the year 2000, when that was a major topic of discussion in Hampton Roads.
About 39% said merging several cities into one larger regional jurisdiction was a good idea. Fifteen percent weren’t sure or didn’t want to answer.
Still, more than half of respondents said some big public services should be combined between the cities – like social services, public housing, fire, roads maintenance and economic development efforts.
More than half said elected officials and competition between jurisdictions for investment are major barriers to regional cooperation.
