Immigration Helped Revive Springfield—Now Its Recovery Is at Risk

“The word I hear most often about the Haitian community right now is 'panicked,'” Michael E. McClelland, a longtime Springfield resident, tells Realtor.com®.In recent years, the Ohio city had begun gaining what it had lacked for decades: people. Thousands of Haitian immigrants made homes there, took jobs, opened businesses, and became part of a community that had spent much of the previous half-century shrinking.Then, on July 27, Haiti’s temporary protected status (TPS) was terminated, throwing an unknown number of Springfield residents into limbo. Not every Haitian resident relied on TPS, and some hold another legal status. But many families are now deciding whether—and how—they can stay.The community is “scared to death,” says McClelland, a volunteer with G92, a local faith-based advocacy group.“Some of these people have been here 15 years," he explains. "They’ve got families here. They’ve got homes. They’ve got jobs.”And for a city that had been building its comeback around Haitians, their departure could threaten a housing recovery decades in the making.Springfield was running out of peopleThe city’s population fell from 81,926 in 1970 to 60,608 in 2010, a decline of 26%, accor...