This is a small community in a single neighborhood.
As throughout the site, some neighborhood-level data are reserved for subscribers.
What do we mean by a neighborhood?
NeighborhoodScout® uses the official government designation for neighborhoods - the census tract.
Census tracts are small, relatively permanent subdivisions of a county that are defined by the U.S. Census Bureau in conjunction with local authorities all across the country to define real neighborhoods that are bounded to contain areas with homogeneous population characteristics (including economic status, lifestyle, and living conditions). Census tracts usually have 4,000 persons, but can range between 1,500 and 8,000 persons. This is the most fine-grained area for which detailed information is made available from the government, to protect the individual privacy of each of us. Because census tracts are based on population, they vary in size depending on the density of settlement. In urban areas, they are small, and in rural areas they can cover an entire small town or even a few small towns in very rural areas.
Since census tracts are subdivisions of a county, we did a spatial overlay of the census tracts onto city and town boundaries using a geographic information system to properly assign each census tract to its appropriate city or town. Then we named each census tract to the local colloquially recognized neighborhood name for that spot (e.g., Boston, MA (Dorchester). If there was not a name available, we named the census tract by the largest street intersection in the census tract (e.g., Worcester, MA (Lincoln St/Plantation St)
Why we don't use Zip Codes as neighborhoods
Zip codes were developed by the Postal Service for the purpose of delivering mail, but were never intended to define coherent neighborhoods. In addition, Zip Codes can have as many as 10 distinctly different census tracts contained within them. When distinct census tracts are blended together in a single Zip Code, the data reflects their average conditions and often gives a false sense of the area. The result is that potentially great matching neighborhoods can be missed, and erroneous matches can also be produced and delivered to you.
Using census tracts makes great matches possible, and helps people find the areas that are best for them and their families. Because we are committed to providing the highest possible quality and finding the neighborhoods that best meet your criteria, we use census tracts. And, as always, we show you the actual street map of the neighborhood so you know exactly where your best matching neighborhood is located.
What is a Condition Alert?
A condition alert is a condition in the neighborhood that triggers an alert. NeighborhoodScout contains condition alerts to highlight conditions that are extreme, whether good or bad. This helps answer crucial questions about the state of the neighborhood being evaluated, such as:
What are the risks of violent crime here?
Is the risk of home break-ins or other property crimes increasing?
Does real estate here hold its value?
Are the trends in local vacancies or unemployment concerning?
...and dozens more.
Information at a glance that you need to know to invest, appraise or finance a property.
Ford Heights is a very small village located in the state of Illinois. With a population of 1,749 people and just one neighborhood, Ford Heights is the 593rd largest community in Illinois.
Occupations and Workforce
Ford Heights is a blue-collar town, with 37.22% of people working in blue-collar occupations, while the average in America is just 27.7%. Overall, Ford Heights is a village of transportation and shipping workers, service providers, and professionals. There are especially a lot of people living in Ford Heights who work in office and administrative support (15.04%), community and social services (7.14%), and law enforcement and fire fighting (6.39%).
Setting & Lifestyle
For a small village, Ford Heights has a lot of people who use public transit to get to work, and those that do mostly ride the bus. This suggests that a real need for low-cost transportation in Ford Heights exists, and local transit is helping to meet that need.
Demographics
The percentage of people in Ford Heights with college degrees is quite a bit lower than the national average for cities and towns of 21.84%: just 12.28% of people over 25 have a bachelor's degree or advanced degree.
The per capita income in Ford Heights in 2022 was $15,803, which is low income relative to Illinois and the nation. This equates to an annual income of $63,212 for a family of four. Ford Heights also has one of the higher rates of people living in poverty in the nation, with 36.83% of its population below the federal poverty line.
The people who call Ford Heights home describe themselves as belonging to a variety of racial and ethnic groups. The greatest number of Ford Heights residents report their race to be Black or African-American, followed by White. Important ancestries of people in Ford Heights include Irish, English, German, African, and Yugoslavian.
The most common language spoken in Ford Heights is English. Other important languages spoken here include Urdu and African languages.
Notable & Unique Neighborhood Characteristics
Many things matter about a neighborhood, but the first thing most people notice is the way a neighborhood looks and its particular character. For example, one might notice whether the buildings all date from a certain time period or whether shop signs are in multiple languages. This particular neighborhood in Ford Heights, the neighborhood, has some outstanding things about the way it looks and its way of life that are worth highlighting.
People
is ranked among the top 6.3% of neighborhoods for first-time home buyers to consider in the state of Illinois according to NeighborhoodScout's exclusive analysis. Homes here are priced below median housing values in the state, yet maintain moderate appreciation rates compared to other communities. Buying into the neighborhood is not only an accessible option but an investment opportunity for many first-time home buyers.
The Neighbors
There are two complementary measures for understanding the income of a neighborhood's residents: the average and the extremes. While a neighborhood may be relatively wealthy overall, it is equally important to understand the rate of people - particularly children - who are living at or below the federal poverty line, which is extremely low income. Some neighborhoods with a lower average income may actually have a lower childhood poverty rate than another with a higher average income, and this helps us understand the conditions and character of a neighborhood.
The neighbors in the neighborhood in Ford Heights are lower-middle income, making it a below average income neighborhood. NeighborhoodScout's research shows that this neighborhood has an income lower than 74.5% of U.S. neighborhoods. With 40.6% of the children here below the federal poverty line, this neighborhood has a higher rate of childhood poverty than 89.3% of U.S. neighborhoods.
What we choose to do for a living reflects who we are. Each neighborhood has a different mix of occupations represented, and together these tell you about the neighborhood and help you understand if this neighborhood may fit your lifestyle.
In the neighborhood, 37.4% of the working population is employed in executive, management, and professional occupations. The second most important occupational group in this neighborhood is manufacturing and laborer occupations, with 31.5% of the residents employed. Other residents here are employed in clerical, assistant, and tech support occupations (16.4%), and 14.7% in sales and service jobs, from major sales accounts, to working in fast food restaurants.
Languages
The most common language spoken in the neighborhood is English, spoken by 92.6% of households. Some people also speak Spanish (5.8%).
Ethnicity / Ancestry
Culture is the shared learned behavior of peoples. Undeniably, different ethnicities and ancestries have different cultural traditions, and as a result, neighborhoods with concentrations of residents of one or another ethnicities or ancestries will express those cultures. It is what makes the North End in Boston so fun to visit for the Italian restaurants, bakeries, culture, and charm, and similarly, why people enjoy visiting Chinatown in San Francisco.
In the neighborhood in Ford Heights, IL, residents most commonly identify their ethnicity or ancestry as Irish (15.0%). There are also a number of people of Italian ancestry (9.0%), and residents who report Mexican roots (7.5%), and some of the residents are also of German ancestry (6.7%), along with some Sub-Saharan African ancestry residents (4.0%), among others.
Getting to Work
How you get to work – car, bus, train or other means – and how much of your day it takes to do so is a large quality of life and financial issue. Especially with gasoline prices rising and expected to continue doing so, the length and means of one's commute can be a financial burden. Some neighborhoods are physically located so that many residents have to drive in their own car, others are set up so many walk to work, or can take a train, bus, or bike. The greatest number of commuters in neighborhood spend between 15 and 30 minutes commuting one-way to work (34.5% of working residents), which is shorter than the time spent commuting to work for most Americans.
Here most residents (67.6%) drive alone in a private automobile to get to work. In addition, quite a number also carpool with coworkers, friends, or neighbors to get to work (9.8%) . In a neighborhood like this, as in most of the nation, many residents find owning a car useful for getting to work.
SCOUT’s patented match algorithm identifies the most similar neighborhoods to a subject location, and quantifies the similarity to the subject location. This allows analysts to identify the most similar neighborhoods in a local market area for appraisals, investments, and research.
The algorithm uses 273 neighborhood conditions, identifies the dominant dimensions underlying the conditions and calculates the similarity. This captures the true culture and character of locations, economic conditions, and trends.
The closer to 100% means the locations are nearly identical. 80% is a very good, but not excellent match, and so forth.
