This is a small community in a single neighborhood.
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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.
Custer is a very small town located in the state of Kentucky. With a population of 2,135 people and just one neighborhood, Custer is the 191st largest community in Kentucky.
Occupations and Workforce
Custer is a blue-collar town, with 43.33% of people working in blue-collar occupations, while the average in America is just 27.7%. Overall, Custer is a town of sales and office workers, service providers, and production and manufacturing workers. There are especially a lot of people living in Custer who work in office and administrative support (18.93%), management occupations (5.72%), and maintenance occupations (5.46%).
Also of interest is that Custer has more people living here who work in computers and math than 95% of the places in the US.
Setting & Lifestyle
Overall, Custer’s crime rate is one of the lowest in the nation, which makes a great place to live if safety is an important concern.
It is a fairly quiet town because there are relatively few of those groups of people who have a tendency to be noisy. (Children, for example, often can't help themselves from being noisy, and being parents ourselves, we know!) Custer has relatively few families with children living at home, and is quieter because of it. Renters and college students, for their own reasons, can also be noisy. Custer has few renters and college students. But the biggest reason it is quieter in Custer than in most places in America, is that there are just simply fewer people living here. If you think trees make good neighbors, Custer may be for you.
One downside of living in Custer is that it can take a long time to commute to work. In Custer, the average commute to work is 42.22 minutes, which is quite a bit higher than the national average.
Demographics
The population of Custer has a very low overall level of education: only 7.47% of people over 25 hold a 4-year college degree or higher.
The per capita income in Custer in 2022 was $22,082, which is lower middle income relative to Kentucky, and low income relative to the rest of the US. This equates to an annual income of $88,328 for a family of four. However, Custer contains both very wealthy and poor people as well. Custer also has one of the higher rates of people living in poverty in the nation, with 31.16% of its population below the federal poverty line.
Custer is a somewhat ethnically-diverse town. The people who call Custer home describe themselves as belonging to a variety of racial and ethnic groups. The greatest number of Custer residents report their race to be White, followed by Black or African-American. Important ancestries of people in Custer include Irish, German, English, European, and Polish.
The most common language spoken in Custer is English. Other important languages spoken here include Italian and Polish.
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 Custer, the neighborhood, has some outstanding things about the way it looks and its way of life that are worth highlighting.
Length of Commute
Whether walking, biking, riding, or driving, the length of one's commute is an important factor for one's quality of life. The neighborhood stands out for its commute length, according to NeighborhoodScout's analysis. Long commutes can be brutal. They take time, money, and energy, leaving less of you for yourself and your family. The residents of the neighborhood unfortunately have the distinction of having, on average, a longer commute than most any neighborhood in America. 17.2% of commuters here travel more than one hour just one-way to work. That is more than two hours per day. This percentage with two-hour + round-trip commutes is higher than NeighborhoodScout found in 99.2% of all neighborhoods in America.
Real Estate
The real estate in this neighborhood consists of more mobile homes than 97.1% of all neighborhoods in America, with 36.4% of the occupied housing here being classified as mobile homes. So if you are looking for a mobile home, or you like the look and feel of mobile home parks, this neighborhood might have the setting you desire.
In addition, unpopulated, and rural, the neighborhood is one of the least crowded neighborhoods in all of America. If you like open space, no traffic, and lots of room, this neighborhood may be just what you are looking for. According to NeighborhoodScout's leading research, this neighborhood is less densely populated than 91.6% of the neighborhoods in America. One of the notable things about is that it is one of the quietest neighborhoods in America, according to NeighborhoodScout's exclusive analysis and quantitative rating of quietness. When you are here, you will find it to be very quiet. If quiet and peaceful are your cup of tea, you may have found a great place for you.
Occupations
NeighborhoodScout's exclusive research identifies the neighborhood as having one of the highest concentrations of people employed in manufacturing or as laborers of any neighborhood in America. In fact, despite the loss of manufacturing jobs nationally, this neighborhood has 43.3% of its working residents employed in such fields, which is a higher proportion than 96.4% of American neighborhoods.
Car Ownership
American households most often have a car, and regularly they have two or three. But households in the neighborhood buck this trend. Residents of this neighborhood must really love automobiles. NeighborhoodScout's Analysis reveals that 34.7% of the households here have four, five, or more cars. That is more cars per household than in 96.0% of the neighborhoods in the nation.
Diversity
Did you know that the neighborhood has more Irish and Belgian ancestry people living in it than nearly any neighborhood in America? It's true! In fact, 23.9% of this neighborhood's residents have Irish ancestry and 0.7% have Belgian ancestry.
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 Custer are lower-middle income, making it a below average income neighborhood. NeighborhoodScout's research shows that this neighborhood has an income lower than 79.9% of U.S. neighborhoods. With 13.3% of the children here below the federal poverty line, this neighborhood has a higher rate of childhood poverty than 57.6% of U.S. neighborhoods.
The old saying "you are what you eat" is true. But it is also true that you are what you do for a living. The types of occupations your neighbors have shape their character, and together as a group, their collective occupations shape the culture of a place.
In the neighborhood, 43.3% of the working population is employed in manufacturing and laborer occupations. The second most important occupational group in this neighborhood is clerical, assistant, and tech support occupations, with 23.9% of the residents employed. Other residents here are employed in sales and service jobs, from major sales accounts, to working in fast food restaurants (16.6%), and 16.1% in executive, management, and professional occupations.
Languages
The most common language spoken in the neighborhood is English, spoken by 99.5% of households. Some people also speak Italian (2.2%).
Ethnicity / Ancestry
Culture is shared learned behavior. We learn it from our parents, their parents, our houses of worship, and much of our culture – our learned behavior – comes from our ancestors. That is why ancestry and ethnicity can be so interesting and important to understand: places with concentrations of people of one or more ancestries often express those shared learned behaviors and this gives each neighborhood its own culture. Even different neighborhoods in the same city can have drastically different cultures.
In the neighborhood in Custer, KY, residents most commonly identify their ethnicity or ancestry as Irish (23.9%). There are also a number of people of German ancestry (20.4%), and residents who report English roots (10.8%), and some of the residents are also of Polish ancestry (1.6%), along with some Scottish ancestry residents (1.2%), 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 45 minutes and one hour commuting one-way to work (28.5% of working residents), longer and tougher than most commutes in America.
Here most residents (86.4%) 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 (9.4%) . 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.
