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.
Smithers - Boomer is a very small town located in the state of West Virginia. With a population of 4,310 people and just one neighborhood, Smithers - Boomer is the 40th largest community in West Virginia.
Occupations and Workforce
Smithers - Boomer is neither predominantly blue-collar nor white-collar, instead having a mixed workforce of both blue-collar and white-collar jobs. Overall, Smithers - Boomer is a town of sales and office workers, service providers, and construction workers and builders. There are especially a lot of people living in Smithers - Boomer who work in office and administrative support (24.34%), food service (17.11%), and teaching (7.41%).
Also of interest is that Smithers - Boomer has more people living here who work in computers and math than 95% of the places in the US.
Telecommuters are a relatively large percentage of the workforce: 11.07% of people work from home. While this number may seem small overall, as a fraction of the total workforce it is high relative to the nation. These workers are often telecommuters who work in knowledge-based, white-collar professions. For example, Silicon Valley has large numbers of people who telecommute. Other at-home workers may be self-employed people who operate small businesses out of their homes.
Setting & Lifestyle
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!) Smithers - Boomer 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. Smithers - Boomer has few renters and college students. But the biggest reason it is quieter in Smithers - Boomer than in most places in America, is that there are just simply fewer people living here. If you think trees make good neighbors, Smithers - Boomer may be for you.
One downside of living in Smithers - Boomer is that it can take a long time to commute to work. In Smithers - Boomer, the average commute to work is 32.85 minutes, which is quite a bit higher than the national average.
Smithers - Boomer is a small town, and as such doesn't have a public transit system that people use to get to and from their jobs every day.
Demographics
The percentage of adults in Smithers - Boomer who are college-educated is close to the national average for all communities of 21.84%: 18.40% of the adults in Smithers - Boomer have a bachelor's degree or advanced degree.
The per capita income in Smithers - Boomer in 2022 was $18,765, which is low income relative to West Virginia and the nation. This equates to an annual income of $75,060 for a family of four. However, Smithers - Boomer contains both very wealthy and poor people as well.
Smithers - Boomer is a somewhat ethnically-diverse town. The people who call Smithers - Boomer home describe themselves as belonging to a variety of racial and ethnic groups. The greatest number of Smithers - Boomer residents report their race to be White, followed by Black or African-American. Important ancestries of people in Smithers - Boomer include Irish, German, Italian, English, and Scottish.
The most common language spoken in Smithers - Boomer is English. Other important languages spoken here include Portuguese and German/Yiddish.
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 Smithers - Boomer, the neighborhood, has some outstanding things about the way it looks and its way of life that are worth highlighting.
People
An interesting characteristic about the neighborhood is that there are more incarcerated people living here than 99.2% of neighborhoods in the U.S. The United States has the highest rate of incarceration in the world, currently with 1 out of every 100 adults in the country are incarcerated as a punishment for crimes committed. The extremely high incarceration rate of this neighborhood could mean that a prison, juvenile detention facility or other correctional facility occupies a large proportion of the neighborhood, or contains a large portion of the neighborhood's population.
In addition, if you're nearing retirement age, or in retirement, the is an excellent choice for you to consider for top-quality retirement living. This neighborhood is rated by NeighborhoodScout as among the top 8.1% of retiree-friendly neighborhoods in West Virginia, combining peace and quiet, safety from crime, and offering diverse housing options from which retirees can choose. Maybe it's because of these amenities that a large proportion of the residents here are college educated seniors, mixed with other age groups. For these and other reasons, NeighborhoodScout identifies this neighborhood as a top-notch place to consider if you are thinking of or planning to retire in West Virginia.
Diversity
Did you know that the neighborhood has more Scottish ancestry people living in it than nearly any neighborhood in America? It's true! In fact, 4.8% of this neighborhood's residents have Scottish 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 Smithers - Boomer are low income, making it among the lowest income neighborhoods in America. NeighborhoodScout's research shows that this neighborhood has an income lower than 91.5% of U.S. neighborhoods. With 30.6% of the children here below the federal poverty line, this neighborhood has a higher rate of childhood poverty than 81.7% of U.S. neighborhoods.
A neighborhood is far different if it is dominated by enlisted military personnel rather than people who earn their living by farming. It is also different if most of the neighbors are clerical support or managers. What is wonderful is the sheer diversity of neighborhoods, allowing you to find the type that fits your lifestyle and aspirations.
In the neighborhood, 27.5% 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 27.4% of the residents employed. Other residents here are employed in sales and service jobs, from major sales accounts, to working in fast food restaurants (25.0%), and 20.0% in executive, management, and professional occupations.
Languages
The most common language spoken in the neighborhood is English, spoken by 99.0% of households.
Ethnicity / Ancestry
Boston's Beacon Hill blue-blood streets, Brooklyn's Orthodox Jewish enclaves, Los Angeles' Persian neighborhoods. Each has its own culture derived primarily from the ancestries and culture of the residents who call these neighborhoods home. Likewise, each neighborhood in America has its own culture – some more unique than others – based on lifestyle, occupations, the types of households – and importantly – on the ethnicities and ancestries of the people who live in the neighborhood. Understanding where people came from, who their grandparents or great-grandparents were, can help you understand how a neighborhood is today.
In the neighborhood in Smithers - Boomer, WV, residents most commonly identify their ethnicity or ancestry as Irish (20.4%). There are also a number of people of German ancestry (15.9%), and residents who report Italian roots (9.3%), and some of the residents are also of English ancestry (7.9%), along with some Scottish ancestry residents (4.8%), among others.
Getting to Work
Even if your neighborhood is walkable, you may still have to drive to your place of work. Some neighborhoods are located where many can get to work in just a few minutes, while others are located such that most residents have a long and arduous commute. The greatest number of commuters in neighborhood spend between 45 minutes and one hour commuting one-way to work (32.1% of working residents), longer and tougher than most commutes in America.
Here most residents (76.0%) 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 (9.5%) . 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.
