Rich Blocks Poor Blocks - Income by Census Tracts (Pittsburgh: rental, houses)

[sparrowmint]

Originally Posted by Hopes

Interesting. I'm surprised there is still money in Churchill. Woodland Hills isn't dragging it down as badly as we thought.

I guess you never drive around there. I do nearly every day. Some parts of the area are filled with old fashioned mansions made of elaborate stonework worth many hundreds of thousands of dollars. Those people can afford to send their kids to whatever school they want.

http://www.zillow.com/homedetails/12...11454090_zpid/ - People who own houses like this don't necessarily have to worry about public school districts.

Such is the folly of denigrating areas based on assumptions.

[PreservationPioneer]

I think median incomes for individuals would tell us much more than median income for households. A lot of people in the city live alone. $25k - 35k a year is not poor if you are single and live alone.

What truly surprises me about this map is how many comparatively well-off people there are. Scroll out and see how many blue areas there are (I'm using the color blind map). Even Johnstown and Altoona, where there are no jobs, have blue areas. It's shocking to me.

Another interesting point: median income is higher in Ingram than it is in Crafton.

Median income in Monongahela, PA may surprise some people.

[ferraris]

Well this is super interesting, they just added rents in addition to median income!

[PreservationPioneer]

Originally Posted by zip95

Rural areas are (broadly speaking and painting with a big brush) white country ghettos. Those with intelligence, drive, and ability are generally on the first bus out of town to the areas where the jobs are. AKA big metro areas, or at a minimum, the nearest "big town" with 30,000+ people... It's no different then the ghetto.

I'm from a small town in a rural area and it definitely wasn't a ghetto. There are some affluent small towns in rural areas, and I'm not even talking about tourist towns.

[sparrowmint]

Yeah, that was one of the dumbest posts I have ever seen on this forum. Congrats, zip95.

[ferraris]

I don't know why I didn't think of it earlier, but I think the southern section of Brighton Heights is partially explained by the two seniors only apartment buildings. Some googling shows The Sheptsky Arms on Mexico St. has 50 units and Riverview Manor on Letort has 98 units. That census tract is 35.6% people over the age of 62 (source). The other two census tracts in Brighton Heights are 23% and 41.4% over the age of 62 (the latter also has a senior apartment building).

The only thing I can come up with is that the southern portion of the neighborhood has more 1-person households consisting of seniors, while the other two census tracts might have 2 seniors living together, or seniors living with other family members. It makes more sense when you combine that with the southern portion also being a little less desirable and consisting of smaller homes.

[I_Like_Spam]

Originally Posted by eschaton

A few comments.

2. Why is southern Brighton Heights so much poorer than the rest of the neighborhood? I'm guessing not too many students or young renters live there, so it can't be that. It's even poorer than Marshall-Shadeland!

A large institution, Western Pen, may well be included in the stats.

Convicts only earn 11 cents an hour or so in their prison jobs, several hundred guys at low wages can drag down the average.

[stan4]

It'd be more interesting if it didn't top out at $110k.

[SteelCityRising]

Originally Posted by stan4

It'd be more interesting if it didn't top out at $110k.

It doesn't. There are a lot of Pittsburgh neighborhoods and suburbs that have median household incomes in excess of $110,000. You just have to click on the dark green tracts to see what specific income that tract makes.

[eschaton]

The rent map is very cool, but I do wonder how accurate it is. I don't think Part of Perry South is really more expensive to rent in than the Mexican War Streets. I also don't thin the eastern part of Lincoln-Lemington-Belmar is more expensive for rent than any section of Lawrenceville. The ACS doesn't survey everyone, and in neighborhoods without a high number of renters, the results can get kinda wonky as a result.

It does look like if you want a deal, Spring-Hill City View is the cheapest non-ghetto place in the city to rent. There is a Section 8 housing complex in the middle of the neighborhood however, which may be depressing overall rental prices. This is one of those cases where it would be helpful if the census bureau provided an alternate metric discounting Section 8.