Is a "hood" in Portsmouth one of the wealthiest districts in Hampton Roads? (section 8)

[Steelers10]

Am I hallucinating or is the highest income neighborhood in the city of Portsmouth in the proverbial "hood"?



The neighborhood in question I believe is called Brighton in ZIP Code 23704. Please no one take offense for me calling it the hood. It has been quite sometime since I've been in the area and while I do not remember it as being particularly derelict (the neighborhood was always considerably nicer relative to its surroundings) there was nothing particularly remarkable about its homes.

Brighton is also surrounded on three sides by major thoroughfares (Portsmouth Blvd, Elm Ave, & Frederick Blvd) that were all pretty much either blighted or zoned industrial if memory serves me correctly. And then of course on the southern edge of the neighborhood you had the shipyard. Because of the major streets surrounding the area I can recall going past the area quite frequently. I cannot fathom what would make this area have a median income of $102K.

I tried to look at satellite imagery to see if maybe there was like one massive home or compound that would radically skew the median income. While I was able to detect some respectable infill homes that appear to be fairly recent construction, nothing particularly blows you away. Now the campus of the old Frederick Military Academy accounts for the western 1/3 of the census block. But the school has been abandoned for 30 years. Is there some possible way that the land accounts for "income" data or towards median home/condo value? If anyone has any insight as to why the median income of this neighborhood is so high (the highest in Portsmouth) I would like to hear your perspective. Maybe this neighborhood has become some hidden gem in Hampton Roads that no one knows about!

[Coconut1]

I would imagine it's some sort of mistake, but something very sketchy is not outside the realm of possibility.

[goofy328]

Well, you're answering your own question here. If everyone in the neighborhood is working that brings up incomes quite a bit. In a typical hood, you don't have that going on at all. Lot of Section 8, welfare, illegal activities, etc.

Plus there are a lot of working class hoods in this country. What is now considered to be the hood, thirty years ago was a working class community. Predominately Black now, predominately Black then, just a transition from lower middle class jobs to service jobs to not working at all. This is how most hoods are created, and you can definitely see that in cities like Portsmouth.

Plus, people have different definitions of what the hood is. Maybe someone is thinking about what it was like five or ten years ago?

If the median income is per household that isn't saying much. Just suggests that you have households with 3 or 4 people making 20k - 30k.

[Spazkat9696]

It must be an anomaly. Look at the poverty and unemployment rates.