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.
Ava is a tiny city located in the state of Illinois. With a population of 542 people and just one neighborhood, Ava is the 735th largest community in Illinois.
Occupations and Workforce
Ava is a blue-collar town, with 42.92% of people working in blue-collar occupations, while the average in America is just 27.7%. Overall, Ava is a city of construction workers and builders, service providers, and sales and office workers. There are especially a lot of people living in Ava who work in office and administrative support (12.79%), food service (6.39%), and healthcare suport services (6.39%).
Also of interest is that Ava has more people living here who work in computers and math than 95% of the places in the US.
Setting & Lifestyle
In Ava, however, the average commute to work is quite long. On average, people spend 31.15 minutes each day getting to work, which is significantly higher than the national average.
As is often the case in a small city, Ava doesn't have a public transportation system that people use for their commute.
Demographics
The population of Ava has a very low overall level of education: only 6.44% of people over 25 hold a 4-year college degree or higher.
The per capita income in Ava in 2022 was $31,335, which is lower middle income relative to Illinois, and middle income relative to the rest of the US. This equates to an annual income of $125,340 for a family of four. However, Ava contains both very wealthy and poor people as well.
The people who call Ava home describe themselves as belonging to a variety of racial and ethnic groups. The greatest number of Ava residents report their race to be White, followed by Native American. Important ancestries of people in Ava include German, Irish, English, French, and Polish.
The most common language spoken in Ava 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 Ava, the neighborhood, has some outstanding things about the way it looks and its way of life that are worth highlighting.
Occupations
The government often provides some of the more stable jobs in the economy. From local, to state, to federal government workers, the government can also be a major employer. What NeighborhoodScout's analysis revealed, is that the neighborhood in particular stands out when compared nationally for the proportion of its working residents who are employed by the government. At 13.4% of its workforce, this neighborhood has a greater concentration of government workers than 95.9% of U.S. neighborhoods.
Real Estate
Uncrowded roads, rural America and space to be the individual you are. If you like these characteristics, this neighborhood may fit you. With just 27 residents per square mile, is less crowded than 93.4% of all U.S. neighborhoods.
Diversity
Significantly, 11.6% of its residents five years old and above primarily speak German/Yiddish at home. While this may seem like a small percentage, it is higher than 99.6% of the neighborhoods in America.
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 Ava are middle-income, making it a moderate income neighborhood. NeighborhoodScout's exclusive analysis reveals that this neighborhood has a higher income than 47.2% of the neighborhoods in America. With 17.9% of the children here below the federal poverty line, this neighborhood has a higher rate of childhood poverty than 66.1% 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, 31.5% of the working population is employed in manufacturing and laborer occupations. The second most important occupational group in this neighborhood is executive, management, and professional occupations, with 27.4% of the residents employed. Other residents here are employed in clerical, assistant, and tech support occupations (21.8%), and 18.7% in sales and service jobs, from major sales accounts, to working in fast food restaurants.
Languages
The languages spoken by people in this neighborhood are diverse. These are tabulated as the languages people preferentially speak when they are at home with their families. The most common language spoken in the neighborhood is English, spoken by 87.7% of households. Other important languages spoken here include German/Yiddish and Italian.
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 Ava, IL, residents most commonly identify their ethnicity or ancestry as German (28.7%). There are also a number of people of English ancestry (8.8%), and residents who report Irish roots (8.5%), and some of the residents are also of Polish ancestry (1.4%), along with some French ancestry residents (1.2%), 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 30 and 45 minutes commuting one-way to work (35.7% of working residents), which is at or a bit above the average length of a commute across all U.S. neighborhoods.
Here most residents (73.7%) 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 (10.1%) and 7.4% of residents also hop out the door and walk to work for their daily commute. 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.
