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.
Rio Oso is a tiny town located in the state of California. With a population of 372 people and just one neighborhood, Rio Oso is the 811th largest community in California.
Housing costs in Rio Oso are among some of the highest in the nation, although real estate prices here don't compare to real estate prices in the most expensive communities in California.
Occupations and Workforce
Rio Oso is a decidedly white-collar town, with fully 88.89% of the workforce employed in white-collar jobs, well above the national average. Overall, Rio Oso is a town of professionals, sales and office workers, and managers. There are especially a lot of people living in Rio Oso who work in management occupations (19.05%), sales jobs (14.81%), and office and administrative support (10.05%).
Also of interest is that Rio Oso has more people living here who work in computers and math than 95% of the places in the US.
Of important note, Rio Oso is also a town of artists. Rio Oso has more artists, designers and people working in media than 90% of the communities in America. This concentration of artists helps shape Rio Oso’s character.
A relatively large number of people in Rio Oso telecommute to their jobs. Overall, about 20.54% of the workforce works from home. While this may seem like a small number, as a fraction of the total workforce it ranks among the highest in the country. 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
Overall, Rio Oso’s crime rate is one of the lowest in the nation, which makes a great place to live if safety is an important concern.
The town is relatively quiet, having a combination of lower population density and few of those groups of people who have a tendency to be noisy. For example, Rio Oso has relatively fewer families with younger children, and/or college students. Combined, this makes Rio Oso a pretty quiet place to live overall. If you like quiet, you will probably enjoy it here.
One downside of living in Rio Oso, however, is that residents on average have to contend with a long commute, spending on average 31.68 minutes every day commuting to work.
Rio Oso 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 population of Rio Oso overall has a level of education that is slightly above the US average for all US cities and towns of 21.84%. Of adults 25 and older in Rio Oso, 23.41% have at least a bachelor's degree.
The per capita income in Rio Oso in 2022 was $45,688, which is middle income relative to California, and upper middle income relative to the rest of the US. This equates to an annual income of $182,752 for a family of four.
Rio Oso is a somewhat ethnically-diverse town. The people who call Rio Oso home describe themselves as belonging to a variety of racial and ethnic groups. The greatest number of Rio Oso residents report their race to be White, followed by Asian. Important ancestries of people in Rio Oso include German, English, British, Swiss, and European.
The most common language spoken in Rio Oso is English. Other important languages spoken here include Langs. of India and Spanish.
Notable & Unique Neighborhood Characteristics
The way a neighborhood looks and feels when you walk or drive around it, from its setting, its buildings, and its flavor, can make all the difference. This neighborhood has some really cool things about the way it looks and feels as revealed by NeighborhoodScout's exclusive research. This might include anything from the housing stock to the types of households living here to how people get around.
Occupations
Each year, fewer and fewer Americans make their living as farmers, foresters, or fishers. But the neighborhood truly stands out among U.S. neighborhoods. According to exclusive NeighborhoodScout analysis, this neighborhood has a greater proportion of farmers, foresters, or fishers than 98.7% of all American neighborhoods. This is truly a unique cultural characteristic of this neighborhood.
Real Estate
This neighborhood has wide open spaces, few people, and lots of space to stretch out. If you like locations that fit that description, you may like this neighborhood. Based on NeighborhoodScout's exclusive analysis, with only 19 people per square mile living here, this neighborhood is less crowded than 95.0% of America.
Diversity
Did you know that the neighborhood has more Swiss and British ancestry people living in it than nearly any neighborhood in America? It's true! In fact, 2.8% of this neighborhood's residents have Swiss ancestry and 2.2% have British 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 Rio Oso are upper-middle income, making it an above average income neighborhood. NeighborhoodScout's exclusive analysis reveals that this neighborhood has a higher income than 72.1% of the neighborhoods in America. In addition, 8.8% of the children seventeen and under living in this neighborhood are living below the federal poverty line, which is a lower rate of childhood poverty than is found in 53.1% of America'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, 41.9% of the working population is employed in executive, management, and professional occupations. The second most important occupational group in this neighborhood is sales and service jobs, from major sales accounts, to working in fast food restaurants, with 20.3% of the residents employed. Other residents here are employed in manufacturing and laborer occupations (17.9%), and 11.3% in clerical, assistant, and tech support occupations.
Languages
The most common language spoken in the neighborhood is English, spoken by 86.0% of households. Some people also speak Spanish (10.2%).
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 Rio Oso, CA, residents most commonly identify their ethnicity or ancestry as Mexican (16.1%). There are also a number of people of German ancestry (13.2%), and residents who report English roots (11.5%), and some of the residents are also of Irish ancestry (8.1%), along with some Sub-Saharan African ancestry residents (3.3%), 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 30 and 45 minutes commuting one-way to work (31.8% of working residents), which is at or a bit above the average length of a commute across all U.S. neighborhoods.
Here most residents (67.7%) 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 (7.9%) . 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.
