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.
Blue Ridge Summit is a tiny town located in the state of Pennsylvania. With a population of 887 people and just one neighborhood, Blue Ridge Summit is the 857th largest community in Pennsylvania.
Occupations and Workforce
Because occupations involving physical labor dominate the local economy, Blue Ridge Summit is generally considered to be a blue-collar town. 41.04% of the Blue Ridge Summit workforce is employed in blue-collar occupations, compared to the national average of 27.7%. Overall, Blue Ridge Summit is a town of service providers, transportation and shipping workers, and professionals. There are especially a lot of people living in Blue Ridge Summit who work in maintenance occupations (12.35%), healthcare (11.35%), and food service (8.76%).
Also of interest is that Blue Ridge Summit has more people living here who work in computers and math than 95% of the places in the US.
One interesting thing about the economy is that relatively large numbers of people worked from their home: 23.17% of the workforce. While this number may seem small overall, as a fraction of the total workforce this is high compared to the rest of the county. 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!) Blue Ridge Summit 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. Blue Ridge Summit has few renters and college students. But the biggest reason it is quieter in Blue Ridge Summit than in most places in America, is that there are just simply fewer people living here. If you think trees make good neighbors, Blue Ridge Summit may be for you.
Blue Ridge Summit 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 Blue Ridge Summit with college degrees is slightly lower than the national average of 21.84% for all communities. 15.45% of adults in Blue Ridge Summit have a bachelor's degree or advanced degree.
The per capita income in Blue Ridge Summit in 2018 was $30,907, which is lower middle income relative to Pennsylvania, and middle income relative to the rest of the US. This equates to an annual income of $123,628 for a family of four. However, Blue Ridge Summit contains both very wealthy and poor people as well.
The people who call Blue Ridge Summit home describe themselves as belonging to a variety of racial and ethnic groups. The greatest number of Blue Ridge Summit residents report their race to be White. Important ancestries of people in Blue Ridge Summit include German, Irish, French, Polish, and Scots-Irish.
The most common language spoken in Blue Ridge Summit is English. Other important languages spoken here include German/Yiddish and Russian.
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.
Diversity
Did you know that the neighborhood has more Scots-Irish and Slovak ancestry people living in it than nearly any neighborhood in America? It's true! In fact, 4.4% of this neighborhood's residents have Scots-Irish ancestry and 1.4% have Slovak ancestry.
The Neighbors
How wealthy a neighborhood is, from very wealthy, to middle income, to low income is very formative with regard to the personality and character of a neighborhood. Equally important is the rate of people, particularly children, who live below the federal poverty line. In some wealthy gated communities, the areas immediately surrounding can have high rates of childhood poverty, which indicates other social issues. NeighborhoodScout's analysis reveals both aspects of income and poverty for this neighborhood.
The neighbors in the neighborhood in Blue Ridge Summit are lower-middle income, making it a below average income neighborhood. NeighborhoodScout's research shows that this neighborhood has an income lower than 65.2% of U.S. neighborhoods. In addition, 4.6% 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 66.1% 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, 34.3% 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 31.7% of the residents employed. Other residents here are employed in sales and service jobs, from major sales accounts, to working in fast food restaurants (19.0%), and 15.0% in clerical, assistant, and tech support occupations.
Languages
The most common language spoken in the neighborhood is English, spoken by 100.0% of households. Some people also speak Italian (4.7%).
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 Blue Ridge Summit, PA, residents most commonly identify their ethnicity or ancestry as German (26.8%). There are also a number of people of Irish ancestry (13.1%), and residents who report English roots (8.6%), and some of the residents are also of Scots-Irish ancestry (4.4%), along with some French ancestry residents (3.2%), 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 under 15 minutes commuting one-way to work (26.1% of working residents), one of the shortest commutes across America.
Here most residents (78.8%) 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 (7.6%) . 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.
