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 Lake is a very small city located in the state of California. With a population of 1,172 people and just one neighborhood, Blue Lake is the 732nd largest community in California. Much of the housing stock in Blue Lake was built prior to World War II, making it one of the older and more historic cities in the country.
Housing costs in Blue Lake 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
Blue Lake is a decidedly white-collar city, with fully 87.78% of the workforce employed in white-collar jobs, well above the national average. Overall, Blue Lake is a city of service providers, managers, and sales and office workers. There are especially a lot of people living in Blue Lake who work in office and administrative support (16.22%), business and financial occupations (12.67%), and healthcare suport services (12.44%).
Also of interest is that Blue Lake has more people living here who work in computers and math than 95% of the places in the US.
Telecommuters are a relatively large percentage of the workforce: 19.01% of people work from home. While this number may seem small overall, as a fraction of the total workforce it is high relative to the nation. 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
Residents of the city have the good fortune of having one of the shortest daily commutes compared to the rest of the country. On average, they spend only 19.11 minutes getting to work every day.
Being a small city, Blue Lake does not have a public transit system used by locals to get to and from work.
Demographics
The population of Blue Lake is very well educated relative to most cities and towns in the nation, where the average community has 21.84% of its adult population holding a 4-year degree or higher: 37.94% of adults in Blue Lake have a bachelor's degree or even advanced degree.
The per capita income in Blue Lake in 2022 was $40,169, 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 $160,676 for a family of four. However, Blue Lake contains both very wealthy and poor people as well.
Blue Lake is a somewhat ethnically-diverse city. The people who call Blue Lake home describe themselves as belonging to a variety of racial and ethnic groups. The greatest number of Blue Lake residents report their race to be White, followed by Native American. Important ancestries of people in Blue Lake include German, English, Irish, Italian, and European.
The most common language spoken in Blue Lake is English. Other important languages spoken here include Italian and Polish.
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.
People
If you are planning to retire in California, this neighborhood should be on your must-see list. For many reasons, may be considered a retiree's dream neighborhood. According to NeighborhoodScout's exclusive analysis and metrics, it's peaceful and quiet, has above average safety from crime compared to other neighborhoods in California, while also offering a diverse range of housing options. This, along with the vibrant mix of very educated seniors and other age groups who choose to live here, makes the neighborhood more retiree-friendly than 99.4% of neighborhoods in CA. If a California retirement is in your future, this neighborhood should be one of the places you visit.
Real Estate
Unpopulated, and rural, the neighborhood is one of the least crowded neighborhoods in all of America. If you like open space, no traffic, and lots of room, this neighborhood may be just what you are looking for. According to NeighborhoodScout's leading research, this neighborhood is less densely populated than 96.1% of the neighborhoods in America.
Diversity
Did you know that the neighborhood has more Welsh and Portuguese ancestry people living in it than nearly any neighborhood in America? It's true! In fact, 2.6% of this neighborhood's residents have Welsh ancestry and 2.5% have Portuguese ancestry.
is also pretty special linguistically. Significantly, 0.8% of its residents five years old and above primarily speak Greek at home. While this may seem like a small percentage, it is higher than 95.9% of the neighborhoods in America.
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 Lake are middle-income, making it a moderate income neighborhood. NeighborhoodScout's exclusive analysis reveals that this neighborhood has a higher income than 44.2% of the neighborhoods in America. With 17.5% of the children here below the federal poverty line, this neighborhood has a higher rate of childhood poverty than 65.5% 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, 45.4% 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 20.6% of the residents employed. Other residents here are employed in manufacturing and laborer occupations (18.0%), and 14.4% in clerical, assistant, and tech support occupations.
Languages
The most common language spoken in the neighborhood is English, spoken by 97.5% of households. Some people also speak Italian (6.0%).
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 Lake, CA, residents most commonly identify their ethnicity or ancestry as German (18.2%). There are also a number of people of Irish ancestry (17.5%), and residents who report English roots (16.3%), and some of the residents are also of Italian ancestry (6.0%), along with some Mexican ancestry residents (4.8%), 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 15 and 30 minutes commuting one-way to work (46.8% of working residents), which is shorter than the time spent commuting to work for most Americans.
Here most residents (61.8%) 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 (17.1%) . 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.
