Desert Center is a tiny town located in the state of California. With a population of 256 people and just one neighborhood, Desert Center is the 826th largest community in California.
Desert Center is a blue-collar town, with 52.94% of people working in blue-collar occupations, while the average in America is just 27.7%. Overall, Desert Center is a town of service providers, construction workers and builders, and sales and office workers. There are especially a lot of people living in Desert Center who work in office and administrative support (17.65%), healthcare suport services (13.73%), and maintenance occupations (5.88%).
Another notable thing is that Desert Center is an extremely popular vacation destination. A significant portion of the population is seasonal. During the vacation season, the town experiences a large influx of people who take up residence in second homes they own in the area. As the vacation season ends, the population drops again, leaving behind a substantially quieter and smaller town.
The overall crime rate in Desert Center is one of the lowest in the US. This makes it one of the safer places to live in the country in terms of crime.
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!) Desert Center 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. Desert Center has few renters and college students. But the biggest reason it is quieter in Desert Center than in most places in America, is that there are just simply fewer people living here. If you think trees make good neighbors, Desert Center may be for you.
Residents of the town have the good fortune of having one of the shortest daily commutes compared to the rest of the country. On average, they spend only 13.13 minutes getting to work every day.
Desert Center 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.
The citizens of Desert Center are slightly less educated than the national average of 21.84% for the average city or town: 14.97% of adults in Desert Center have a bachelor's degree or advanced degree
The per capita income in Desert Center in 2022 was $25,685, which is low income relative to California, and lower middle income relative to the rest of the US. This equates to an annual income of $102,740 for a family of four. However, Desert Center contains both very wealthy and poor people as well.
Desert Center is an extremely ethnically-diverse town. The people who call Desert Center home describe themselves as belonging to a variety of racial and ethnic groups. The greatest number of Desert Center residents report their race to be White, followed by Black or African-American. Desert Center also has a sizeable Hispanic population (people of Hispanic origin can be of any race). People of Hispanic or Latino origin account for 37.13% of the town’s residents. Important ancestries of people in Desert Center include Irish, German, English, Welsh, and Italian.
The most common language spoken in Desert Center is English. Other important languages spoken here include Spanish and Pacific Island languages.
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 Desert Center, the neighborhood, has some outstanding things about the way it looks and its way of life that are worth highlighting.
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 99.6% of the neighborhoods in America.
In addition, the real estate in this neighborhood consists of more mobile homes than 99.0% of all neighborhoods in America, with 49.3% of the occupied housing here being classified as mobile homes. So if you are looking for a mobile home, or you like the look and feel of mobile home parks, this neighborhood might have the setting you desire.
Furthermore, vacant homes and apartments are a significant characteristic of this neighborhood. In fact, with 39.6% of the residential real estate vacant, the neighborhood claims the distinction of having a higher vacancy rate than 97.6% of the neighborhoods in America. This can either be because much of the property is seasonally occupied, like in many vacation areas, or that much of the real estate is more permanently abandoned.
There are more people living in the neighborhood employed as sales and service workers (52.9%) than almost any neighborhood in the country. From fast-food service workers to major sales accounts, sales and service workers make up the largest proportion of our national employment picture. But despite that size and importance nationally, this neighborhood still stands out as unique due to the dominance of people living here who work in such occupations.
Did you know that the neighborhood has more Lithuanian and Mexican ancestry people living in it than nearly any neighborhood in America? It's true! In fact, 1.2% of this neighborhood's residents have Lithuanian ancestry and 57.6% have Mexican ancestry.
is also pretty special linguistically. Significantly, 6.0% of its residents five years old and above primarily speak Chinese at home. While this may seem like a small percentage, it is higher than 96.0% of the neighborhoods in America.
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 Desert Center are lower-middle income, making it a below average income neighborhood. NeighborhoodScout's research shows that this neighborhood has an income lower than 83.2% of U.S. neighborhoods. With 11.0% of the children here below the federal poverty line, this neighborhood has a higher rate of childhood poverty than 52.4% 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, 47.1% of the working population is employed in sales and service jobs, from major sales accounts, to working in fast food restaurants. The second most important occupational group in this neighborhood is manufacturing and laborer occupations, with 25.5% of the residents employed. Other residents here are employed in clerical, assistant, and tech support occupations (14.4%), and 10.3% in executive, management, and professional occupations.
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 48.1% of households. Other important languages spoken here include Spanish and Chinese.
Culture is the shared learned behavior of peoples. Undeniably, different ethnicities and ancestries have different cultural traditions, and as a result, neighborhoods with concentrations of residents of one or another ethnicities or ancestries will express those cultures. It is what makes the North End in Boston so fun to visit for the Italian restaurants, bakeries, culture, and charm, and similarly, why people enjoy visiting Chinatown in San Francisco.
In the neighborhood in Desert Center, CA, residents most commonly identify their ethnicity or ancestry as Mexican (57.6%). There are also a number of people of Irish ancestry (9.9%), and residents who report English roots (7.0%), and some of the residents are also of German ancestry (4.7%), along with some Ukrainian ancestry residents (1.6%), among others. In addition, 19.2% of the residents of this neighborhood were born in another country.
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 (33.7% of working residents), which is shorter than the time spent commuting to work for most Americans.
Here most residents (68.1%) 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 (15.4%) . In a neighborhood like this, as in most of the nation, many residents find owning a car useful for getting to work.