Los Angeles, CA (Westlake)

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 Westlake neighborhood in Los Angeles are low income, making it among the lowest income neighborhoods in America. NeighborhoodScout's research shows that this neighborhood has an income lower than 93.6% of U.S. neighborhoods. With 54.1% of the children here below the federal poverty line, this neighborhood has a higher rate of childhood poverty than 95.5% 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 Westlake neighborhood, 56.6% of the working population is employed in manufacturing and laborer 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 28.6% of the residents employed. Other residents here are employed in executive, management, and professional occupations (7.5%), and 6.1% in clerical, assistant, and tech support occupations.

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 Westlake neighborhood is Spanish, spoken by 85.0% of households. Other important languages spoken here include English and Korean.

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 Westlake neighborhood in Los Angeles, CA, residents most commonly identify their ethnicity or ancestry as Mexican (24.3%). There are also a number of people of Asian ancestry (3.7%). In addition, 57.0% of the residents of this neighborhood were born in another country.

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 Westlake neighborhood spend between 45 minutes and one hour commuting one-way to work (37.5% of working residents), longer and tougher than most commutes in America.

Here most residents (37.3%) ride the bus to get to work. In addition, quite a number also carpool with coworkers, friends, or neighbors to get to work (23.7%) and 22.9% of residents also drive alone in a private automobile for their daily commute. The bus provides a valuable service in the Westlake neighborhood of Los Angeles by getting a lot of residents to and from work daily, reducing the costs of commuting and reducing some congestion on the roads as well.