Roanoke, VA (Williamson Road)

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 Williamson Road neighborhood in Roanoke are low income, making it among the lowest income neighborhoods in America. NeighborhoodScout's research shows that this neighborhood has an income lower than 95.0% of U.S. neighborhoods. In addition, 2.1% 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 74.9% 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 Williamson Road neighborhood, 33.8% 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 27.2% of the residents employed. Other residents here are employed in clerical, assistant, and tech support occupations (20.1%), and 18.8% in sales and service jobs, from major sales accounts, to working in fast food restaurants.

Languages

The most common language spoken in the Williamson Road neighborhood is English, spoken by 85.5% of households. Some people also speak Spanish (13.4%).

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 Williamson Road neighborhood in Roanoke, VA, residents most commonly identify their ethnicity or ancestry as English (7.0%). There are also a number of people of Dominican ancestry (5.5%), and residents who report Irish roots (4.1%), and some of the residents are also of Sub-Saharan African ancestry (3.5%), along with some Puerto Rican ancestry residents (2.9%), among others.

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 Williamson Road neighborhood spend between 15 and 30 minutes commuting one-way to work (50.8% of working residents), which is shorter than the time spent commuting to work for most Americans.

Here most residents (58.9%) 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 (13.2%) . In a neighborhood like this, as in most of the nation, many residents find owning a car useful for getting to work.