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.
Reform is a very small town located in the state of Alabama. With a population of 1,461 people and just one neighborhood, Reform is the 259th largest community in Alabama.
Occupations and Workforce
Reform is neither predominantly blue-collar nor white-collar, instead having a mixed workforce of both blue-collar and white-collar jobs. Overall, Reform is a town of service providers, production and manufacturing workers, and sales and office workers. There are especially a lot of people living in Reform who work in office and administrative support (13.94%), healthcare suport services (11.02%), and healthcare (7.46%).
Setting & Lifestyle
In Reform, however, the average commute to work is quite long. On average, people spend 32.95 minutes each day getting to work, which is significantly higher than the national average.
Reform is a very car-oriented town. 97.78% of residents commute to work in a private automobile rather than by other means, such as public transit, bicycling, or walking. This is because Reform is a small town , and most people who live here have to drive out of town for work, and the town population is not large nor dense enough to support an extensive public transportation system. Reform has a lot of rural roads, and houses can be far apart. Many residents drive out of town for regular shopping trips as well.
As is often the case in a small town, Reform doesn't have a public transportation system that people use for their commute.
Demographics
In Reform, just 10.80% of people have at least a bachelor's degree, which is quite a bit lower than the national average for cities and towns of 21.84%.
The per capita income in Reform in 2022 was $20,933, which is low income relative to Alabama and the nation. This equates to an annual income of $83,732 for a family of four. However, Reform contains both very wealthy and poor people as well. Reform also has one of the higher rates of people living in poverty in the nation, with 39.22% of its population below the federal poverty line.
Reform is an extremely ethnically-diverse town. The people who call Reform home describe themselves as belonging to a variety of racial and ethnic groups. The greatest number of Reform residents report their race to be Black or African-American, followed by White. Important ancestries of people in Reform include English, Irish, German, Scottish, and Italian.
The most common language spoken in Reform is English. Other important languages spoken here include Spanish and Polish.
Notable & Unique Neighborhood Characteristics
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 Reform, the neighborhood, has some outstanding things about the way it looks and its way of life that are worth highlighting.
Car Ownership
Most American households own a car or other vehicle. Many own two cars or perhaps three. In the United States, it is useful to have an automobile not only for commuting, but also for shopping and getting to other services one needs. But NeighborhoodScout's analysis revealed that households in the neighborhood have a highly unusual car ownership. Residents of this neighborhood must really love automobiles. NeighborhoodScout's Analysis reveals that 44.2% of the households here have four, five, or more cars. That is more cars per household than in 99.1% of the neighborhoods in the nation.
Modes of Transportation
While most Americans do drive to work alone each day, the neighborhood stands out by having 91.2% of commuters doing so, which is a higher proportion of people driving alone to work than NeighborhoodScout found in 98.1% of all American neighborhoods.
Real Estate
Uncrowded roads, rural America and space to be the individual you are. If you like these characteristics, this neighborhood may fit you. With just 26 residents per square mile, is less crowded than 93.5% of all U.S. neighborhoods.
The Neighbors
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 neighborhood in Reform are low income, making it among the lowest income neighborhoods in America. NeighborhoodScout's research shows that this neighborhood has an income lower than 91.1% of U.S. neighborhoods. With 37.2% of the children here below the federal poverty line, this neighborhood has a higher rate of childhood poverty than 87.6% 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, 35.9% of the working population is employed in manufacturing and laborer occupations. The second most important occupational group in this neighborhood is clerical, assistant, and tech support occupations, with 25.2% of the residents employed. Other residents here are employed in executive, management, and professional occupations (22.4%), and 13.7% in sales and service jobs, from major sales accounts, to working in fast food restaurants.
Languages
The most common language spoken in the neighborhood is English, spoken by 98.5% of households.
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 Reform, AL, residents most commonly identify their ethnicity or ancestry as English (6.3%). There are also a number of people of German ancestry (3.2%), and residents who report Irish roots (2.8%), and some of the residents are also of Italian ancestry (1.4%), along with some Scottish ancestry residents (1.2%), 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 between 30 and 45 minutes commuting one-way to work (37.2% of working residents), which is at or a bit above the average length of a commute across all U.S. neighborhoods.
Here most residents (91.2%) drive alone in a private automobile to get to work. 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.
