Downsville is a tiny town located in the state of New York. With a population of 474 people and just one neighborhood, Downsville is the 894th largest community in New York. Downsville has an unusually large stock of pre-World War II architecture, making it one of the older and more historic towns.
Unlike some towns, Downsville isn’t mainly white- or blue-collar. Instead, the most prevalent occupations for people in Downsville are a mix of both white- and blue-collar jobs. Overall, Downsville is a town of service providers, managers, and construction workers and builders. There are especially a lot of people living in Downsville who work in maintenance occupations (20.63%), management occupations (20.63%), and food service (12.70%).
Of important note, Downsville is also a town of artists. Downsville has more artists, designers and people working in media than 90% of the communities in America. This concentration of artists helps shape Downsville’s character.
Overall, Downsville’s crime rate is one of the lowest in the nation, which makes a great place to live if safety is an important concern.
Residents will find that the town is relatively quiet. This is because it is not over-populated, and it has fewer college students, renters, and young children - all of whom can be noisy at times. So, if you're looking for a relatively peaceful place to live, Downsville is worth considering.
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 14.64 minutes getting to work every day.
Being a small town, Downsville does not have a public transit system used by locals to get to and from work.
In terms of college education, Downsville ranks among the least educated cities in the nation, as only 2.62% of people over 25 have a bachelor's degree or advanced degree.
The per capita income in Downsville in 2022 was $30,478, which is low income relative to New York, and lower middle income relative to the rest of the US. This equates to an annual income of $121,912 for a family of four. However, Downsville contains both very wealthy and poor people as well.
The people who call Downsville home describe themselves as belonging to a variety of racial and ethnic groups. The greatest number of Downsville residents report their race to be White. Important ancestries of people in Downsville include German, Italian, Irish, English, and African.
The most common language spoken in Downsville is English. Other important languages spoken here include Italian and Other Indo-European.
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.
Despite all of the residential real estate here in the neighborhood, NeighborhoodScout has discovered that much of it is vacant. In resort or second-home vacation areas, this naturally occurs because homes and apartments are seasonally occupied, and empty for a portion of the year. In non-vacation or resort areas, however, this can be an indicator of property abandonment or a weak real estate market. The vacancy rate here is 53.1%, which is higher than 99.0% of all U.S. neighborhoods.
In addition, this neighborhood has wide open spaces, few people, and lots of space to stretch out. If you like locations that fit that description, you may like this neighborhood. Based on NeighborhoodScout's exclusive analysis, with only 13 people per square mile living here, this neighborhood is less crowded than 96.4% of America.
If you're planning where to retire, the neighborhood in Downsville is a great option to consider. According to NeighborhoodScout's exclusive retirement dream area analysis, it's peaceful and quiet, has above average safety ratings compared to other neighborhoods in NY, offers a wide range of housing options, and has already attracted an enviable mix of college educated seniors. This neighborhood ranks as better for retirement living than 89.1% of the neighborhoods in New York. If you are considering retiring to New York, this is a good neighborhood to look at. In addition to being an excellent choice for active retirees, this neighborhood is also a very good choice for families with school-aged children.
Did you know that the neighborhood has more Dutch and Yugoslav ancestry people living in it than nearly any neighborhood in America? It's true! In fact, 4.6% of this neighborhood's residents have Dutch ancestry and 0.5% have Yugoslav ancestry.
is also pretty special linguistically. Significantly, 15.3% of its residents five years old and above primarily speak Italian at home. While this may seem like a small percentage, it is higher than 99.2% of the neighborhoods in America.
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 Downsville are lower-middle income, making it a below average income neighborhood. NeighborhoodScout's research shows that this neighborhood has an income lower than 64.3% of U.S. neighborhoods. With 14.6% of the children here below the federal poverty line, this neighborhood has a higher rate of childhood poverty than 60.2% 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, 33.1% 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 32.7% of the residents employed. Other residents here are employed in manufacturing and laborer occupations (26.2%), and 8.9% in government jobs, whether they are in local, state, or federal positions.
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 93.1% of households. Other important languages spoken here include Italian and Spanish.
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 Downsville, NY, residents most commonly identify their ethnicity or ancestry as German (18.3%). There are also a number of people of Irish ancestry (14.2%), and residents who report English roots (12.3%), and some of the residents are also of Italian ancestry (10.7%), along with some Dutch ancestry residents (4.6%), among others.
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 under 15 minutes commuting one-way to work (32.1% of working residents), one of the shortest commutes across America.
Here most residents (81.9%) 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 (10.2%) . In a neighborhood like this, as in most of the nation, many residents find owning a car useful for getting to work.