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.
Lena is a tiny town located in the state of Mississippi. With a population of 154 people and just one neighborhood, Lena is the 271st largest community in Mississippi.
Occupations and Workforce
When you are in Lena, you'll notice that it is more blue-collar than most other communities in America. 35.53% of Lena’s employed work in blue-collar jobs, while America averages only 27.7% that do. Overall, Lena is a town of professionals, transportation and shipping workers, and construction workers and builders. There are especially a lot of people living in Lena who work in maintenance occupations (10.53%), teaching (9.21%), and management occupations (9.21%).
Of important note, Lena is also a town of artists. Lena has more artists, designers and people working in media than 90% of the communities in America. This concentration of artists helps shape Lena’s character.
Also of interest is that Lena has more people living here who work in computers and math than 95% of the places in the US.
Telecommuters are a relatively large percentage of the workforce: 17.11% of people work from home. While this number may seem small overall, as a fraction of the total workforce it is high relative to the nation. These workers are often telecommuters who work in knowledge-based, white-collar professions. For example, Silicon Valley has large numbers of people who telecommute. Other at-home workers may be self-employed people who operate small businesses out of their homes.
Setting & Lifestyle
Because of many things, Lena is a great place for families with children to consider. First of all, many other families with children live here, making Lena a place where both parents and children are more likely to develop social ties with other families, as well as find family-oriented services and community. The town’s good public school district and large population of college-educated adults provide an environment conducive to academic values. With regard to real estate, Lena has a high rate of owner-occupied single family homes, which tends to reflect stability in the local community. Finally, Lena’s overall crime rate ranks among the lowest in the country, making it one of the safest places to raise a family.
In Lena, however, the average commute to work is quite long. On average, people spend 36.55 minutes each day getting to work, which is significantly higher than the national average. One bright side is that local public transit is widely used, so it may be an option to avoid the headache of driving in the heavy traffic by leaving the car at home and taking transit.
Despite being a small town, Lena has a lot of people using the bus to get to and from work every day. Most of these people on the bus are using it to get to good jobs in other cities.
Demographics
The population of Lena is very well educated relative to most cities and towns in the nation, where the average community has 21.84% of its adult population holding a 4-year degree or higher: 35.23% of adults in Lena have a bachelor's degree or even advanced degree.
The per capita income in Lena in 2022 was $40,134, which is wealthy relative to Mississippi, and upper middle income relative to the rest of the US. This equates to an annual income of $160,536 for a family of four. However, Lena contains both very wealthy and poor people as well.
The people who call Lena home describe themselves as belonging to a variety of racial and ethnic groups. The greatest number of Lena residents report their race to be White, followed by Black or African-American. Important ancestries of people in Lena include English, Irish, Scottish, French, and Scots-Irish.
The most common language spoken in Lena is English. Other important languages spoken here include Spanish and African languages.
Notable & Unique Neighborhood Characteristics
When you see a neighborhood for the first time, the most important thing is often the way it looks, like its homes and its setting. Some places look the same, but they only reveal their true character after living in them for a while because they contain a unique mix of occupational or cultural groups. This neighborhood is very unique in some important ways, according to NeighborhoodScout's exclusive exploration and analysis.
Real Estate
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 25 people per square mile living here, this neighborhood is less crowded than 93.8% of America. One of the notable things about is that it is one of the quietest neighborhoods in America, according to NeighborhoodScout's exclusive analysis and quantitative rating of quietness. When you are here, you will find it to be very quiet. If quiet and peaceful are your cup of tea, you may have found a great place for you.
People
If you're planning where to retire, the neighborhood in Lena 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 MS, 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 88.8% of the neighborhoods in Mississippi. If you are considering retiring to Mississippi, this is a good neighborhood to look at.
Migration / Stability
The freedom of moving to new places versus the comfort of home. How much and how often people move not only can create diverse and worldly neighborhoods, but simultaneously it can produce a loss of intimacy with one's surroundings and a lack of connectedness to one's neighbors. NeighborhoodScout's exclusive research has identified this neighborhood as unique with regard to the transience of its populace. More residents of the neighborhood live here today that also were living in this same neighborhood five years ago than is found in 96.1% of U.S. neighborhoods. This neighborhood is really made up of people who know each other, don't move often, and have lived here in this very neighborhood for quite a while.
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 Lena are lower-middle income, making it a below average income neighborhood. NeighborhoodScout's research shows that this neighborhood has an income lower than 68.4% of U.S. neighborhoods. With 13.0% of the children here below the federal poverty line, this neighborhood has a higher rate of childhood poverty than 57.0% of U.S. neighborhoods.
What we choose to do for a living reflects who we are. Each neighborhood has a different mix of occupations represented, and together these tell you about the neighborhood and help you understand if this neighborhood may fit your lifestyle.
In the neighborhood, 29.7% of the working population is employed in clerical, assistant, and tech support occupations. The second most important occupational group in this neighborhood is executive, management, and professional occupations, with 27.4% of the residents employed. Other residents here are employed in manufacturing and laborer occupations (23.8%), and 17.9% 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 96.7% of households. Some people also speak Spanish (2.7%).
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 Lena, MS, residents most commonly identify their ethnicity or ancestry as English (19.2%). There are also a number of people of Mexican ancestry (2.8%), and residents who report Irish roots (2.3%), and some of the residents are also of German ancestry (1.8%).
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 45 minutes and one hour commuting one-way to work (28.7% of working residents), longer and tougher than most commutes in America.
Here most residents (78.7%) 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 (16.1%) . 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.
