Community Corner

Map: How Are Veteran Communities Changing?

About 200,000 enlisted men and women leave the service every year, and many are eager to buy a home and settle down.

Newscruncher is a daily series that breaks down the characteristics of your town by the numbers. You can see more posts by clicking the Newscruncher link above the headline or by checking out our weekend roundups. If you see any technical issues with this map, or if you'd like to suggest ideas for future Newscruncher articles, please email data@patch.com.

The map above shows two snapshots of our local area: the map shaded in green shows the percentage of people who moved in after 2004 and the map shaded in blue shows the percentage of veterans across town.

We laid these two maps over each other to highlight possible connections in certain parts of town. As veterans come home from deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan they're changing the face of the American veteran diaspora: What was primarily a group of aging Americans, comprised of veterans from older wars, is increasingly transforming into a group of younger Americans characterized by desires for good jobs, affordable homes, and successful school districts.

An annual survey commissioned by Military.com, USAA and Sperling's Best Places to identify the "Best Places for Veterans" changed its criteria this year to focus more on homecoming veterans.

About 200,000 enlisted men and women leave the service every year, and that number is set to increase as the draw down in the Middle East continues. And while close to 80 percent of veterans are homeowners, many of the younger veterans are finding housing unaffordable despite some Veterans Affairs home loan options available to them.

Since we know new veterans are increasingly trying to move into new homes, and we know which parts of town have had the most new residents since 2004, we decided to overlay the two maps to see if there are any commonalities.

The data in this map are from the United States Census Bureau's 2011 American Community Survey. These values are an estimate for 2011 taking into account 60 months of collected data. You can learn more about the survey here.

Using your cursor, you can hover over any census tract – the geographic region defined by the U.S. Census – and see in the box in the upper right hand corner of the map of people who moved in after 2004 and the percentage of veterans in that area. Toggle between civilian veterans and moved after 2004 to change the variables of the map.

When you look at the clusters of veterans across town, would you guess they are from the generation that's starting a family, or the one entering retirement? Tell us in a comment or a blog post.

Find out what's happening in Mill Valleywith free, real-time updates from Patch.


Get more local news delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for free Patch newsletters and alerts.

We’ve removed the ability to reply as we work to make improvements. Learn more here