What the Maps Tell Us: Initial Findings

Families with children live throughout the four-county region. The map Families with Children (Density by Acre) shows three kinds of spatial patterns: scattered hotspots with high densities of families with children, large areas with moderate densities of families with children, and areas with relatively low densities of families with children. In Clark County, dense clusters of families with children are found along State Road 500. In the three Oregon counties, areas with high densities of families with children tend to be located in eastern Multnomah County and western Washington County. Much of inner east Portland has a moderate density of families with children. West of the Willamette River, the area bounded by 217, I-5 and I-205 has a relatively low density of households with children.
 
The map Single Parent Families (Density by Acre) indicates that single-parent families are also distributed throughout the region. Denser concentrations of these households are found in and around the Bagley Downs neighborhood in Vancouver, the Portsmouth neighborhood in north Portland, the Powellhurst-Gilbert neighborhood in outer east Portland, the Rockwood and Mount Hood neighborhoods in Gresham, the Central Beaverton neighborhood, the Aloha neighborhood in unincorporated Washington County and downtown Hillsboro.
 
In contrast, according to the Households with No Children (Density by Acre) map, households without children are concentrated in a few areas, most of which are in Portland. The region’s largest concentration of households without children is found in an area comprised of downtown Portland, the Pearl District, the Northwest District and Goose Hollow. Households without children are also clustered in the adjacent inner southeast neighborhoods of Buckman, Kerns and Sunnyside, and the inner northeast neighborhoods of Irvington and Sullivan’s Gulch. In Washington County, smaller clusters are also found in east Hillsboro and throughout Beaverton.

These maps can help organizations that offer services for specific kinds of households to geographically target outreach and program delivery. The maps may also be useful to school districts, park planners and other public agencies in planning their investments and services. From an equity perspective, the maps can be analyzed in combination with other Atlas maps to assess how the distribution of key resources and opportunities compares with the distribution of different household types across the region.