After doing a bit more research I came to find some of my findings were an open gate to a tsunami of questions. It all starts with the people, and where they live and how. I found that the answers to these questions give a larger meaning to how the Paterson community works. It makes them stick out.
As a retraction, "to most of the people who live in Paterson work there", I would like to reword that and say it seems that a good portion of the people who work there live in or around Paterson because the businesses are self owned and and a short commute from where they live and where they work. After asking a total of 7 people a series of questions, all 7 of the people worked and lived in Paterson. Though it may not seem that ALL the people are either employees in the city or live there also this could be very much true. Of course some of the people who live there, have jobs in other places like new York and other places where they would need to commute, but what I am trying to make clear is with the little help they receive from the government they seem to be pretty self sufficient, and content with the way their town works. With that being said, there's also a sense of belonging. Paterson seems like it belongs to the people instead of them just existing. After taking a peek at some census data it shows the amount of people who travel to work and about 30% of the people work inside the lines of Paterson.
Another piece of information I came across was the car status. The census shows that the most people in Paterson own in between 1 and 3 cars. What is also equally interesting is the lack of luxury vehicles in the area, or even a luxury vehicles dealership. There are not too many BMWs and Mercades benz's driving around on the ragged roads of Paterson. This is an indicator that the incomes of families who live in Paterson are not up to par to be able to own a luxury car. Not to say they can't afford them, but to say is it needed. The selection of car could be the choice between buying a car they want that will make it harder to pat mortgage or rent, or buying a car they need that will not put them in financial trouble.
Paterson does not have a whole bunch of big named companies other than their gas stations. As I previously stated about the size of Paterson, it is small, but large enough where it should have big named companies. Due to minorities being perceived as people who can afford only the bare mininmum, companies do not see it as cost effective to invest in them placing stores in these kinds of neighborhoods. I’ve come to find the people in Paterson are a bit more family oriented. According to the census data:
Average household size of owner-occupied unit
3.68
+/-0.14
(X)
(X)
Average household size of renter-occupied unit
2.96
+/-0.07
This shows that more people who own homes have at least 3-4 people living under the same roof. The amount of people that are living in a household of about 2-3 is a number that correlates with people who rent out spaced. These numbers are pretty close in measure and its a good indicator that people are living with family not just for the comfort, but for the help and money.
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