Is Healdsburg the best place to live in Sonoma County?
According to Niche.com, Healdsburg comes in bronze, after Sebastopol and Petaluma. Niche.com, a Pittsburgh-based data analysis website ranks places to live, schools and colleges, released its current rankings earlier this week. Graton and Windsor round out the top five locations.
The areas were graded on criteria including public schools, housing availability and cost, job availability, cost of living, crime and safety, nightlife, diversity, weather, overall health, outdoor activities available, attractiveness to families and average commute.
Grades are assigned based on how each place performs compared to all other places, according to Niche.com. Graded factors are weighted as follows: higher education rate (15 percent), cost of living (10 percent), housing (10 percent), public schools (10 percent), diversity (7.5 percent), shortest commute (7.5 percent), overall experience (5 percent), crime and safety (5 percent), family (5 percent), health and fitness (5 percent), jobs (5 percent), nightlife (5 percent), outdoor activities (5 percent) and weather (5 percent).
Niche.com gathers its data from myriad sources, including the American Community Survey from the U.S. Census Bureau, which provides local information on population, home value and income levels; county business patterns, zip code business patterns and the uniformed crime report from the FBI, the National Climatic Data Center from NOAA, the food environmental atlas from the U.S. Department of Agriculture and more.
Healdsburg received an A for diversity, commute, weather and outdoor activities, a B+ for families and nightlife and a B- for jobs and public schools. Its lowest scores were for housing and cost of living, both graded C-.
The accuracy of some of the data is questionable and differs from county-produced statistics. For example, Niche.com reports average rent in Healdsburg is $1,328, however Craiglist lists one and two bedrooms renting for more, including nearly $4,000 a month. The median home value was also reported lower than county statistics: $549,700 versus $725,000.
Healdsburg schools, such as the charter school, high school and West Side Elementary, received B grades. Healdsburg Elementary and Healdsburg Junior High were given C+ grades due to low reading and math proficiency levels.
Other north county rankings include Cloverdale (#17) and Geyserville (#21).
