Demographics and Housing

The pre­dom­i­nance of high-cost, sin­gle-fam­i­ly hous­ing and the lim­it­ed sup­ply of alter­na­tive hous­ing types con­tin­ue to pose chal­lenges for cer­tain demo­graph­ic groups in the com­mu­ni­ty. Emp­ty-nesters, retirees and seniors who would like to stay in the com­mu­ni­ty and ​“age in place,” but do not have the phys­i­cal or finan­cial means to main­tain a sin­gle-fam­i­ly home, have rel­a­tive­ly few alter­na­tive and/​or afford­able hous­ing options in New Cas­tle. Despite their desire to remain in the com­mu­ni­ty, and as chil­dren grad­u­ate from the school sys­tem, long­time res­i­dents tend to move to oth­er com­mu­ni­ties with more hous­ing options and ameni­ties, such as alter­na­tive trans­porta­tion options which do not require own­er­ship of a per­son­al vehi­cle, despite their desire to remain in the Town. The high cost of hous­ing as well as the lack of alter­na­tive hous­ing types also makes it dif­fi­cult for young and sin­gle-income fam­i­lies and indi­vid­u­als employed with­in the Town and mil­len­ni­als (those age 18 – 33 years) in gen­er­al to live in the com­mu­ni­ty. Much of this has been evi­denced through the pop­u­la­tion and demo­graph­ic con­di­tion of the community.

While New Castle’s pop­u­la­tion has grown (quick­ly in the 1950s and ​‘60s, and then more grad­u­al­ly into the 21^st cen­tu­ry), the age dis­tri­b­u­tion of the Town’s pop­u­la­tion has gen­er­al­ly remained con­sis­tent through the decades as reflect­ed in Fig­ure 1. Since the 1950s, New Castle’s pop­u­la­tion has been com­posed main­ly of fam­i­lies with school-age chil­dren. Those between the ages of 5 and 19 have made up 25 – 30% of the pop­u­la­tion, while peo­ple ages 35 to 59 have con­sis­tent­ly com­prised 38 – 44%. Fig­ure 1 also reflects a slight trend amongst those between the ages of 20 and 34 and those over 60 which indi­cates that as cou­ples have cho­sen to have chil­dren lat­er in life and the baby boomer pop­u­la­tion (ages 60 – 74) has aged, peo­ple between the ages of 20 and 34 have com­prised a small­er per­cent­age of the Town’s pop­u­la­tion than ever before, while the per­cent­age rep­re­sent­ed by those between the ages of 60 and 74 has increased.

New Castle’s age dis­tri­b­u­tion through the years reveals a few key trends. First, it is like­ly that fam­i­lies with school-age chil­dren will con­tin­ue to make up a con­sid­er­able por­tion of New Castle’s pop­u­la­tion and will be served by the exist­ing sin­gle-fam­i­ly hous­ing stock with­in the Town. Sec­ond, the senior pop­u­la­tion, those age 60 or above, will con­tin­ue to increase as the baby boomer gen­er­a­tion ages, notwith­stand­ing the trend of out­mi­gra­tion for those whose chil­dren have grad­u­at­ed from the school sys­tem. The reduc­tion in the per­cent­age of those between age 18 – 33 (mil­len­ni­als) appears to be con­sis­tent with nation­al trends of re-urban­iza­tion where­by young peo­ple are mov­ing from the sub­urbs to the city and are becom­ing less reliant on the pri­vate automobile.