Mapping Same Sex Partners in Montgomery County.

To follow up on the previous post, as promised some maps on same sex partner households. The census actually asked this question in 2000, counting unmarried partner households, and counting them for male-male, male-female, and female-female couples.

Admitting there will be some error here (how much?), this is about as good as it gets in trying to actually measure homosexuals and homosexual couples for the Dayton area.

About 58% of Montgomery county census tracts report 5 or more same sex households

Mapping this out, showing the locations of the top ten tracts and the count per tract of same-sex partner households.

What I like about this kind of stuff is how it blows stereotypes out of the water. One of the big urban affairs stereotypes is that of the “urban homosexual”, a pioneer of gentrification and a marker of the “creative class”.

As one can see by this map, not one of the top ten census tracts is in a historic district undergoing renovation. Nearly all are in suburban areas, some rather snaggletooth (like northern Riverside) and one (Trotwood/Madison Township) nearly rural. The only Dayton concentration is in Old North Dayton and downtown.



In fact, the two hottest historic districts, Oregon and South Park have no same sex partner households reporting (neither does Wright-Dunbar). One does see a bit of a concentration in what looks like St Annes Hill and Huffman.

Taking a look the top tracts for female-female and male-male partners. Again, no historic district concentrations:




And some percentages. Again, the top ten tracts by percentage of households that have same-sex partnerships. Here, small tract size might mean a higher %. Grafton Hill and McPherson Town show up here.


Then, looking at no or 4 or less same sex partners reporting, which shows a few clusters of tracts, like parts of Kettering, Huber Heights, Drexel, and Miami Township and the older part of Miamisburg.

So, looking at these maps, just by the raw numbers, it seems the favored locations for same sex partner households are:

Centerville/Washington Twp, Trotwood/Madison Twp, Riverside, Old North Dayton.

And downtown.

Does this indicate a potential niche market for downtown housing?