Reston: All About the Benjamins

This fancy map confirms what we've known all along: North Reston is the most affluent part of our beloved beige community. Thank you, U.S. Census, for that valuable news flash! But where do the undesiriables poors live? If you read the comments on this fancy "web log," you'd say "South Reston, of course." But you'd be wrong, as the Census Bureau has pinpointed the area immediately around Lake Anne as Reston's poorest neighborhood. Which is why, when you walk through Lake Anne Plaza, you see so many people wearing those barrels held up by suspenders that were so popular during the last economic downturn. The median household income around Lake Anne is $73,259, which is down 23 percent since 2000, according to the Census Bureau's American Community Survey, which recorded demographic changes from 2005-09. North Reston residents reported median household incomes of between $124,000 and $134,000, according to the Census, while South Reston ranged between $83,000 and $89,000 average household incomes. (Yes, we know Lake Anne is home to several housing developments that serve low-income residents, but so are most parts of Reston -- that's part of the whole vision of our beige community. There are just comparatively fewer other houses in Lake Anne to nudge the averages up. Either that, or Dear Leader had a bad decade on the stock market.)

But we digress. The Census survey also claimed that Reston actually grew smaller between 2000 and 2009, from 56,407 to 53,759 people, though our BFFs at Reston 2020 (and common sense) dispute this, given that nearly 2,400 new housing units were built in Reston during the same time period. The median home value rose to $463,900 in 2009 from $238,700 in 2000, while median household income increased from $80,018 to $98,207 and the median age rose from 36.2 to 38.5. Our diverse community maintained roughly the same demographics (73 percent white, 9 percent black, 10 percent Asian and 9 percent Hispanic), while 26 percent speak a language other than English at home.

In conclusion, in this time of holiday need, please remember your less fortunate neighbors in their lakefront homes on Lake Anne, and be sure to slide the leftovers from your fruitcakes and whatnot under the doors of their three-car garages, the end.