Melrose Eviction Risk: Moderate , Roanoke

The poverty rate is 35%, which in this model reads as reduced rent-recovery odds after a judgment. Cost burden runs 54% here against 42.8% across Roanoke City. Sitting well above the midpoint, economic stress reads 8.7/10.

Well under the midpoint, rent-regulation exposure reads 1.5/10. 18% are severely burdened past the 50% mark. That cohort absorbs no shock: one repair bill or one cut shift converts straight into arrears.

Housing insecurity runs 26.3% against 14.2% nationally. Inability to pay a utility bill runs 20.5% against 9.2% nationally. Utility arrears usually lead rent arrears by a month or two. At $1,194 a month, rents run 20% over what the rest of Roanoke commands.

It sits 1.0 points above the Roanoke City average of 4.2. In the 1930s the federal Home Owners' Loan Corporation graded this ground C ("Definitely Declining"). Redlining cut off mortgage credit to whole blocks for decades, and the areas graded D still carry measurably lower ownership and higher rent burden today. On the national scale it lands near the 65th percentile of the 84,120 tracts scored.

On the CDC Social Vulnerability Index the tract reads 8.9/10, which tracks how hard a shock lands on the households already here. Statewide the VA average is 4.2, so this tract runs 1.0 points hotter.

All figures here are ACS 5-year estimates for this tract, refreshed as the underlying releases land.