Monitor Editor
STARKE—An investment website has ranked Starke in the bottom 10% of suburbs in the U.S.
Smart Asset ranked 494 communities that lie between 15 minutes and one hour by car to cities with populations of 250,000 or more.
Starke placed 451 in the rankings, ahead of well-known communities like Boca Raton, Coral Gables and Miami Beach, Florida, and West Hollywood, Palm Springs and Santa Monica, California.
The study, which looked at communities with populations between 5,000 and 100,000, analyzed metrics within three groups: jobs, affordability and livability.
Starke made the list because it qualified as a suburb of Jacksonville.
“For our jobs score,” the website said, “we considered five metrics: median household income, five-year income growth, 10-year employment growth, job diversity and unemployment rate.”
For affordability, the study compiled housing costs relative to income, home value-to-income ratio, average effective property tax rate and estimated annual cost of living for an individual.
Livability included high school graduation rates, dining and entertainment establishments as a percentage of all establishments and violent and property crimes per 100,000 people.
Starke ranked 164th in affordability with a score of 63.28. Anadarko, Oklahoma, a suburb of Oklahoma City, led the category with a score of 100.
The Bradford County seat ranked 389th in jobs with a 33.98 score, behind the Indianapolis suburb of Brownsburg, Indiana, which set the curve with 100.
The Milwaukee suburb of Sheboygan Falls, Wisconsin, set the pace in livability with a score of 100. Starke placed 492nd in the category, third from the bottom, scoring 4.12.
The communities that Starke beat in the overall standings: Boca Raton, Coral Gables, Miami Beach, West Hollywood, Palm Springs and Santa Monica, had poor affordability scores.
Miami Beach also scored worse than Starke in livability with a 2.51 index.
Other Jacksonville-area communities making the list were Fernandina Beach, ranked 11th; St. Marys, Georgia, ranked 44th; Yulee, ranked 82nd; Middleburg, ranked 94; St. Augustine Beach, ranked 101; Macclenny, rated 134, St. Augustine, ranked 143; Orange Park, ranked 173; Neptune Beach, ranked at 250, Jacksonville Beach, ranked at 254 and Atlantic Beach, rated at 293.
