Phelan, CA population, income and ZIP codes

Phelan CDP is a mid-size town in California, with 18,059 residents counted in the Census American Community Survey 2019-2023 ACS 5-year estimates, which places it #372 of 1,618 ranked by population — larger than 77% of them. The median age here is 33.9 years against 39.1 nationally, a slightly younger profile than the country as a whole. Places under 65,000 residents only appear in the five-year release, never the one-year file, so these values pool sixty months of responses and lag the current year by design.

Households in Phelan CDP earn a median of $83,759 a year, 6.6% above the national figure of $78,538 and 8% below the $91,111 median for the 1,050 California cities we cover. Median household income counts every pre-tax dollar arriving at an address — wages, self-employment, Social Security, pensions, interest and public assistance — for everyone living there, so multi-earner households pull the figure up even where individual pay is modest. Poverty reaches 14.5% of residents here, above the 12.4% national rate.

The typical owner-occupied home in Phelan CDP is valued at $357,200, 17.7% above the national figure and 39% below the $589,600 peer median, while median gross rent runs $1,623 a month, 15.4% above the national figure, or roughly $19,476 across a full year. A household on the local median income would put about 23.3% of gross pay toward that rent against the federal 30% cost-burden threshold, so renting here is within the standard affordability guideline. The home-price-to-income ratio works out to 4.3×, against roughly 3.9× nationally, so buying is harder here than in the average US market. 80.6% of occupied homes are owner-occupied versus 65% nationally, an owner-dominated market where rental listings are scarce and rent medians rest on a thin sample. Gross rent folds in the utilities a tenant pays separately, so it is closer to the real monthly outlay than a headline rent figure.

Median income runs above the national figure while poverty also runs above it — a split distribution, not a uniformly comfortable place. Averages hide that; the two numbers together do not.

All values below were released by the Census for this exact geography, with no gap-filling on our side. Small-area estimates still carry wider margins of error than state or national figures, so check the linked ACS tables before relying on them for lending, appraisal or legal work.