Poplar-Cotton Center, CA population, income and ZIP codes

Poplar-Cotton Center CDP is a small town in California, with 2,038 residents counted in the Census American Community Survey 2019-2023 ACS 5-year estimates, which places it #899 of 1,618 ranked by population — larger than 44% of them. The median age here is 30.4 years against 39.1 nationally, a distinctly younger profile, typical of places with students, military posts or a fast-growing family population. At this population the ACS sample is small, so the margin of error around every dollar figure below is wide — treat the numbers as a band, not a point, and expect them to move between annual releases without the place itself changing.

Households in Poplar-Cotton Center CDP earn a median of $51,893 a year, 33.9% below the national figure of $78,538 and 43% below the $91,111 median for the 1,050 California cities we cover. The median is the midpoint household, not an average, so a handful of very high earners cannot drag it upward the way they distort a mean. Poverty reaches 27% of residents here, well above the 12.4% national rate, which is the single clearest signal in this dataset that median income here is carried by a narrow band of households.

The typical owner-occupied home in Poplar-Cotton Center CDP is valued at $209,100, 31.1% below the national figure and 65% below the $589,600 peer median, while median gross rent runs $977 a month, 30.5% below the national figure, or roughly $11,724 across a full year. A household on the local median income would put about 22.6% 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×, against roughly 3.9× nationally, so buying is harder here than in the average US market. 48.3% of occupied homes are owner-occupied versus 65% nationally, so the market leans more heavily on renters. Rent is reported gross — contract rent plus tenant-paid utilities — which is why it runs above the advertised price on a listing for the same unit.

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.