Best PlacesWooster Square, New Haven, CT Best Neighborhoods

2026–2027 edition · Data updated July 2026

Every neighborhood in and around Wooster Square, New Haven, scored on 40 measures of daily life and ranked to fit what matters to you. The coast is close, and the measures below put a number on how close. To work out which city fits you best, start with the best places to live tool.

See the map of best neighborhoods

Wooster Square, New Haven ranks 2,784th of 5,983 U.S. neighborhoods on the BestNeighborhood index. It scores highest on civic engagement by a wide margin, and noise is the weak spot.

#2,784
of 5,983 neighborhoods
BestNeighborhood rank
Defaults weight crime safety, affordability, schools, and weather highest: the things hardest to change after a move
N/A
of 5,983 neighborhoods
Your rank
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The best neighborhoods in Wooster Square, New Haven

Map of the best neighborhoods in the Wooster Square, New Haven area, with better matches in green and worse matches in red
Click the map to explore
National median
Worse match Better match
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BestNeighborhood is the only ranking that scores 40 measures of daily life neighborhood by neighborhood and lets you re-weight every one of them yourself.

Wooster Square, New Haven's strengths and weaknesses

Top 1%Civic engagement
Top 10%An educated workforce
Top 10%Transit
Each measure against the national median. Bars to the right beat the median; bars to the left fall short. Percentiles compare Wooster Square, New Haven with other neighborhoods.

Where Wooster Square, New Haven ranks high

  • Voter turnoutBetter than 99% of neighborhoods
  • Educational attainmentBetter than 94% of neighborhoods
  • TransitBetter than 94% of neighborhoods
  • Short commute16.6 minutes each way, better than 94% of neighborhoods
  • Heat safetyBetter than 91% of neighborhoods

Where Wooster Square, New Haven ranks low

  • QuietBetter than only 1% of neighborhoods
  • Housing crash safetyBetter than only 3% of neighborhoods
  • Low property taxBetter than only 4% of neighborhoods
  • State fiscal healthBetter than only 6% of neighborhoods
  • School gradeD−, better than only 8% of neighborhoods

What it costs to buy a home in Wooster Square, New Haven

A household needs to earn about $128,000 a year to comfortably buy the median Wooster Square, New Haven home, at 20% down and today's 30-year rate. That runs well above the area's median income of $74,243, so buying stretches a typical household.

Income to buy the median home
$128,000
a year, at 20% down and today's 30-year rate
Estimated monthly payment
$2,983
principal, interest, tax, and insurance on a $420,197 home
Median rent
$1,905
a month, across all home sizes

Where the monthly payment goes

Principal & interest$2,142
Property tax$701
Homeowners insurance$140

Assumes a 20% down payment, a 6.6% 30-year fixed rate, and a 28% share of income going to the payment. The rate is the 2026-07-23 30-year fixed average, series MORTGAGE30US from the St. Louis Fed, which publishes Freddie Mac's weekly survey. Against the median home value, property tax uses Wooster Square, New Haven's effective rate of 2.00%, and insurance is estimated at 0.4% of home value a year.

Renting versus buying

At today's prices and rents, renting stays cheaper than buying across the first 10 years here, so the case for buying rests on staying much longer or on prices rising faster than assumed. The chart tracks the running cost of each.

Cumulative cost of renting versus owning the median home, first 10 years. Illustrative estimate.

Who lives in Wooster Square, New Haven

Wooster Square, New Haven runs younger than the country, and households here run smaller than average.

Median age
33
younger than the U.S. median of 41
Residents 65 and older
11%
versus 18% nationally
Average household
1.5
below the U.S. average of 2.6

Residents by age

Under 186%
18 to 3447%
35 to 4924%
50 to 6413%
65 and older11%

Racial and ethnic makeup has its own map. See the race and diversity map for Wooster Square, New Haven.


Who works in Wooster Square, New Haven, and how

Work in Wooster Square, New Haven centers on education and health care & social. Unemployment is close to the national rate, and employment has held roughly flat.

Work from home
27%
above the national average
Unemployment
5.6%
above the national average
Job growth
−0.1%
/y 2019-2023, slower than the national pace

Largest industries

Education34%
Health care & social11%
Professional & technical10%
Manufacturing7%
Retail trade7%

How people get to work

  • Drive or carpool 41%
  • Work from home 27%
  • Transit, walk, or bike 32%

Life in Wooster Square, New Haven

Wooster Square, New Haven has more restaurants and bars per resident than 88% of neighborhoods. The coast is about 4 minutes away. That concentrates in some parts of Wooster Square, New Haven and thins out in others, which the map shows.

Places to eat and drink
55
restaurants, bars, and fast food, about 173.2 per 10,000 residents, more than 88% of neighborhoods
Coffee shops
7
about 22.0 per 10,000 residents, more than 89% of neighborhoods
To the coast
4 min
drive to the nearest ocean beaches

What the weather is like in Wooster Square, New Haven, month by month

Wooster Square, New Haven sees roughly 70 pleasant days a year. July highs average about 86 degrees. January highs sit near 43, with lows near 25. The comfortable stretch runs May, June, and August through October.

Average daily high, mean, and low in degrees Fahrenheit, NOAA station data 2016 to 2025.
Show the monthly temperatures
MonthAvg highAvgAvg low
January43°34°25°
April61°50°40°
July86°77°67°
October69°59°49°

Flying in and out of Wooster Square, New Haven

The nearest airport, Tweed/New Haven, is about 3 miles away and is a small airport. The nearest major hub is Bradley International, about 45 miles away.

Nearest airport
HVN
Tweed/New Haven, about 3 miles
Airport size
Small hub
122nd-busiest in the US, 41 nonstop destinations
Average drive
8 min
from the area, with no traffic

The best schools in and around Wooster Square, New Haven

Schools across Wooster Square, New Haven average a D−, better than 8% of neighborhoods.

Top elementary schools

Top high schools

Grades come from K-12 test scores, with scores projected for schools missing data. See every Wooster Square, New Haven school and its grade on SchoolGrade.


Wooster Square, New Haven measure by measure

Cards are ordered by how much each measure matters to you, so the ones you weighted highest come first. Expand to see every measure. Percentages compare Wooster Square, New Haven against the other 5,982 neighborhoods.


Common questions about living in Wooster Square, New Haven

Is Wooster Square, New Haven a good place to live?

Using BestNeighborhood's default rankings, Wooster Square, New Haven ranks 2,784th of 5,983 neighborhoods. It scores highest on civic engagement, an educated workforce, and transit, and lowest on noise and an overheated housing market. How good it is for you depends on which of those you weight most, which the map lets you set.

Is Wooster Square, New Haven expensive to live in?

The median home is worth $420,197. The overall cost of living runs about 0% below the national average. Set against a $74,243 median income, cost of living beats 59% of neighborhoods.

Is Wooster Square, New Haven safe?

Wooster Square, New Haven is safer than 24% of neighborhoods. Safety varies a lot by neighborhood. Crime costs an estimated $497 per resident a year.


Compare Wooster Square, New Haven with other neighborhoods


Sources and methodology

Every measure on this page is scored for each neighborhood, then rolled up to Wooster Square, New Haven. Scores are absolute rather than ranked, which means a 60 in Wooster Square, New Haven represents the same real quantity as a 60 anywhere else, and the ranking is a weighted average of those absolutes. The map colors come from a national scale calibrated against a population weighted random sample of 5,000 neighborhoods. That absolute scoring is what no other places-to-live ranking does: it puts a single neighborhood, a town, a metro, and a state on one scale, so the same 40 measures answer both which metro to move to and which street inside it to buy on. Read the full methodology.

Wooster Square, New Haven detail on BestNeighborhood maps:

  1. Walk Grade for Wooster Square, New Haven: walkability, transit, and biking, measured on the real street network rather than by straight line distance.
  2. Noise in Wooster Square, New Haven: road, rail, and aviation sound modeling calibrated against federal ground truth measurements.
  3. Conservative vs liberal map of Wooster Square, New Haven: precinct level election results apportioned to neighborhoods.
  4. Mobile and cell coverage in Wooster Square, New Haven: carrier by carrier coverage behind the cell score.

Wooster Square, New Haven detail on related sites:

  1. CrimeGrade: neighborhood crime rates behind the crime safety score.
  2. ISPreports.org: provider by provider internet availability and advertised speeds.
  3. CoverageWatch: the car insurance premiums behind the cheap car insurance score.

Federal and public data:

  1. U.S. Census Bureau American Community Survey: income, home value, rent, vacancy, commute time and mode, educational attainment, home age, age structure, household type, industry, and race.
  2. NOAA Global Surface Summary of the Day: the daily station record behind the monthly temperatures and the pleasant-day count.
  3. FAA Passenger Boarding Data: airport size and annual passenger counts.
  4. Freddie Mac Primary Mortgage Market Survey: the 30-year fixed rate used in the cost-to-buy estimate.
  5. FBI Crime Data Explorer: reported offenses behind the tangible crime cost estimate.
  6. U.S. EPA Air Quality System: five year average air quality index.
  7. FEMA National Risk Index: expected annual loss from natural hazards.
  8. CDC PLACES: disease burden, preventable risk, and barriers to care.
  9. National Center for Education Statistics: school enrollment and assessment inputs behind the school grade.
  10. FCC National Broadband Map: internet and wireless availability.
  11. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics: employment and job growth behind the local economy score.
  12. Religious activity uses a proprietary religious signal measurement.