Washington, DC

ZIP code 20017 is assigned to Washington, DC, and falls within District of Columbia County. Like every US postal code, it began as a mail-routing device rather than a geographic boundary — the US Postal Service groups delivery routes under a single code so carriers and sorting equipment can process mail efficiently. Today it also serves as a practical shorthand for the area itself: roughly 21,013 people live inside it.

At 9,457 residents per square mile spread over 2.222 square miles, 20017 reads as a densely built-up area. It is a mid-sized postal code by population, and density shapes almost everything else on this page — how people get to work, whether they own or rent, and what housing costs.

Household earnings run above the national median. At $101,543, 20017 sits comfortably in the upper half, ahead of 84% of them. The US median for comparison is $70,109. Bear in mind that median income describes the midpoint household, not the average — it is not pulled upward by a handful of very high earners the way a mean would be.

Housing in 20017 costs far above the national median. A typical home is valued at $686,400 against a US median of $207,500, and median gross rent runs $1,793 a month. The split between owning and renting is fairly even at 57.4% owner-occupied, which tends to indicate a mix of housing types rather than one dominant form.

The building stock is dominated by detached single-family houses, which account for 56.5% of housing units here. The median construction year is 1953, making the housing here mid-century.

The population skews younger than the country as a whole, with a median age of 35.9 against 42 nationally. The average household holds 2.42 people, and 56.3% are family households.

Getting to work takes 33.1 minutes on average one way. The dominant mode is drove alone at 36.9% of workers, while 21.0% take public transit, 27.9% work from home. Commute patterns are one of the better proxies for how a place actually functions day to day.

Beyond addressing mail, 20017 does a lot of quiet administrative work. Retailers use it to calculate shipping and sales tax at checkout. Insurers use it to set premiums, since risk profiles vary geographically. Employers and marketers use it to define service areas. Government agencies use it to route benefits and organise reporting. If you have ever been asked for a postal code by a form that clearly does not intend to send you anything, this is why.

For anyone weighing a move, 20017 offers a compact profile of Washington: 21,013 residents, a median household income of $101,543, 59.1% of adults holding a bachelor's degree or higher, and an unemployment rate of 5.7%. A handful of figures like these answer more relocation questions than most neighbourhood guides do.

One caution worth repeating: a postal code is not a neighbourhood. 20017 may cover parts of several distinct areas, and a single neighbourhood in Washington may be split across more than one code. Boundaries also shift as USPS adjusts delivery routes. Treat the figures here as describing a delivery area, which is what they actually measure.