Number articles are never a favorite for journalists. But some topics just lend themselves to numerology versus storytelling. Placed right up that list is Census data, interesting yet useless without a whole pile of mind-numbing statistics.
    Now that the 2010 results have been compiled, collated, cut and crunched, here’s an overall picture of Fort Lupton from the eye of the national head counters, hopefully with some of the more boring details set aside.
    According to results for the Fort Lupton area, the population approximates some 7,377 people. That reflects a 10-year population swell in the city of 8.7 percent, up from 6,787 in 2000. Still, that gain is modest by comparative standards.
    In contrast to the national average, Fort Lupton grew at a rate one full percentage point lower than the country as a whole. Weld County ballooned approximately 40 percent, and Colorado growth overall came in at just under 17 percent in the same time period.
    The city did get younger, with 30.8 percent of the Fort Lupton city residents under 18 years of age, a 14.5 percent increase from 2000. That’s almost seven percent younger that the national average.
    Demographically, Fort Lupton is a largely Hispanic city and becoming more so. 2010 race data for Fort Lupton city include the racial breakdown percentages of 0.4 percent Black, 0.7 of a percent Asian and 55 percent Hispanic. Hispanic or Latino growth, as listed was 845 residents; a bump of 26 percent, fully three times the overall city rate.
    As to domiciles, there were 2,534 housing units listed in Fort Lupton in 2010, 94.4 percent of which were occupied. The 5.6 percent vacancy rate is less than half of the national average.
    Largely attributed to first-time ownership and vulnerabilities in job markets such as the construction trades, Colorado Hispanic homeownership in the past decade dipped to 48.3 percent versus the 2000 census point of just under 53 percent. The figures are better locally, with the 53 percent listed in Adams County and 53 percent in Weld County. White home ownership in Weld stayed within a 1 percent decline, holding at 72 percent.
    Perhaps most striking were the results for same-sex couples throughout the state and region, with Colorado spiking a 60 percent increase in those households. Weld County topped that figure, with an 80 percent increase, going from 312 households in 200 to 563 in 2010.