Our Community

Sedona is a rural town in North Central Arizona, with a population of about 12,000 people. We are blessed with beautiful natural surroundings and a community richly invested in the arts. Residents and visitors have an abundance of visual art, dance, music, theater and film to be immersed in daily.

Our People:
We are a predominantly middle class community, with only 9.7% of the population living below the poverty line, we have the highest median household income in the county ($50,316) Over 85% of our residents are White, over 10% are Hispanic/Latino and we are also home to Native American members of the Yavapai-Apache nation. Sedona has the highest older adult population (over 65) in the county (26%). Young people under the age of 24 also comprise over 25% of the population.

Our Strengths:
Sedona has many strengths and assets to be proud of:

• Beautiful physical environment
• Low crime rate
• High education levels
• Low unemployment
• Many opportunities for art and cultural creative expression

Our Challenges:
Many of the challenges we face as a community are themed around trust issues.

• One of our more interesting challenges is the high number of non-profit organizations. As close as 15 years ago, Sedona had over 1,000 NPO’s. This has created a culture of competition, territorialism and mistrust.
• Our Hispanic community is often faced with federal sweeps of neighborhoods, police harassment and potential deportation. This has created a great divide between our English speaking and Spanish-speaking neighbors.
• Often considered a community where people go to retire, there are a noticeable lack of resources for working family and children and little trust between our older generations and our youth. The youth in our community have been disenfranchised and are hesitant to engage with adults.

Our Communities for All Ages:

The long term vision of our Communities for All Ages initiative is to increase the ability of Sedona to respond to and provide for people at all life-stages and invite them to inform the culture of a community where all are welcomed, respected and supported.  Our team's contribution to that vision is the development of the Sedona Community Consortium (SCC) as a primary mechanism through which meaningful community-building takes place in Sedona.  The SCC designs, facilitates and supports programming and leadership building around food security and nutrition for all ages and works to create an inclusive, healthy and safe community that is multi-generational and collaborative.