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Place dossier plate
SheetMI-KALAMAZOO-MI · Kalamazoo, MI 73,132 pop · income 18th pct · 68 tracts
Instrument codes from this place’s ACS population and household income, BEA state COL, FBI safety, national income percentile, photo-finish peer city, home-value band, and matched Census-tract book - not a moving recommendation.
Income neighbourhood around Kalamazoo
Lowest/highest poles plus peers nearest Kalamazoo on median household income. Full ladder: /browse and /rankings.
median HH income
Caguas zona u… · lowest
26,649
Caguas zona u… · lowest
26,649 median HH income
22.4% of the leader · rank #1
Lake of the W… · near
48,958
Lake of the W… · near
48,958 median HH income
41.1% of the leader · rank #2
Sherman · near
48,958
Sherman · near
48,958 median HH income
41.1% of the leader · rank #3
Mount Pleasant · near
48,963
Mount Pleasant · near
48,963 median HH income
41.1% of the leader · rank #4
Kalamazoo · this city
48,965
Kalamazoo · this city
48,965 median HH income
41.1% of the leader · rank #5
West Lealman · near
48,965
West Lealman · near
48,965 median HH income
41.1% of the leader · rank #6
Rochester Hil… · highest
119,054
Rochester Hil… · highest
119,054 median HH income
100.0% of the leader · rank #7
What this shows Neighbourhood peers only - not a full nationwide city board. Open a near peer when the gap is small; open the poles when the spread is wide.
Compare beyond this state
Nationwide peers by population, income, and FBI crime rate
Out-of-state nearest neighbors for Kalamazoo on ACS population and median household income
, plus FBI UCR reporting rate when the extract covers this place. Link sets are deduped so each column is a distinct comparison path, not a forecast that peers share a labor market or climate.
Similar population
Nearest out-of-state cities by ACS population. This city: 73,132.
Agency-reported UCR totals per 100,000 population, not a neighborhood safety grade or a prediction of personal risk.
Kalamazoo - the verdict
Out of every US city with 1,000+ residents, Kalamazoo places in the 18th percentile for household income and the 4th percentile for safety. Source: Census ACS + FBI UCR.
18th
percentile, household income
32nd
percentile, home value
32nd
percentile, median rent
4th
percentile, safety
📝 How we sourced this
Population, income, and housing-cost figures come from the U.S. Census Bureau American Community Survey 5-year estimates (B-series tables). Crime data uses FBI UCR; climate uses NOAA Climate Normals; school counts come from NCES Common Core of Data; permits use the Census Building Permits Survey (BPS). See our methodology page for the full ETL pipeline and OMB / FIPS join keys.
Data Snapshot: Kalamazoo, MI
Census ACS 2023 estimates count 73,132 residents in Kalamazoo, a small city within Michigan. Kalamazoo households earn a median of $48,965 annually, in the lower quartile of U.S. cities for household income, with a poverty rate of 17.2%. Home values in Kalamazoo run a median of $164,500, and the median resident age is 26.8 years. About 37.1% of adults hold a bachelor's degree or higher, while 60.9% of working-age residents are in the labor force.
In 2024, 7 residential building permits were authorized in Kalamazoo (Construction Slowdown), down 81% from five years earlier, per Census BPS data. Kalamazoo's reported crime rate runs above the national norm: FBI UCR reporting places total crime at 4731.4 incidents per 100,000 residents, above the national average (voluntary agency reporting, reflects reporting activity, not a definitive danger score).
Living costs in Michigan run below the national norm: the state registers 96.2 on a 100-equals-national-average index (Below Average) per BEA Regional Price Parities 2024. HUD Fair Market Rent for a typical two-bedroom in this state is $1,113 per month. EIA 2023 residential energy data puts Michigan's average monthly utility costs around $238 (state average). The average commute for Kalamazoo workers runs 16.4 minutes, with 74.1% driving alone and 8.9% working from home. Natural-hazard exposure scores 49.6 out of 100 on FEMA's National Risk Index (Low).
A decision-led reading path
Useful questions to ask of Kalamazoo's data
How this reading path is ordered
This is not a composite city score. It is a city-specific route through the available public records, ordered for this profile so the page starts with questions the joined data can actually answer. The route here runs from population change to housing and income to comparison shortlist to within-city variation to work and mobility to schools and households to reported crime; another city can have a different sequence or fewer supported layers because the source joins are not uniform.
For Kalamazoo, city-specific coverage includes commute-mode shares, local building permits, within-city Census tract profiles, FBI reported-crime rates, annual population history, matched public-school count.
All six city-specific enrichment layers used by this profile are present.
1. Population change
Is Kalamazoo growing, shrinking, or holding steady?
Recent estimates point downward. A falling count can reflect migration, household size, annexation boundaries, or estimation noise, so it is a prompt to inspect the full series rather than a claim about local economic health.
Census PEP estimates show the population declined by -797 residents from 2020 to 2025, a -1.1% change. Separately, Census BPS recorded 7 housing units authorized in 2024. PEP and ACS are different Census series, so the trend is kept separate from the headline ACS population.
How far does income reach against housing in Kalamazoo?
The home-value-to-income reference sits in a middle range: the ACS median home value is 3.4 times median household income. The ACS poverty estimate is 17.2%, which keeps the citywide median from describing every household.
This is a citywide price-to-income reference, not a mortgage-affordability test; it does not include interest rates, taxes, insurance, household size, or an individual buyer's down payment. Income and home value move within the same broad scale here. The useful next check is not a generic affordability label, but whether similar-size cities offer a materially different income, housing, or commute trade-off.
Which cities make useful reference points for Kalamazoo?
Within Michigan, the closest population matches are Southfield (76,025 residents, $65,848 income); Rochester Hills (76,086 residents, $119,054 income); Wyoming (76,865 residents, $72,163 income). Outside the state, the closest population matches in this dataset are Redlands, CA (72,985 residents); New Britain, CT (73,301 residents); Caguas zona urbana, PR (72,862 residents). A third, income-matched reference set of 6 out-of-state cities sits in the income neighbourhood chart near the Place Dossier plate. These are mechanical peer sets, not claims that the places share a labor market, climate, culture, or metro context.
Use the in-state set to hold state policy and broad price conditions more nearly constant. Use the nationwide size set to ask whether cities with a similar resident count produce different housing, income, or commute outcomes. The income set is a third lens, deliberately separate from population matching. The nationwide peer panel below adds a fourth FBI UCR reporting-rate lens, not personal risk.
What can 68 Census tracts reveal inside Kalamazoo?
That layer breaks the citywide income, rent, and home-value medians into smaller Census geographies, which can reveal differences that one municipal median necessarily hides. A tract is a statistical area, not a locally defined neighborhood or a promise about conditions on a particular block. Start with the city profile for the broad comparison, then use the tract layer to test whether the same housing and income pattern is consistent across the city. Large within-city spreads are a reason to avoid treating any citywide median as a universal resident experience.
PlainCities matches 68 Census tracts to this city.
These joined records add useful context, but they do not need another full-size panel. Each remains a separate measure with its own geography and source boundary.
Work and mobility
What does the journey to work look like in Kalamazoo?
Mode share answers how workers usually travel; it does not measure congestion, reliability, distance to a particular job, or the quality of transit service. No single mode completely explains the work trip here. The mix is more useful than a one-number commute grade, especially when comparing places where transit, walking, and remote work divide the non-driving share differently.
Driving alone is the largest reported mode at 74.1%. The reported mean trip to work is 16.4 minutes.
Public transit
2.2%
Work from home
8.9%
Drive alone
74.1%
City-level Census ACS commuting estimates covering 36,450 workers age 16+.
What does the education layer cover for Kalamazoo?
The NCES join finds 3 public schools within the city match. 37.1% of adults age 25+ hold a bachelor's degree or higher in the ACS estimate. These measures answer different questions: the school count describes local institutions, while adult attainment describes residents and cannot be used as a school-quality rating.
The city has a broader matched school footprint, but count alone does not describe performance, capacity, program availability, or attendance boundaries. This profile deliberately avoids converting it into an unsupported family-friendliness score.
Matched public schools
3
Bachelor's degree+
37.1%
Poverty estimate
17.2%
NCES Common Core of Data school locations plus Census ACS resident characteristics.
What can the FBI record say about safety in Kalamazoo?
Treat this as a reporting-rate comparison, not a prediction of personal risk or a neighborhood-level safety grade. Tourism, daytime population, reporting practices, and variation inside the city are not adjusted away. The state rank and same-state peer table are the narrower comparisons available on this page.
The joined FBI UCR record reports 4731.4 violent and property crimes per 100,000 residents, above the 2280.5 national reference used here. The difference is 107% higher in arithmetic terms, but agency participation is voluntary and reporting completeness varies.
Property rate
3447.9
Violent rate
1283.5
Total reported rate
4731.4
FBI Uniform Crime Reporting, incidents per 100,000. Voluntary agency reporting; not a danger score.
Near national cost · BEA RPP 2024, Michigan average
F
City profile score · Kalamazoo, MI
30/100
5 published dimensions · ACS/FBI 2023
Comparative score against U.S. cities with population of 1,000 or more on Census ACS medians
(income, poverty, bachelor's share, cost of living) and FBI UCR violent-crime rates when
published. Higher means a stronger standing on those published figures, not a livability
rating, not a recommendation to move, buy, or pick a "best" city. Missing inputs drop out
and redistribute weight.
How it is calculated.
Bachelor's+ share B
37.1%
Adults with a bachelor's degree or higher; ACS.
Cost of living C
96.2 index
BEA state Regional Price Parities index (100 ≈ national average); lower is stronger on this axis. Same value for every city in the state.
Household income F
$48,965
Median household income vs U.S. cities (pop ≥1,000); ACS.
Poverty rate F
17.2%
Share of residents below the poverty line; lower scores better on this axis.
Violent crime F
1,284 /100k
FBI UCR violent offenses per 100,000 residents; lower is stronger on this axis.
Kalamazoo profile (scored ACS/FBI dimensions)Read the chart values
Bachelor's+ share: 70/100 (B) · 37.1%
Cost of living: 57/100 (C) · 96.2 index
Household income: 19/100 (F) · $48,965
Poverty rate: 19/100 (F) · 17.2%
Violent crime: 0/100 (F) · 1,284 /100k
Where Kalamazoo sits on home value vs crime among peer cities
Kalamazoo's median home value and FBI crime rate plotted with similar-size and
same-state peers (padded with large cities when the peer set is thin). The second
read: pricey does not always mean safer, check which quadrant this city lands in.
Census ACS median home value vs FBI UCR crime rate - Kalamazoo highlighted among 9 peers.Read the chart values
Kalamazoo, MI (this city): home $164,500, crime 4,731/100k
Redlands, CA : home $583,000, crime 2,450/100k
New Britain, CT : home $207,300, crime 2,347/100k
Southfield, MI : home $226,900, crime 2,913/100k
Rochester Hills, MI : home $377,400, crime 624/100k
Wyoming, MI : home $203,900, crime 2,616/100k
Novi, MI : home $399,100, crime 755/100k
Flint, MI : home $47,600, crime 2,570/100k
Farmington Hills, MI : home $333,200, crime 879/100k
How does Kalamazoo compare to other US cities?
Kalamazoo measured against every US city with 1,000+ residents, computed live from the same Census and FBI data shown throughout this page.
Household income18% higher than other cities
Home value32% pricier than other cities
Median rent32% pricier than other cities
Safety4% safer than other cities
"Safer than" reflects total crime rate from FBI UCR; the others use Census ACS estimates.
National percentiles can mask local variation. Looking only at Michigan, Kalamazoo ranks #246 of 254 Michigan cities by lowest crime rate - a narrower, more locally useful cut than the national comparison above.
How we calculate these percentiles & ranks
Each percentile compares Kalamazoo against every qualifying US city; each in-state rank narrows that to Michigan only. Full formula and direction notes: methodology.
Michigan-relative analysis
Median Gross Rent places Kalamazoo near the bottom of Michigan's cities
Among the 727 Michigan cities PlainCities tracks with reported median gross rent data, Kalamazoo ranks #1 - the 0th percentile within the state. This is a different, narrower cut than the nationwide percentiles above: it compares Kalamazoo only against its own state's cities, not the full US field.
Median Household Income
#541 of 718
25th percentile in Michigan
Median Gross Rent
#1 of 727
0th percentile in Michigan
Median Home Value
#319 of 721
56th percentile in Michigan
Poverty Rate
#116 of 727
83rd percentile in Michigan
Bachelor's Degree or Higher
#144 of 727
80th percentile in Michigan
How in-state ranks are ordered
Ranked by raw value (highest first); a higher rank is not automatically "better" for every measure, see each metric's own context above. This is a comparison within Michigan only, not a livability score. See the methodology for the source and calculation.
Gauge source note
18th percentile nationally for median household income · 4th percentile for safety (lower crime rate). Source: Census ACS 2023 / FBI UCR 2023.
Kalamazoo's profile vs. every US city
Income, affordability, and safety percentile
Kalamazoo's percentile rank on 3 favorable-direction measures (income, affordability, safety) vs. every tracked US city -- higher on every axis is more favorable. Not a composite quality score, just the arithmetic mean of the axes shown.
How Kalamazoo's home value compares nationally
Median home value vs. every US city (population 1,000+)
$164,500Among the most affordablemore affordable than 68% of 15,600 US cities
Show national distribution
Each bar is a $25K-wide band; taller bars hold more US cities. The dashed line + filled bar mark this entry. Hover or tap any bar for its full count, share, and where it sits relative to this entry.
Source U.S. Census Bureau ACS 5-Year Estimates · 2023
Kalamazoo's home-value-to-income ratio: 3.4×
ACS median home value divided by median household income.
Band
moderate
3.0–5.0×
National rank
#8,384 of 15,516
More affordable than 46% of tracked cities (pop. 1,000+)
Size class
#179 of 750
Mid-size cities (50,000–199,999)
At 3.4×, Kalamazoo sits in the moderate band:
national rank #8,384 of 15,516 and #179 of 750mid-size cities (50,000–199,999).
Income and home value move in the same broad scale; check same-state peers before treating the multiple as an advantage or a warning.
How this ratio is calculated
Ratio = Census ACS 2023 median home value ÷ median household income for cities with both fields and population ≥ 1,000.
Rank 1 = lowest ratio (most compact). Bands match the fleet affordability thresholds used on guides (<3.0 / 3.0–5.0 / >5.0).
This is not a mortgage payment estimate and does not include rates, taxes, insurance, or down payment.
Income distribution context
$48,965Kalamazoo, MI median household income (Census ACS)
Show U.S. national quintile / Lorenz context Kalamazoo, MI median household income (Census ACS 5-year) with U.S. national quintile shares for context. Diagonal = equality; the curve is national, not computed for Kalamazoo, MI.
Key socioeconomic indicators
Bachelor's degree or higher (adults 25+)37.1%
Census ACS S1501, educational attainment
Poverty rate (households below FPL)17.2%
Census ACS S1701, poverty status
Labor force participation (adults 16+)60.9%
Census ACS S2301, share of working-age residents in the labor force
Population
73,132
Median Income
$48,965
Median Home Value
$164,500
Median Age
26.8
Poverty Rate
17.2%
Labor force participation
60.9%
Bachelor's Degree+
37.1%
Safety & Crime
Total Crime Rate
4731.4
per 100,000 residents
Violent Crime
1283.5
per 100,000 residents
Property Crime
3447.9
per 100,000 residents
Crime reporting caveat
Reflects incidents reported to the FBI's Uniform Crime Reporting program — agency participation is voluntary and reporting completeness varies by jurisdiction and year, so this reflects reporting activity, not a definitive danger score. Not adjusted for tourism, commuter, or daytime population.
Schools
Total Schools
3
Public schools in this city
Population Change
PEP vintage
Annual U.S. Census Bureau Population Estimates Program (PEP) estimates, 2020–2025
Kalamazoo's Census PEP population estimates, 2020–2025.Read the chart as text
Period
Population
2020
73,480 residents
2021
72,294 residents
2022
72,841 residents
2023
73,169 residents
2024
72,857 residents
2025
72,683 residents
Housing Supply
BPS source
Census Bureau Building Permits Survey (BPS) - annual residential permits authorized
📉 Construction Slowdown
Total Permits (2024)
7
housing units authorized
Single-Family
1
detached homes
Multifamily
6
apartments & condos
Supply Intensity
0.1
permits per 1,000 residents
5-Year Permit Trend (2019–2024)
Year
Total
Single-Family
Multifamily
Est. Value
2019
36
34
2
$8.1M
2020
23
23
0
$5.7M
2021
17
17
0
$4.2M
2022
5
5
0
$1.5M
2023
4
4
0
$0.7M
2024
7
1
6
$1.4M
Permit volume decreased 81% from 2019 to 2024.
Commute Patterns
Commute source
How workers travel to work, Census ACS 2023
Average Commute Time
16.4 minutes
Drive Alone
74.1%
Carpool
7.1%
Public Transit
2.2%
Walk
6.8%
Work from Home
8.9%
Other
0.9%
Based on 36,450 workers 16 and over.
Monthly Utility Costs
Michigan statewide monthly utility average (EIA 2023): $238
EIA 2023 residential energy data puts average monthly utilities across Michigan at $238 (electricity about $105 , water and sewer about $48 ).
These are Michigan statewide averages, not a meter reading for Kalamazoo. Actual bills vary by home size, usage, and local rates. Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) 2023.
Living Costs & Risk
Michigan's BEA cost-of-living index is 96.2 (Below Average; US average = 100, RPP 2024). HUD Fair Market Rent for a typical two-bedroom in the county around Kalamazoo is $1,113/mo. FEMA's National Risk Index, averaged to Michigan statewide on PlainCities, rates natural-hazard exposure at 49.6 / 100 (Low).
Cost/risk geography note
Cost of living is a Michigan statewide BEA average; rent is a county-level HUD Fair Market Rent for the county Kalamazoo sits in; the FEMA hazard score shown here is a statewide average of county NRI inputs, not a parcel-level reading.
How Kalamazoo compares to similar-size Michigan cities
Same-state peer method
Closest same-state population matches, not geographic neighbors. Population + median household income come from Census Bureau ACS 5-year B01001 and B19013.
Source: U.S. Census Bureau ACS 5-Year 2023, FBI UCR, NCES CCD, Census BPS 2024, Census ACS B08301/B08136, U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) 2023, BEA Regional Price Parities 2024, HUD Fair Market Rents 2026, FEMA National Risk Index.