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Place dossier plate
SheetTX-HALE-CENTER-TX · Hale Center, TX 1,705 pop · income 18th pct
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 Hale Center
Lowest/highest poles plus peers nearest Hale Center on median household income. Full ladder: /browse and /rankings.
median HH income
Grapeland · lowest
36,918
Grapeland · lowest
36,918 median HH income
31.3% of the leader · rank #1
Belwood · near
49,078
Belwood · near
49,078 median HH income
41.6% of the leader · rank #2
Trotwood · near
49,082
Trotwood · near
49,082 median HH income
41.6% of the leader · rank #3
Hale Center · this city
49,083
Hale Center · this city
49,083 median HH income
41.6% of the leader · rank #4
Lansing · near
49,083
Lansing · near
49,083 median HH income
41.6% of the leader · rank #5
Fall Branch · near
49,083
Fall Branch · near
49,083 median HH income
41.6% of the leader · rank #6
Romancoke · highest
118,077
Romancoke · highest
118,077 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 Hale Center 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: 1,705.
Agency-reported UCR totals per 100,000 population, not a neighborhood safety grade or a prediction of personal risk.
Hale Center - the verdict
Out of every US city with 1,000+ residents, Hale Center places in the 18th percentile for household income and the 81st percentile for safety. Source: Census ACS + FBI UCR.
18th
percentile, household income
5th
percentile, home value
40th
percentile, median rent
81st
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: Hale Center, TX
Hale Center is a small town in Texas, home to 1,705 residents per U.S. Census Bureau ACS 2023 estimates. Median household income here is $49,083 per year, in the lower quartile of U.S. cities for household income, with a poverty rate of 5.7%. Home values in Hale Center run a median of $85,300, and the median resident age is 53.3 years. Educational attainment runs 6.7% of adults with a bachelor's degree or higher. Separately, 50.2% of working-age residents are in the labor force.
The Census Building Permit Survey recorded 0 residential units authorized here in 2024 (No Permits). Hale Center reports a comparatively low crime rate: per-100,000 total crime stands at 606.7 in FBI UCR data, below the national average (a voluntary reporting program, read this as reporting activity, not a definitive danger score).
Texas tracks close to the national cost-of-living baseline: the state registers 97.1 on a 100-equals-national-average index (Near Average) per BEA Regional Price Parities 2024. A typical two-bedroom carries a HUD Fair Market Rent of $1,149 per month statewide. Monthly utility costs average around $223 across Texas, per EIA 2023 residential energy estimates. Workers in Hale Center report an average commute of 13.3 minutes, with 96.8% driving alone and 0.9% working from home. Natural-hazard exposure scores 49.0 out of 100 on FEMA's National Risk Index (Low).
A decision-led reading path
Useful questions to ask of Hale Center'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 schools and households to housing and income to comparison shortlist to population change to reported crime to work and mobility; another city can have a different sequence or fewer supported layers because the source joins are not uniform.
For Hale Center, city-specific coverage includes matched public-school count, commute-mode shares, annual population history, local building permits, FBI reported-crime rates.
No matched row is reported here for within-city Census tract profiles; the page leaves those layers out instead of substituting a statewide or national value.
1. Schools and households
What does the education layer cover for Hale Center?
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.
The NCES join finds 3 public schools within the city match. 6.7% 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.
How far does income reach against housing in Hale Center?
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. The ratio makes housing the clearest place to start this profile, but a low multiple can coexist with slow demand, older stock, or household-level hardship. Compare the home-value distribution and same-state peer table before treating it as an advantage.
The home-value-to-income reference is relatively compact: the ACS median home value is 1.7 times median household income. The ACS poverty estimate is 5.7%, which keeps the citywide median from describing every household.
Which cities make useful reference points for Hale Center?
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.
Within Texas, the closest population matches are Cienegas Terrace (1,703 residents, $42,382 income); De Kalb (1,702 residents, $45,577 income); Fannett (1,698 residents, $92,731 income). Outside the state, the closest population matches in this dataset are Arcade, GA (1,705 residents); Romancoke, MD (1,705 residents); Atlantic Beach, NC (1,705 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.
Is Hale Center growing, shrinking, or holding steady?
Census PEP estimates show the population declined by -77 residents from 2020 to 2025, a -3.7% change. Separately, Census BPS recorded 0 housing units authorized in 2024. PEP and ACS are different Census series, so the trend is kept separate from the headline ACS population.
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.
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.
Reported crime
What can the FBI record say about safety in Hale Center?
The joined FBI UCR record reports 606.7 violent and property crimes per 100,000 residents, below the 2280.5 national reference used here. The difference is 73% lower in arithmetic terms, but agency participation is voluntary and reporting completeness varies.
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.
Total reported rate
606.7
Violent rate
50.6
Property rate
556.1
FBI Uniform Crime Reporting, incidents per 100,000. Voluntary agency reporting; not a danger score.
What does the journey to work look like in Hale Center?
Driving alone is the largest reported mode at 96.8%. The reported mean trip to work is 13.3 minutes.
Mode share answers how workers usually travel; it does not measure congestion, reliability, distance to a particular job, or the quality of transit service. The profile is strongly car-oriented, so a relocation comparison should put trip distance, vehicle access, and household fuel costs ahead of a citywide commute average. The same-state peer links offer a more relevant benchmark than a national label.
Drive alone
96.8%
Work from home
0.9%
Public transit
0.0%
City-level Census ACS commuting estimates covering 654 workers age 16+.
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.
Violent crime A-
51 /100k
FBI UCR violent offenses per 100,000 residents; lower is stronger on this axis.
Poverty rate C+
5.7%
Share of residents below the poverty line; lower scores better on this axis.
Cost of living C-
97.1 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
$49,083
Median household income vs U.S. cities (pop ≥1,000); ACS.
Bachelor's+ share F
6.7%
Adults with a bachelor's degree or higher; ACS.
Hale Center profile (scored ACS/FBI dimensions)Read the chart values
Violent crime: 84/100 (A-) · 51 /100k
Poverty rate: 61/100 (C+) · 5.7%
Cost of living: 53/100 (C-) · 97.1 index
Household income: 19/100 (F) · $49,083
Bachelor's+ share: 0/100 (F) · 6.7%
Where Hale Center sits on home value vs crime among peer cities
Hale Center'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 - Hale Center highlighted among 8 peers.Read the chart values
Hale Center, TX (this city): home $85,300, crime 607/100k
Arcade, GA : home $228,800, crime 1,594/100k
Atlantic Beach, NC : home $466,400, crime 4,372/100k
Wynnewood, OK : home $103,700, crime 1,038/100k
Napavine, WA : home $335,500, crime 1,616/100k
De Kalb, TX : home $99,900, crime 69/100k
Crosbyton, TX : home $58,900, crime 1,764/100k
Grapeland, TX : home $154,000, crime 536/100k
How does Hale Center compare to other US cities?
Where Hale Center sits among all US cities (population 1,000+) on each measure, computed live from Census and FBI data.
Household income18% higher than other cities
Home value5% pricier than other cities
Median rent40% pricier than other cities
Safety81% 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 Texas, Hale Center ranks #126 of 624 Texas 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 Hale Center against every qualifying US city; each in-state rank narrows that to Texas only. Full formula and direction notes: methodology.
Texas-relative analysis
Median Gross Rent places Hale Center near the bottom of Texas's cities
Among the 1,663 Texas cities PlainCities tracks with reported median gross rent data, Hale Center ranks #1 - the 0th percentile within the state. This is a different, narrower cut than the nationwide percentiles above: it compares Hale Center only against its own state's cities, not the full US field.
Median Household Income
#1,158 of 1,520
24th percentile in Texas
Median Gross Rent
#1 of 1,663
0th percentile in Texas
Median Home Value
#1,249 of 1,505
17th percentile in Texas
Poverty Rate
#1,056 of 1,663
36th percentile in Texas
Bachelor's Degree or Higher
#1,437 of 1,663
13th percentile in Texas
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 Texas only, not a livability score. See the methodology for the source and calculation.
Gauge source note
18th percentile nationally for median household income · 81st percentile for safety (lower crime rate). Source: Census ACS 2023 / FBI UCR 2023.
Hale Center's profile vs. every US city
Income, affordability, and safety percentile
Hale Center'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 Hale Center's home value compares nationally
Median home value vs. every US city (population 1,000+)
$85,300Among the most affordablemore affordable than 95% 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
Hale Center's home-value-to-income ratio: 1.7×
ACS median home value divided by median household income.
Band
affordable
< 3.0×
National rank
#844 of 15,516
More affordable than 95% of tracked cities (pop. 1,000+)
Size class
#817 of 11,323
Micro cities (under 10,000)
At 1.7×, Hale Center sits in the affordable band:
national rank #844 of 15,516 and #817 of 11,323micro cities (under 10,000).
The multiple is comparatively compact among tracked cities, but a low ratio can still coexist with slow demand or household-level hardship.
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
$49,083Hale Center, TX median household income (Census ACS)
Show U.S. national quintile / Lorenz context Hale Center, TX median household income (Census ACS 5-year) with U.S. national quintile shares for context. Diagonal = equality; the curve is national, not computed for Hale Center, TX.
Key socioeconomic indicators
Bachelor's degree or higher (adults 25+)6.7%
Census ACS S1501, educational attainment
Poverty rate (households below FPL)5.7%
Census ACS S1701, poverty status
Labor force participation (adults 16+)50.2%
Census ACS S2301, share of working-age residents in the labor force
Population
1,705
Median Income
$49,083
Median Home Value
$85,300
Median Age
53.3
Poverty Rate
5.7%
Labor force participation
50.2%
Bachelor's Degree+
6.7%
Safety & Crime
Total Crime Rate
606.7
per 100,000 residents
Violent Crime
50.6
per 100,000 residents
Property Crime
556.1
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
Hale Center's Census PEP population estimates, 2020–2025.Read the chart as text
Period
Population
2020
2,056 residents
2021
2,043 residents
2022
2,015 residents
2023
2,001 residents
2024
1,998 residents
2025
1,979 residents
Housing Supply
BPS source
Census Bureau Building Permits Survey (BPS) - annual residential permits authorized
Total Permits (2024)
0
housing units authorized
Single-Family
0
detached homes
Multifamily
0
apartments & condos
5-Year Permit Trend (2019–2024)
Year
Total
Single-Family
Multifamily
Est. Value
2019
0
0
0
-
2020
3
3
0
$0.6M
2021
0
0
0
-
2022
0
0
0
-
2023
0
0
0
-
2024
0
0
0
-
Commute Patterns
Commute source
How workers travel to work, Census ACS 2023
Average Commute Time
13.3 minutes
Drive Alone
96.8%
Carpool
2.3%
Public Transit
0.0%
Walk
0.0%
Work from Home
0.9%
Based on 654 workers 16 and over.
Monthly Utility Costs
Texas statewide monthly utility average (EIA 2023): $223
EIA 2023 residential energy data puts average monthly utilities across Texas at $223 (electricity about $130 , water and sewer about $48 ).
These are Texas statewide averages, not a meter reading for Hale Center. Actual bills vary by home size, usage, and local rates. Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) 2023.
Living Costs & Risk
Texas's BEA cost-of-living index is 97.1 (Near Average; US average = 100, RPP 2024). HUD Fair Market Rent for a typical two-bedroom in the county around Hale Center is $1,149/mo. FEMA's National Risk Index, averaged to Texas statewide on PlainCities, rates natural-hazard exposure at 49.0 / 100 (Low).
Cost/risk geography note
Cost of living is a Texas statewide BEA average; rent is a county-level HUD Fair Market Rent for the county Hale Center sits in; the FEMA hazard score shown here is a statewide average of county NRI inputs, not a parcel-level reading.
How Hale Center compares to similar-size Texas 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.