Side-by-side metrics and state or size-class ranks use the same Census and FBI fields shown on this profile. Results stay in the URL so you can bookmark or share them.
Place dossier plate
SheetVA-GATE-CITY-VA · Gate City, VA 1,939 pop · income 6th pct · 6 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 Gate City
Lowest/highest poles plus peers nearest Gate City on median household income. Full ladder: /browse and /rankings.
median HH income
Pennington Gap · lowest
22,857
Pennington Gap · lowest
22,857 median HH income
15.4% of the leader · rank #1
Gate City · this city
37,188
Gate City · this city
37,188 median HH income
25.0% of the leader · rank #2
Bath · near
37,188
Bath · near
37,188 median HH income
25.0% of the leader · rank #3
Oscoda · near
37,188
Oscoda · near
37,188 median HH income
25.0% of the leader · rank #4
Ridgeway · near
37,188
Ridgeway · near
37,188 median HH income
25.0% of the leader · rank #5
Stoutland · near
37,188
Stoutland · near
37,188 median HH income
25.0% of the leader · rank #6
Hampden-Sydney · highest
148,846
Hampden-Sydney · highest
148,846 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 Gate City 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: 1,939.
Agency-reported UCR totals per 100,000 population, not a neighborhood safety grade or a prediction of personal risk.
Gate City - the verdict
Nationally, Gate City sits in the 6th percentile for household income and the 34th percentile for safety among US cities with a population of 1,000 or more. Source: Census ACS + FBI UCR.
6th
percentile, household income
30th
percentile, home value
62nd
percentile, median rent
34th
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: Gate City, VA
Census ACS 2023 estimates count 1,939 residents in Gate City, a small town within Virginia. Median household income here is $37,188 per year, in the lower quartile of U.S. cities for household income, with a poverty rate of 10.8%. Gate City's housing stock carries a median value of $158,400, and the median resident age is 42.0 years. About 32.0% of adults hold a bachelor's degree or higher, while 49.0% of working-age residents are in the labor force.
Crime here tracks close to the national norm: FBI UCR reporting places total crime at 1935.5 incidents per 100,000 residents, near the national average (voluntary agency reporting, reflects reporting activity, not a definitive danger score).
Virginia tracks close to the national cost-of-living baseline: the state registers 101.1 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 $1,369 per month statewide. Monthly utility costs average around $235 across Virginia, per EIA 2023 residential energy estimates. The average commute for Gate City workers runs 20.6 minutes, with 93.4% driving alone and 6.6% working from home. Natural-hazard exposure scores 33.3 out of 100 on FEMA's National Risk Index (Very Low).
A decision-led reading path
Useful questions to ask of Gate City'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 reported crime to comparison shortlist to work and mobility to schools and households to population change to within-city variation to housing and income; another city can have a different sequence or fewer supported layers because the source joins are not uniform.
For Gate City, city-specific coverage includes within-city Census tract profiles, FBI reported-crime rates, annual population history, matched public-school count, commute-mode shares.
No matched row is reported here for local building permits; the page leaves those layers out instead of substituting a statewide or national value.
Question 1
What can the FBI record say about safety in Gate City?
The joined FBI UCR record reports 1935.5 violent and property crimes per 100,000 residents, below the 2280.5 national reference used here. The difference is 15% 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.
Which cities make useful reference points for Gate City?
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 Virginia, the closest population matches are Hampden-Sydney (1,942 residents, $148,846 income); Stanley (1,976 residents, $59,583 income); Tappahannock (1,865 residents, $44,896 income). Outside the state, the closest population matches in this dataset are Maple Park, IL (1,939 residents); Paulina, LA (1,939 residents); Lame Deer, MT (1,939 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.
What does the journey to work look like in Gate City?
Driving alone is the largest reported mode at 93.4%. The reported mean trip to work is 20.6 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.
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.
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.
Schools and households
What does the education layer cover for Gate City?
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 5 public schools within the city match. 32.0% 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.
Poverty estimate
10.8%
Bachelor's degree+
32.0%
Matched public schools
5
NCES Common Core of Data school locations plus Census ACS resident characteristics.
Is Gate City growing, shrinking, or holding steady?
Census PEP estimates show the population declined by -44 residents from 2020 to 2025, a -2.2% change. No comparable local building-permit series is available here, so population change should not be read as a housing-supply measure. 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.
2020 estimate
2,044
2025 estimate
2,000
Period change
-2.2%
Census Population Estimates Program, 2020–2025; permit context uses Census BPS.
How far does income reach against housing in Gate City?
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. Housing value is high relative to the citywide income median. That flags a question for comparison, not a verdict: tenure, household composition, financing costs, and the age of the ACS estimate can all change what a resident actually pays.
The home-value-to-income reference is comparatively stretched: the ACS median home value is 4.3 times median household income. The ACS poverty estimate is 10.8%, which keeps the citywide median from describing every household.
Value / income
4.3×
Home value
$158,400
Household income
$37,188
City-level Census ACS 2023 medians. The ratio divides two separate medians and is descriptive only.
Lowest-decile income · poverty 10.8% (Above-median poverty)
Cost of Living Index (state)
101.1 (US=100)
Above-average cost · BEA RPP 2024, Virginia average
F
City profile score · Gate City, VA
34/100
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 C+
32.0%
Adults with a bachelor's degree or higher; ACS.
Violent crime D
199 /100k
FBI UCR violent offenses per 100,000 residents; lower is stronger on this axis.
Poverty rate F
10.8%
Share of residents below the poverty line; lower scores better on this axis.
Cost of living F
101.1 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
$37,188
Median household income vs U.S. cities (pop ≥1,000); ACS.
Gate City profile (scored ACS/FBI dimensions)Read the chart values
Bachelor's+ share: 61/100 (C+) · 32.0%
Violent crime: 48/100 (D) · 199 /100k
Poverty rate: 37/100 (F) · 10.8%
Cost of living: 35/100 (F) · 101.1 index
Household income: 3/100 (F) · $37,188
Where Gate City sits on home value vs crime among peer cities
Gate City'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 - Gate City highlighted among 26 peers.Read the chart values
Gate City, VA (this city): home $158,400, crime 1,936/100k
Maple Park, IL : home $265,000, crime 268/100k
Grove Hill, AL : home $151,400, crime 1,338/100k
Stanley, VA : home $197,100, crime 998/100k
Tappahannock, VA : home $204,200, crime 3,660/100k
Pennington Gap, VA : home $86,900, crime 1,276/100k
New York, NY : home $751,700, crime 3,039/100k
Los Angeles, CA : home $879,500, crime 2,212/100k
Chicago, IL : home $315,200, crime 4,012/100k
Houston, TX : home $253,400, crime 5,442/100k
Phoenix, AZ : home $381,900, crime 3,125/100k
Philadelphia, PA : home $232,400, crime 5,457/100k
San Antonio, TX : home $219,700, crime 5,218/100k
San Diego, CA : home $848,500, crime 2,082/100k
Dallas, TX : home $295,300, crime 4,010/100k
San Jose, CA : home $1,187,800, crime 3,195/100k
Austin, TX : home $512,700, crime 3,709/100k
Fort Worth, TX : home $277,300, crime 3,158/100k
Columbus, OH : home $234,500, crime 3,088/100k
Indianapolis, IN : home $207,000, crime 4,214/100k
San Francisco, CA : home $1,380,500, crime 4,526/100k
Seattle, WA : home $912,100, crime 5,783/100k
Denver, CO : home $586,700, crime 5,755/100k
Oklahoma City, OK : home $215,100, crime 3,570/100k
El Paso, TX : home $171,700, crime 1,772/100k
Washington, DC : home $724,600, crime 4,514/100k
How does Gate City compare to other US cities?
Gate City measured against every US city with 1,000+ residents, computed live from the same Census and FBI data shown throughout this page.
Household income6% higher than other cities
Home value30% pricier than other cities
Median rent62% pricier than other cities
Safety34% safer than other cities
"Safer than" reflects total crime rate from FBI UCR; the others use Census ACS estimates.
A national percentile can hide a lot of local variation: narrowed to Virginia alone, Gate City ranks #65 of 117 Virginia cities by lowest crime rate - a different, more locally useful comparison than stacking it against the entire country.
How we calculate these percentiles & ranks
Each percentile compares Gate City against every qualifying US city; each in-state rank narrows that to Virginia only. Full formula and direction notes: methodology.
Virginia-relative analysis
Median Gross Rent places Gate City near the bottom of Virginia's cities
Among the 619 Virginia cities PlainCities tracks with reported median gross rent data, Gate City ranks #1 - the 0th percentile within the state. This is a different, narrower cut than the nationwide percentiles above: it compares Gate City only against its own state's cities, not the full US field.
Median Household Income
#518 of 558
7th percentile in Virginia
Median Gross Rent
#1 of 619
0th percentile in Virginia
Median Home Value
#430 of 567
24th percentile in Virginia
Poverty Rate
#173 of 616
71st percentile in Virginia
Bachelor's Degree or Higher
#259 of 618
58th percentile in Virginia
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 Virginia only, not a livability score. See the methodology for the source and calculation.
Gauge source note
6th percentile nationally for median household income · 34th percentile for safety (lower crime rate). Source: Census ACS 2023 / FBI UCR 2023.
Gate City's profile vs. every US city
Income, affordability, and safety percentile
Gate City'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 Gate City's home value compares nationally
Median home value vs. every US city (population 1,000+)
$158,400Among the most affordablemore affordable than 70% 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
Gate City's home-value-to-income ratio: 4.3×
ACS median home value divided by median household income.
Band
moderate
3.0–5.0×
National rank
#11,418 of 15,516
More affordable than 26% of tracked cities (pop. 1,000+)
Size class
#8,824 of 11,323
Micro cities (under 10,000)
At 4.3×, Gate City sits in the moderate band:
national rank #11,418 of 15,516 and #8,824 of 11,323micro cities (under 10,000).
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
$37,188Gate City, VA median household income (Census ACS)
Show U.S. national quintile / Lorenz context Gate City, VA median household income (Census ACS 5-year) with U.S. national quintile shares for context. Diagonal = equality; the curve is national, not computed for Gate City, VA.
Key socioeconomic indicators
Bachelor's degree or higher (adults 25+)32.0%
Census ACS S1501, educational attainment
Poverty rate (households below FPL)10.8%
Census ACS S1701, poverty status
Labor force participation (adults 16+)49.0%
Census ACS S2301, share of working-age residents in the labor force
Population
1,939
Median Income
$37,188
Median Home Value
$158,400
Median Age
42.0
Poverty Rate
10.8%
Labor force participation
49.0%
Bachelor's Degree+
32.0%
Safety & Crime
Total Crime Rate
1935.5
per 100,000 residents
Violent Crime
198.5
per 100,000 residents
Property Crime
1737.0
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
5
Public schools in this city
Population Change
PEP vintage
Annual U.S. Census Bureau Population Estimates Program (PEP) estimates, 2020–2025
Gate City's Census PEP population estimates, 2020–2025.Read the chart as text
Period
Population
2020
2,044 residents
2021
2,032 residents
2022
2,033 residents
2023
2,023 residents
2024
2,019 residents
2025
2,000 residents
Commute Patterns
Commute source
How workers travel to work, Census ACS 2023
Average Commute Time
20.6 minutes
Drive Alone
93.4%
Carpool
0.0%
Public Transit
0.0%
Walk
0.0%
Work from Home
6.6%
Based on 821 workers 16 and over.
Monthly Utility Costs
Virginia statewide monthly utility average (EIA 2023): $235
EIA 2023 residential energy data puts average monthly utilities across Virginia at $235 (electricity about $115 , water and sewer about $50 ).
These are Virginia statewide averages, not a meter reading for Gate City. Actual bills vary by home size, usage, and local rates. Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) 2023.
Living Costs & Risk
Virginia's BEA cost-of-living index is 101.1 (Near Average; US average = 100, RPP 2024). HUD Fair Market Rent for a typical two-bedroom in the county around Gate City is $1,369/mo. FEMA's National Risk Index, averaged to Virginia statewide on PlainCities, rates natural-hazard exposure at 33.3 / 100 (Very Low).
Cost/risk geography note
Cost of living is a Virginia statewide BEA average; rent is a county-level HUD Fair Market Rent for the county Gate City sits in; the FEMA hazard score shown here is a statewide average of county NRI inputs, not a parcel-level reading.
How Gate City compares to similar-size Virginia 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 ACS B08301/B08136, U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) 2023, BEA Regional Price Parities 2024, HUD Fair Market Rents 2026, FEMA National Risk Index.