Living in Cedar Rapids, IA

Crime in Cedar Rapids runs a bit below the national average. The violent crime index is 78 (100 is the U.S. baseline), with property crime at 99. That puts it in a decent spot — not the safest metro in the country, but meaningfully better than the midpoint. Neighborhood choice still matters, especially if you have kids or walk home late. FBI Uniform Crime Report data.

Rent in Cedar Rapids is genuinely cheap relative to what people earn here. Median rent is $925/month and median household income is $67,859/year — that's a 16.4% rent-to-income ratio, which is rare in today's housing market. Lower demand, cheaper land, or strong local wages could all be factors. Whatever the cause, your dollar stretches further here than in most places. Census ACS 2023.

The average worker in Cedar Rapids spends about 16 minutes getting to the office. Driving solo is the default (77.0%), with 12.6% working remotely and 0.6% on public transit. It's a fairly typical commute — not a selling point, not a dealbreaker.

Everything on this page is built from public government sources: rent and income figures from the Census Bureau's American Community Survey (ACS 5-Year Estimates, 2023); commute and transportation data from Census ACS tables B08303 and B08006; crime rates from the FBI Uniform Crime Report. We refresh each dataset monthly through an automated pipeline and cross-check for anomalies. No surveys, no user-submitted guesses — just official federal data presented in a way that's actually useful for people researching a move.