Living in Kansas City, KS

Crime rates in Kansas City are a touch above the national midpoint. The violent crime index comes in at 112 and property crime at 143, where 100 represents the U.S. average. That's not alarming, but it's enough that you should spend real time researching specific neighborhoods rather than assuming everywhere is equally fine. Talk to people who live there, walk the streets at different hours, and check the local police department's crime map. FBI UCR data.

By most measures, yes. The median rent of $1,073/month against a median household income of $59,183/year works out to a 21.8% rent-to-income ratio. Financial planners generally want that number under 30%, so Kansas City clears the bar with room to spare. You'll have breathing space for savings, car payments, and the occasional splurge. Numbers from Census ACS 2023.

Worth considering, yes. At 20 minutes average, the commute in Kansas City isn't brutal but it's not trivial either. 75.5% drive alone, 1.1% ride transit, and 8.5% work remotely. Where you live relative to your office will make a bigger difference than the city-wide average suggests.

Good, overall. The median AQI sits at 44, which falls within the EPA's "Good" category, and Kansas City logs 260 clean-air days annually. Ozone is the main pollutant. Occasional spikes happen — wildfire smoke, temperature inversions, or high-ozone days — but they're the exception, not the rule. Check AirNow.gov during allergy season or summer heat waves.

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; air quality measurements from the EPA's Air Quality System database. 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.