Living in Columbia, SC

It's elevated — there's no way to sugarcoat a violent crime index of 139 when the national average sits at 100. Property crime is at 154. That said, city-wide averages hide a lot of variation. There are safe, quiet neighborhoods in Columbia where people raise families without much worry. The key is doing granular research: talk to residents, check precinct-level data, and visit at different times of day before signing a lease. FBI UCR numbers.

Housing costs in Columbia are reasonable. Median rent sits at $1,158/month with median household income at $55,653/year — a 25.0% rent-to-income ratio. That's well within the comfort zone that most financial advisors recommend. It's not dirt cheap, but most working households can afford rent here without financial strain. Other costs like groceries and utilities will vary, but the rent picture is solid. Census ACS 2023 data.

The average worker in Columbia spends about 16 minutes getting to the office. Driving solo is the default (62.9%), with 9.8% working remotely and 1.4% 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.