Living in Charleston, WV

Charleston's crime numbers hover right around the U.S. average. Violent crime index: 93. Property crime index: 87. The national baseline for both is 100, so you're looking at a city that's neither notably safe nor notably dangerous on paper. In practice, where you live within the city shifts the picture dramatically — a 10-minute drive can mean a completely different experience. Check local crime maps. Source: FBI UCR.

Rent in Charleston is genuinely cheap relative to what people earn here. Median rent is $898/month and median household income is $64,512/year — that's a 16.7% 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.

Most people in Charleston are at work within 16 minutes — a pretty reasonable commute by American standards. The breakdown: 70.7% drive alone, 2.1% take public transit, and 11.2% work from home. Rush hour adds time, obviously, but the baseline is manageable.

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.