Tampa vs Hialeah: which should you move to?
Tampa or Hialeah? Housing, rent, crime, climate, income, taxes and transit, side by side, from each city's own published figures. Written for someone deciding where to live, not for a ranking.
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Both cities are in Florida and price in US dollars, so neither takes income tax, a single filer on $100,000 pays the same $13,449 in federal tax in each, and the homestead rules are the same. Both houses are Zillow's typical home value for June 2026 at the same 6.67% rate, so the figures net directly: Tampa's typical home was $380,283 and Hialeah's $445,331, and mortgage, property tax and insurance come to about $2,906 a month against $3,425. That is roughly 41% of Tampa's median household income of $84,114 and 72% of Hialeah's $57,151, a gap of $26,963 in household pay, and rent runs the same way, $1,999 against $2,374. Tampa's millage is the higher, 19.8428 against 18.6468, so most of the $519 gap is the price and the rest Hialeah's insurance line of $505 a month against $390. Crime favors Hialeah on violence: on the FBI's 2024 counts for both, about 178 violent offenses per 100,000 against Tampa's 445, and in 2025 3 homicides against 17, while property crime is close once Hialeah's missing car thefts are counted. Hialeah's January is 5.4 F warmer, its metro unemployment 3.7% against 4.8% and its sales tax 7% against 7.5%. Choose Tampa for household pay that carries a house, Tampa General and Moffitt, the airport in the city and a city that is still growing. Choose Hialeah for low violent crime, a tight labor market and Metrorail into Miami, if your income can carry a house at 7.8 times the local median and you will check the flood map for rain rather than surge.
| Measure | Tampa | Hialeah | Advantage |
|---|---|---|---|
| City population | 413,554 (2025) | 230,968 (2025) | Not directly comparable |
| Metro population | 3,418,895 (2025) | 6,391,072 (2025) | Not directly comparable |
| Five-year growth Growth is pressure on rents and roads as much as it is opportunity, so it is reported without a winner. | 7.3% (2020-2025) | 3.5% (2020-2025) | Not directly comparable |
What a home costs in each
The figures the two cities' rent-versus-buy and mortgage calculators run on, read from the same tables.
| Measure | Tampa | Hialeah | Advantage |
|---|---|---|---|
| Benchmark home price MLS® HPI or equivalent benchmark. Lower is treated as the advantage, which is the buyer's view rather than the owner's. | $380,283 (June 2026) | $445,331 (June 2026) | Tampa |
| Detached house benchmark Tampa and Hialeah publish a single house index rather than a composite, so the two rows repeat. | $380,283 | $445,331 | Tampa |
| Apartment or condominium benchmark | Not published | Not published | Not directly comparable |
| Two-bedroom rent | $1,999/mo (median, June 2026) | $2,374/mo (median, June 2026) | Tampa |
| One-bedroom rent | $1,719/mo | $2,042/mo | Tampa |
| Two-bedroom rent against median income A year of two-bedroom rent as a share of the median household income below. A household paying the median rent out of the median income is a fiction, but it is the same fiction in both columns and it crosses currencies. | 28.5% of a year's income | 49.8% of a year's income | Tampa |
| Mortgage payment on the benchmark, 20% down 30-year amortization on American monthly compounding, the convention in both. | $1,957/mo at 6.67% | $2,292/mo at 6.67% | Tampa |
| Price to household income Benchmark price divided by the median household income below. A ratio is comparable across currencies; the dollars are not. | 4.5× | 7.8× | Tampa |
| Property tax on the benchmark home The effective rate on market value, which is what the two rates have in common and what the Advantage column is decided on; the bills are in each city's own dollars. | $6,712/yr (1.765%, 2025) | $7,534/yr (1.692%, 2025) | Hialeah |
| Transfer tax on the benchmark home Compared as a share of the price. Where the seller pays it, it is a cost of leaving rather than arriving. | $2,662 (seller pays) | $2,672 (seller pays) | Hialeah |
| Rent control A cap protects a sitting tenant and does nothing for the next lease, so neither column is simply better. | Forbidden by state law | Forbidden by state law | Not directly comparable |
Tampa: About 1.77% of what you pay for the house, which is lower than the 19.8428 mills Tampa is charged, and the difference is Florida's homestead exemption rather than any assessment lag. The state assesses at full market value and a purchase resets the assessment to the price. What there is instead is an exemption: $25,000 of taxable value comes off for every taxing authority and a second slice comes off for all of them except the Hillsborough County school board, which levies 6.3400 of the 19.8428. That second slice was $25,000 through the 2024 tax roll and has been adjusted for inflation every 1 January since, under the 2024 amendment to Article VII section 6 of the state constitution, so it is now somewhat more than $25,000. The figures here use the base amount, because the Department of Revenue sends the adjusted figure to the county property appraisers rather than publishing it. The difference is worth a few dollars a year on a bill, and the county property appraiser can tell you the amount in force. A homesteaded buyer's first-year bill is therefore about $6,712 on the $380,283 typical home value here. That 19.8428 is the figure Hillsborough County publishes for this taxing district rather than a total assembled here, and Tampa's own council sets 6.2076 of it. The exemption is not automatic: you file for it with the county property appraiser by 1 March of the year after you buy. The seller's tax bill is not a guide to yours. Save Our Homes caps a homesteaded property's assessed value at 3% growth a year, and that cap resets to full market value the January after the sale, so a long-tenured owner can be taxed on a fraction of what you will be taxed on for the same house. Ask the property appraiser what the assessment would be at your purchase price, not what the current bill is. Hialeah: About 1.69% of what you pay for the house, which is lower than the 18.6468 mills charged here, and the difference is Florida's homestead exemption rather than any assessment lag. The state assesses at full market value and a purchase resets the assessment to the price. What there is instead is an exemption: $25,000 of taxable value comes off for every taxing authority and a second slice comes off for all of them except the school district, which levies 6.4990 of the 18.6468. That second slice was $25,000 through the 2024 tax roll and has been adjusted for inflation every 1 January since, under the 2024 amendment to Article VII section 6 of the state constitution, so it is now somewhat more than $25,000. The figures here use the base amount, because the Department of Revenue sends the adjusted figure to the county property appraisers rather than publishing it. The difference is worth a few dollars a year on a bill, and the county property appraiser can tell you the amount in force. A homesteaded buyer's first-year bill is therefore about $7,534 on the $445,331 typical home value here. Hialeah runs its own fire department, so it pays none of the county's 2.3965-mill Fire Rescue district levy. One of only five municipalities in Miami-Dade in that position, and worth more than most municipal rates on this table. The exemption is not automatic: you file for it with the Miami-Dade Property Appraiser by 1 March of the year after you buy. The seller's tax bill is not a guide to yours. Save Our Homes caps a homesteaded property's assessed value at 3% growth a year, and that cap resets to full market value the January after the sale, so a long-tenured owner can be taxed on a fraction of what you will be taxed on for the same house. Ask the property appraiser what the assessment would be at your purchase price, not what the current bill is.
How safe each city is, by the numbers it publishes
Police-reported figures for the most recent year each force or statistics agency has released. Rates describe a whole city or metro area, and the spread between neighbourhoods inside one city is usually wider than the gap between the two cities.
| Measure | Tampa | Hialeah | Advantage |
|---|---|---|---|
| Crime Severity Index Statistics Canada's weighted index for the metropolitan area, where 100 is Canada in 2006. American cities have no equivalent series. | Not published | Not published | Not directly comparable |
| Violent crime per 100,000 | 376 (2025) | 178 (2025) | Hialeah |
| Property crime per 100,000 | 1,465 (2024) | 1,417 (2025) | Hialeah |
| Homicides Counts, not rates, and a single year in a small city moves a long way on chance alone. What each figure covers is under the table. | 17 (2025) | 3 (2025) | Not directly comparable |
Violent crime in the city fell from 2,031 offences in 2023 to 1,862 in 2024 and 1,553 in 2025 (TPD 2025 Annual Report), with homicides halving in 2025 to 17. Total crime fell 21.3% in 2025 and TPD reported a 22% mid-year drop the year before, so the direction over three years is clearly down, though the figures remain preliminary until certified under NIBRS.
What the rates cover: Computed: Tampa Police Department 2025 Annual Report counts 1,553 violent crimes (robbery, aggravated assault/battery, murder, sexual battery) in 2025, down from 1,862 in 2024 and 2,031 in 2023; divided by the 413,554 Vintage 2025 city population. FBI UCR-based 2024 figure for comparison: 1,817 offences, 445 per 100k. TPD notes Florida moved to NIBRS in 2022 and figures are preliminary until certified by FDLE and the FBI.
Homicides: City of Tampa, 2025: 17 homicides, a 52.8% drop from 36 in 2024 (FBI UCR 2024 count 36, 8.8 per 100k). Works out to about 4.1 per 100k in 2025. TPD calls it the lowest annual total in more than 50 years. One January 2026 FOX 13 report quoted 19; the 52.8% figure in TPD's annual report is consistent with 17.
Down for violent crime, and down for property crime by less than the FBI's totals suggest. On the FBI CDE's counts violent offenses went from 474 in 2022 to 431 in 2023, 415 in 2024 and 412 in 2025, about 210, 187, 178 and 178 per 100,000 on each year's Vintage 2025 population, and January to July 2026 brought 192 against 246 in the same months of 2025, a fall of 22%, mostly in aggravated assaults (165 against 214). Robberies halved, from 66 in 2022 to 31 in 2025. The CDE's property totals fell from 4,329 in 2022 to 3,273 in 2025, but about 500 of that fall is motor vehicle thefts the FBI's series stopped carrying in October 2023; without them property offenses went from 3,801 in 2022 to 3,621 in 2023, 3,610 in 2024 and 3,266 in 2025, a fall of 14% over three years, with larceny down from 3,565 to 3,018. FDLE's file, which kept counting car thefts, has them falling too, from 541 in 2022 and 566 in 2023 to 488 in 2024 and 337 in 2025. January to July 2026 property offenses (1,969) were level with 2025 (1,962). The CDE counts were read on 2 October 2026 from a feed last refreshed on 15 September 2026, whose August 2026 property count (139, about half a normal month) and September figures (none) are incomplete and are not used.
What the rates cover: Computed: 412 violent offenses (murder, rape, robbery and aggravated assault) in the FBI Crime Data Explorer's summarized data for the Hialeah Police Department (ORI FL0130400) in calendar 2025, divided by the 230,968 Vintage 2025 estimate for July 2025; on the CDE's own agency population of 238,769 the rate is 173. The department has reported to the FBI through the incident-based system since January 2021 and the CDE has every month from then to August 2026. 2025 is the year the Miami, Tampa, Jacksonville, Port St. Lucie and St. Petersburg profiles use. That is half Miami's 359, below Tampa's 376, St. Petersburg's 502 and Jacksonville's 514, and above Port St. Lucie's 130 and Cape Coral's 122 for 2023. Aggravated assault is 356 of the 412. The Florida Department of Law Enforcement's incident-based (FIBRS) file, which feeds the FBI and counts somewhat more broadly (its forcible sex offenses include fondling), has 432 violent offenses for the department in 2025, about 187 per 100,000.
Homicides: 3 murders and nonnegligent manslaughters in 2025 in the FBI CDE, about 1.3 per 100,000 on the city population; FDLE's file also has 3. The CDE series is 12 in 2021, 6 in 2022, 6 in 2023, 2 in 2024, 3 in 2025 and 2 in January to August 2026. Miami had 26 in 2025, Tampa 17, St. Petersburg 9 and Port St. Lucie 4.
Winters, summers and what the weather can do to a house
| Measure | Tampa | Hialeah | Advantage |
|---|---|---|---|
| January mean | 16.7 °C | 19.7 °C | Not directly comparable |
| July mean | 28.8 °C | 28.5 °C | Not directly comparable |
| Precipitation a year | 1,176 mm | 1,852 mm | Not directly comparable |
| Snowfall a year | 0 cm | 0 cm | Not directly comparable |
| Sunshine a year | Not published | 3,154 hours | Not directly comparable |
NOAA NCEI 1991-2020 normals, Tampa International Airport (USW00012842): January mean 62.0 F, July mean 83.8 F (August is the warmest month at 84.0 F), annual precipitation 46.30 in, annual snow normal 0. About 30 of those inches (762 mm) fall June through September. Sunshine hours are not part of the 1991-2020 normals product and were not verified.
Hazards: Hurricanes and storm surge are the defining hazard: Helene's surge in September 2024 flooded coastal Tampa Bay neighborhoods, then Milton made landfall near Siesta Key on October 9, 2024 as a Category 3, and 2024 alone generated 10,261 NFIP flood claims and about $1.1 billion in payouts in Hillsborough County. Flood insurance is effectively required in much of the city and has grown costlier under NFIP Risk Rating 2.0; summer heat indices above 100 F and daily lightning storms are routine from June to September.
NOAA NCEI 1991-2020 normals for the Hialeah cooperative station (USC00083909), about 3.8 miles south-southeast of the city's center and about half a mile outside its southern limit. It is used rather than Miami International Airport (USW00012839), 5.5 miles south, because it is closer and has a complete set of 1991-2020 monthly and annual normals for temperature, precipitation and snowfall. Its temperature normals rest on 27 to 29 years of the 30 and meet NCEI's standard completeness in every month; five months of its precipitation normals (April and July to October) are flagged representative, from 21 to 23 years, while the airport's precipitation rests on all 30. The nearer Opa-locka airport (USW00012882, 2.9 miles) has no snowfall normal and only 18 to 23 years in any element. January mean 67.4F, July mean 83.3F, annual mean 76.6F, 72.93 in of precipitation and 0.0 in of snow. August is the warmest month at 83.5F, with a mean high of 90.1F; January's mean low is 59.1F. September (11.53 in) and June (11.45 in) are the wettest months, June through September bring 40.88 in, 56% of the year, and May through October 76%; January (2.03 in) is the driest. The normals count 91.0 days a year at 90F or above, 0.2 at 100F and none at or below freezing. Converted here to 19.7 C, 28.5 C, 1,852 mm and 0 cm. Miami International, whose normals the Miami profile stores, is a little warmer and drier: 68.6F in January, 84.1F in July and 67.41 in a year, with 91.4 days at 90F. Hialeah's January is the second warmest of the Florida cities this site compares after Miami's, and its rain is the most of any of them. Sunshine is Miami's: the normals carry none, and the 3,154 hours stored here, 70% of possible with 74 clear days, are Current Results' figure for Miami from NCDC's 1961-1990 Comparative Climatic Data, the source of the other US profiles' sunshine hours; Current Results lists no Hialeah station.
Hazards: Hurricanes, rain flooding and heat. The last hurricane to bring hurricane-force gusts was Irma, which came ashore at Cudjoe Key and then Marco Island on 10 September 2017, well to the southwest: nearly every inland station in the Miami-Dade and Broward metro area reported sustained winds just below hurricane force, Opa-locka Airport, 2.9 miles north of the city's center, recorded 56 kt (64 mph) sustained with a gust of 74 kt (85 mph), Miami International a gust of 63 kt (72 mph), and about 1,000 homes in Miami-Dade had major damage (National Hurricane Center). That 72 mph gust is the airport's strongest since 2010, and it had 5.18 in of rain that day. Rain is the more frequent problem in a flat, low city: the airport's wettest day since 2010 was 9.70 in on 22 May 2012, and it had 7.53 in on 15 November 2023 and 6.25 in on 12 June 2024. FEMA's flood map puts City Hall in zone AH, a special flood hazard area for shallow ponding, with a base flood elevation of 8 ft (panel 12086C0284L, effective 11 September 2009), so flood insurance can be a lender's requirement well inland from the coast. Heat: 91.0 days a year at 90F or above on the Hialeah normals; the airport recorded 139 such days in 2023, the most since 2010, and 115 in 2026 through 29 September, and reached 100F (37.8 C) on 18 August 2026, its only reading that high since 2010. Cold is brief: the airport's lowest reading since 2010 is 35F, on 10 January 2010 and again on 1 February 2026, and the normals count no nights at or below freezing.
What people earn and what the government takes
| Measure | Tampa | Hialeah | Advantage |
|---|---|---|---|
| Median household income | $84,114 USD (2024) | $57,151 USD (2024) | Tampa |
| Unemployment rate | 4.7% (June 2026) | 3.7% (July 2026) | Hialeah |
| Sales tax | 7.5% | 7% | Hialeah |
| Top marginal income tax Federal plus provincial or state. The American figure leaves out payroll taxes and the cost of health insurance, both of which a Canadian household covers through the tax it pays here. | 37% | 37% | Even |
| Income tax on $100,000, single filer Tampa and Hialeah sit under one province's or state's income tax, so the two cells describe the same tax and any difference between them is one of method rather than of tax. Florida levies no income tax, so both cells are the federal bill on $100,000 and they agree to the dollar. The Advantage column is Even for that reason, and the essay below says the same thing. | $13,449 USD | $13,449 USD | Even |
BLS counted 1,583,300 nonfarm jobs in the MSA in December 2025, up 0.9% over the year, with education and health services (+4.2%) and leisure and hospitality (+2.0%) leading and the May 2025 mean hourly wage of $31.96 sitting below the US average of $33.54. The largest industries by employment in the metro in 2024 were health care and social assistance, retail trade, and professional, scientific and technical services (Census ACS via Data USA).
Main sectors: Health care and social assistance, Finance, insurance and professional services, Retail and leisure/hospitality, Port, logistics and defense (Port Tampa Bay, MacDill AFB), Higher education and research (USF, Moffitt).
Florida has no state income tax, estate tax or inheritance tax. Property tax is the main local levy; homesteaded owners get a $50,000 exemption and the Save Our Homes 3% annual assessment cap, which means long-time owners pay much less than a new buyer of the same house.
BLS counted 1,349,400 nonfarm jobs in the Miami-Miami Beach-Kendall metropolitan division, which is Miami-Dade County, in August 2026 (not seasonally adjusted, preliminary), up 6,200 or 0.5% on the year. Professional and business services (+5,300, or 2.5%, to 221,300), private education and health services (+4,600, or 2.0%, to 229,600), leisure and hospitality (+2,900, or 1.9%, to 153,400) and wholesale trade (+1,500, or 1.8%, to 82,800) added the most, while financial activities lost 5,100 (-5.0%, to 96,700), government 1,100 and transportation, warehousing and utilities 1,000. Trade, transportation and utilities is the largest supersector at 324,900, 24% of the county's jobs. The City's 2025 financial report lists its ten principal employers, led by Palmetto General Hospital (1,635), the City (1,492), UPS (1,119) and Hialeah Hospital (1,032), at 8,995 jobs, 7.8% of employment in the city on the City's count; six of the ten carry exactly the headcount they had in 2016, so the list has not been recounted for most of them. Most residents work elsewhere in the county: 61.8% of the city's workers (74,100 of 119,984) worked outside Hialeah in 2024, but only 9.8% (11,754) outside Miami-Dade. 13.2% worked from home, and the mean commute for the rest was 30 minutes, with 11.4% spending an hour or more (ACS 2024 1-year, B08007, B08008, B08013, B08101 and B08303).
Main sectors: Health care: Palmetto General Hospital (1,635 staff) is the city's largest employer, and Hialeah Hospital (1,032), Larkin Community Hospital's Palm Springs campus (683) and La Colonia Medical Centers (527) are also among its ten largest, in a county sector (private education and health services, 229,600 jobs) that added 4,600 jobs over the year, Shipping, wholesale and warehousing: United Parcel Service (1,119) is the third-largest employer, in a city beside Miami International Airport; Miami-Dade's wholesale trade employs 82,800 and its transportation, warehousing and utilities 98,400, Groceries and retail: Publix (771), Fresco y Más (741) and Sedano's (545) among the ten largest employers, the many independent shops and supermarkets on the main streets that Wikipedia describes, and Westland Mall, in a county with 143,700 retail jobs, City government: the City of Hialeah (1,492, down from 1,755 in 2016), which runs its own police, fire department, library and free bus service, Light industry: the garment and manufacturing plants that made Hialeah an industrial city in the 1970s and 1980s have mostly gone, replaced in part by electronics and technology businesses (Wikipedia); Miami-Dade's manufacturing employs 46,800, 3.5% of its jobs.
Property tax is the local levy that matters. Tax Foundation puts Florida's effective property tax rate on owner-occupied homes at 0.78%, and a homestead exemption takes as much as $50,000 off a permanent residence's taxable value and brings the Save Our Homes limit on how fast its assessment can rise (Florida Department of Revenue). A property in the City of Hialeah (Miami-Dade millage code 0400) paid 18.6468 mills for 2025 on the Miami-Dade Property Appraiser's adopted chart, down from 18.6638 in 2024: the City's own 6.3018 plus the 12.3450 of school, county and regional levies every municipality in the county pays. Hialeah runs its own fire department and its own library, so it pays neither the county Fire Rescue district's 2.3965 mills nor the library district's 0.2812. The City has held its rate at 6.3018 for at least ten years while taxable value rose 11.0% in fiscal 2025 to $22.2 billion (City of Hialeah financial report), and the appraiser's proposed 2026 table keeps it there, for a total of 18.6134. Miami-Dade is also the one Florida county with its own deed tax: 60 cents per $100 rather than the statewide 70, plus a 45-cent surtax that is not due on a transfer of a single-family dwelling only (Florida Department of Revenue), so a house at Hialeah's typical value of $445,331 carries about $2,672 and a condominium or duplex at the same price about $4,676, the seller's by convention. Zillow's typical home value for the city was $445,331 in June 2026, down 1.5% on the year, and its observed rent $2,374; the bills, insurance and flood exposure that follow belong to the housing layer.
Whether you need a car
| Measure | Tampa | Hialeah | Advantage |
|---|---|---|---|
| System | HART (Hillsborough Area Regional Transit) buses, the TECO Line Streetcar between downtown and Ybor City, and HART's MetroRapid and on-demand HARTFlex services | Miami-Dade County's Department of Transportation and Public Works runs Metrobus across the city and Metrorail's Green Line, which stops at Okeechobee and Hialeah stations inside the city and at the Tri-Rail and Metrorail Transfer Station on its southern edge; Tri-Rail, the commuter railroad to Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach, stops at the transfer station and at Hialeah Market (Wikipedia). The City runs its own free bus service, Hialeah Transit, which in 2023 ran two routes, Flamingo and Marlin, with a free on-demand service through the Freebee app from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. on weekdays and 3 p.m. to 9 p.m. on weekends, most of its cost covered by a county half-penny tax (NBC 6 South Florida). By road the city is bounded or crossed by Interstate 75, the Palmetto Expressway (State Road 826), the Homestead Extension of Florida's Turnpike, Okeechobee Road (US 27) and the Gratigny Parkway (Wikipedia). | Not directly comparable |
| Commute by public transit | 1.2% (2024) | 1.4% (2024) | Hialeah |
| Walk or cycle to work | 3.4% (2024) | 2.3% (2024) | Tampa |
| Airport | Tampa International Airport (TPA), 24,811,007 passengers in calendar 2025 (+0.22% on 2024), 27th busiest US airport, 635 daily flights, Southwest the largest carrier at 24% (TPA Fact Sheet, June 2026). | Miami International Airport (MIA), about 5.4 miles south of the city's center, handled 55,314,661 passengers in 2025, 1.1% below 2024's record 55,926,566 (Wikipedia, from the airport's traffic reports). Tri-Rail, from the Tri-Rail and Metrorail Transfer Station on the city's southern edge, connects the city to it and north to West Palm Beach (Wikipedia). | Not directly comparable |
HART carried about 11.94 million unlinked trips in 2025 (APTA Transit Ridership Report, Q4 2025). The 2.7-mile TECO Line Streetcar, fare-free since 2018, carried 1,323,715 riders in 2024, its record year.
Miami-Dade's transit system carried 81,459,917 unlinked trips in 2025 on the National Transit Database's monthly ridership file (Federal Transit Administration): 55.6 million on Metrobus, 15.0 million on Metrorail, 7.8 million on the Metromover downtown, 290,161 on its new bus rapid transit and the rest on demand-response, vanpool and commuter bus service. That is 20% below the 102.1 million of 2019 and 4.3% below 2024's 85.2 million, and January to August 2026 ran 1.3% below the same months of 2025. The Miami profile's 80.8 million is APTA's count for the same year. Tri-Rail carried 4,552,250 commuter rail trips in 2025, level with 2024 and above 2019's 4,495,039 (same file). The City's own buses do not report monthly to the NTD; in October 2023 its transit manager put them at almost 30,000 riders a month, 11,000 of them on the on-demand service (NBC 6 South Florida).
Health care, schools and what each city is like
Health care
Care is paid for through employer plans, ACA marketplace plans, Medicare and Medicaid; Florida has not expanded Medicaid, so low-income adults without children often fall into the coverage gap, and out-of-pocket costs depend entirely on the plan. Tampa General Hospital (the USF Health teaching hospital, ranked the top hospital in the Tampa Bay region by U.S. News for 11 straight years through 2026-2027, with OB-GYN ranked fifth nationally in 2025-2026), Moffitt Cancer Center (an NCI-designated comprehensive cancer center), AdventHealth Tampa, St. Joseph's and the James A. Haley VA are the major hospitals; specialist waits are usually weeks rather than months but vary by insurer network.
Education
The University of South Florida (about 48,700 students across Tampa, St. Petersburg and Sarasota-Manatee in 2025-26, an AAU member since 2023) and the private University of Tampa anchor higher education, with Hillsborough Community College for two-year programs. Schools are run by a single county district, Hillsborough County Public Schools, the seventh-largest in the US, whose 40-day enrollment fell 3.9% to 213,513 in 2025-26 as families took state vouchers and charters; it runs 42 magnet schools (about 17,500 students in 2024-25) with admission by lottery, so the school you get depends as much on the choice application as on the address.
Living there
Tampa is a flat, hot, car-first city where a 26-minute average commute hides the reality that I-275 and the Howard Frankland Bridge back up daily and transit carries about one commuter in a hundred. The walkable parts are concentrated: the Riverwalk, Hyde Park, Seminole Heights and Ybor City, with the streetcar linking downtown to Ybor for free. Flood zone and elevation now matter as much as school zone when picking a house, after Helene's surge in 2024 showed which streets go under; summers mean afternoon lightning storms and heat indices over 100 F from June into September.
Health care
Care is paid for through employer or marketplace insurance, Medicare and Medicaid, and Florida is one of the ten states that have not expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act (KFF). The City of Hialeah's uninsured rate was 15.1% in 2024 (35,490 of 234,398, ACS 2024 1-year), above Miami-Dade's 12.4%, Florida's 10.9% and the national 8.2%. The city has two acute care hospitals, Hialeah Hospital and Palmetto General Hospital, which Steward Health Care bought from Tenet in August 2021 and lost in its bankruptcy: a court approved their sale to Healthcare Systems of America on 25 October 2024, and Hialeah Hospital is now owned by Medical Properties Trust and operated by that company (Wikipedia). Palmetto General is the city's largest employer (1,635 staff) and Hialeah Hospital its fourth (1,032), with Larkin Community Hospital's Palm Springs campus (683) and La Colonia Medical Centers (527) also among the ten largest (City of Hialeah). Wikipedia gives Hialeah Hospital 378 beds from the hospital's own site of 2015; this file did not verify a current bed count for either hospital, or a wait time figure for primary or specialist care.
Education
Miami-Dade County Public Schools runs the city's public schools. The district counted 18,910 fewer students on the first days of 2026-27 than at the end of 2025-26, a first-day snapshot it says the October count will refine, with private school vouchers, the cost of living and immigration enforcement among the reasons given; it had already closed or consolidated nine schools, and the 27 more it has put under review or reassessment do not include any named in Hialeah (WLRN; CBS News Miami). Wikipedia's list of the schools serving the city includes Hialeah Senior High, Hialeah-Miami Lakes Senior High and Westland Hialeah Senior High, with the José Martí MAST 6-12 magnet academy and the City of Hialeah Educational Academy, a charter school (Wikipedia). Miami Dade College has had a Hialeah campus since 1980. The City runs its own public library system, founded in 1924, a year before the city was incorporated, and outside the county's library district, which is why the county library levy does not appear on Hialeah tax bills (Wikipedia; Miami-Dade Property Appraiser).
Living there
Hialeah is the most Cuban city in the United States. It was laid out in 1921 by the aviator Glenn Curtiss and the cattleman James Bright on a prairie between Biscayne Bay and the Everglades, incorporated in 1925, the year Hialeah Park's racetrack opened, and became a working-class city after 1959 as successive waves of Cuban exiles settled there (Wikipedia). On the ACS 2024 1-year estimates 95.3% of its people are Hispanic, 72.7% are of Cuban origin and 77.1% were born outside the United States, against 55.3% for Miami-Dade; 91.9% speak Spanish at home and 59.5% speak English less than very well (2020-2024 5-year). It is dense, about 10,700 people per square mile of land, and one of the few places in the county with a street grid numbered separately from Miami's. It has the second-lowest household income of the Florida cities this site compares ($57,151, above only Tallahassee's) and, after Miami and Orlando, the lowest share of owners (42.8%), but its unemployment is low (2.3% in July 2026) and most of its workers have jobs inside Miami-Dade. It is also older than its reputation, with a median age of 46.0. It barely grew from 2020 to 2025 (3.5%) and lost people in the last year, as Miami-Dade did. Violent crime in 2025 was 178 per 100,000, half Miami's, with three homicides. Its own government does more than most: it runs its fire department, its library and free buses, and its property tax rate has not moved from 6.3018 mills in a decade.
Where each city wins, and where it loses
Both cities price in US dollars and both headlines are Zillow's typical home value for the city across all homes in June 2026, financed at Freddie Mac's August rate of 6.67%, so this is one of the pairs where the figures net directly with neither a measure gap nor a rate gap. Tampa's typical home was $380,283, 2.1% below a year earlier, the city's row in the Tampa Bay layer, and Hialeah's $445,331, 1.5% below, its row in the Miami-Dade layer; Hialeah's is about 1.17 times Tampa's. Against local pay the gap widens: the headlines are 4.5 times the City of Tampa's 2024 median household income of $84,114 and 7.8 times Hialeah's $57,151, the lowest of the Florida cities this site compares. At 20% down, Tampa's $304,226 loan costs $1,957 a month and Hialeah's $356,265 loan $2,292. A homesteaded buyer's first-year property tax is about $6,712 in Tampa, 1.77% of the price on Hillsborough's published 19.8428 mills, against $7,534 in Hialeah, 1.69% on 18.6468, a lower millage on a higher price, and insurance is budgeted at $390 and $505 a month, the Tampa Bay layer's band for a coastal address and the Miami-Dade layer's mainland figure, neither including flood. The three lines come to about $2,906 and $3,425, roughly 41% and 72% of local median income, and of the $519 gap $335 is the mortgage, $69 the tax and $115 the insurance. Renters see the same order: Zillow's observed rent index was $1,999 in Tampa and $2,374 in Hialeah in June 2026, about 29% and 50% of median income. Condominium fees are estimated at $700 a month against $850, neither of them a published average.
Only 2024 has the FBI's counts for both cities, and on them Hialeah reports far less violent crime and fewer homicides, while property crime is close once its missing car thefts are put back. Tampa had 1,817 violent offenses that year, 445 per 100,000, and 5,988 property offenses, 1,465. Hialeah had 415 violent offenses, about 178 per 100,000 on that year's estimate, and 3,632 property offenses, about 1,558. That property figure is understated: the FBI's copy carries 22 motor vehicle thefts for the department in 2024, against 488 in the file of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, which feeds the FBI, because the FBI's series stopped carrying them in October 2023, and with the state's count in place Hialeah's rate would be about 1,760. For 2025 Hialeah's FBI counts give 178 violent and 1,417 property offenses per 100,000, and Tampa's own count, preliminary until certified, about 375.5 violent crimes. Homicide is the count least changed by definitions, and there Hialeah is far lower: 3 in 2025, about 1.3 per 100,000, against 17 in Tampa, about 4.1 and the lowest there in more than 50 years. Both are falling. Tampa's violent count has dropped every year since 2023 and its total crime fell 21.3% in 2025. Hialeah's violent offenses have fallen every year since 2022, from 474 to 412, and January to July 2026 brought 192 against 246 in the same months of 2025; leaving out the car thefts, its property offenses fell 14% over three years. The Hialeah counts were read on 2 October 2026 and can still be revised.
Hialeah has the warmer winter and much the wetter year, and the two cities flood from different directions. January averages 19.7 C at the Hialeah cooperative station, about half a mile outside the city's southern limit, against 16.7 C at Tampa International, 67.4F against 62.0F, 5.4 F warmer; July averages 28.5 C against 28.8 C, 83.3F against 83.8F, and August is the warmest month in both, 83.5F and 84.0F. Hialeah gets 1,852 mm of rain a year, the most of any Florida city this site compares, and Tampa 1,176 mm; about 30 in of Tampa's falls from June through September, against 40.88 in of Hialeah's, and neither has snow in the normals. Hialeah's normals count 91.0 days a year at 90F or above and no freezing nights, and Tampa's profile describes heat indices above 100 F and daily lightning storms from June into September. Hialeah's sunshine figure, 3,154 hours, is Miami's on the older series; Tampa's was not verified. Tampa's defining hazard is surge: Helene's flooded coastal Tampa Bay neighborhoods in September 2024, Milton came ashore at Siesta Key as a Category 3 two weeks later, and Hillsborough County generated 10,261 flood insurance claims and about $1.1 billion in payouts that year. Hialeah is inland, and its risk is rain on flat, low ground. FEMA's map puts its City Hall in zone AH, a special flood hazard area for shallow ponding with a base flood elevation of 8 ft, and on the City's own flood layer 90,311 of its 223,109 residents at the 2020 census, about two in five, lived in a mapped flood zone. Miami International, 5.4 miles south, had 9.70 in of rain on 22 May 2012, its wettest day since 2010, and the last hurricane-force gusts near Hialeah were Irma's in September 2017, 85 mph at Opa-locka Airport, 2.9 miles north of the city's center, when about 1,000 homes in Miami-Dade had major damage.
Hialeah's metro has the lower unemployment, and Tampa's households earn far more. On the same unadjusted basis BLS put July 2026 unemployment at 3.7% for the Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach metro and 4.8% for Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater, with the City of Hialeah itself at 2.3%. Miami-Dade, the Miami-Miami Beach-Kendall division, had 1,349,400 nonfarm jobs in August 2026, 0.5% more than a year earlier; the Tampa metro had 1,583,300 in December 2025, 0.9% more, with education and health services and leisure and hospitality in front. Tampa's base is the port, MacDill Air Force Base, Tampa General, USF and Moffitt, and finance, insurance and professional services. Hialeah's largest employers are its hospitals, Palmetto General with 1,635 staff and Hialeah Hospital, the City itself, UPS beside the airport, and the grocers, Publix, Fresco y Más and Sedano's; 61.8% of its workers worked outside the city in 2024 but only 9.8% outside Miami-Dade, and the mean commute was 30 minutes against Tampa's 26.1. Median household income was $84,114 in the City of Tampa in 2024 and $57,151 in Hialeah, $26,963 less, against $78,275 across Tampa Bay and $80,625 across greater Miami. Hialeah's residents are older, with a median age of 46.0, and fewer of them own their homes, 42.8%. On the 2024 estimates 95.3% of them are Hispanic and 72.7% of Cuban origin, and 91.9% speak Spanish at home. Florida takes no income tax in either, so $100,000 pays the same $13,449 in federal tax for 2025. Sales tax is 7.5% in Hillsborough, whose three half-cent surtaxes pay for school capital, indigent care and infrastructure, against 7% in Miami-Dade. Property tax and insurance come to about $11,392 a year on Tampa's typical home and $13,594 on Hialeah's.
Neither is a city to live in without a car, and Hialeah's transit share is a little the higher of the two, with rail at its edge. In 2024, 1.2% of City of Tampa workers commuted by transit and 3.4% walked or cycled, against 1.4% and 2.3% in Hialeah, where 68.5% drove alone. HART carried about 11.94 million trips across Hillsborough in 2025, and its 2.7-mile TECO Line streetcar, fare-free since 2018, carried a record 1,323,715 riders in 2024 between downtown and Ybor City. Hialeah is served by Miami-Dade's system, which carried 81,459,917 trips in 2025 on the National Transit Database's count: Metrobus across the city and Metrorail's Green Line, with Okeechobee and Hialeah stations inside it and the Tri-Rail and Metrorail Transfer Station on its southern edge, where Tri-Rail runs north to Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach. The City also runs its own free buses, two routes and an on-demand service that carried almost 30,000 riders a month in 2023. Tampa has no passenger rail, and its profile notes that I-275 and the Howard Frankland Bridge back up daily; Hialeah is bounded or crossed by Interstate 75, the Palmetto Expressway, the Homestead Extension of Florida's Turnpike and Okeechobee Road. Tampa International, in the city, handled 24,811,007 passengers in 2025 on 635 daily flights. Miami International, about 5.4 miles south of Hialeah's center, handled 55,314,661.
Florida has not expanded Medicaid, so coverage in both runs through an employer or marketplace plan, Medicare or Medicaid, and Tampa's profile notes that low-income adults without children often fall into the gap. Hialeah's uninsured rate was 15.1% in 2024, against Miami-Dade's 12.4%, Florida's 10.9% and the national 8.2%; Tampa's profile gives no city rate. Tampa has the region's largest hospitals: Tampa General, the USF Health teaching hospital, ranked the top hospital in the Tampa Bay region by U.S. News for 11 straight years through 2026-2027, Moffitt, an NCI-designated comprehensive cancer center, AdventHealth Tampa, St. Joseph's and the James A. Haley VA. Hialeah has two acute care hospitals, Hialeah Hospital and Palmetto General, which Steward Health Care bought from Tenet in August 2021 and lost in its bankruptcy; a court approved their sale to Healthcare Systems of America on 25 October 2024. Tampa's profile puts specialist waits in weeks; Hialeah's verified none. Both county districts are shrinking. Hillsborough County Public Schools enrolled 213,513 in 2025-26, 3.9% fewer than a year earlier as families took vouchers and charters, and admits to its 42 magnets by lottery. Miami-Dade County Public Schools counted 18,910 fewer students on the first days of 2026-27 than at the end of 2025-26, a snapshot the October count will refine, and has closed or consolidated nine schools and put 27 more under review, none of them named in Hialeah. Tampa has the University of South Florida, about 48,700 students across three campuses, the University of Tampa and Hillsborough Community College; Hialeah has a Miami Dade College campus, open since 1980, the José Martí MAST 6-12 magnet academy and a public library system the City has run since 1924.
What people underestimate is that Tampa's bill carries the higher rate and still comes out lower, and what neither carry includes. Tampa's council sets 6.2076 of the 19.8428 mills on a City address. Hialeah's City levies 6.3018 of 18.6468, a rate it has held for at least ten years, and its address pays neither the Miami-Dade Fire Rescue district's 2.3965 nor the county library district's 0.2812, because the City runs its own fire department and library. The rules are the state's in both. $25,000 of taxable value comes off every levy for a homestead and a second slice off all but the school district's, Save Our Homes caps a homestead's assessment at 3% a year and resets it on a sale, and the exemption has to be filed with the property appraiser by 1 March of the year after you buy; without it the bills are about $7,546 and $8,304. Closing costs differ by county. Hillsborough charges the seller the state's documentary stamp of 70 cents per $100, about $2,662 on Tampa's typical home, and Miami-Dade 60 cents on a single-family house, about $2,672 on Hialeah's, with a 45-cent surtax on a condominium or duplex that brings it to about $4,676; the buyer pays 0.55% of the loan in both, about $1,673 and $1,959. Then the water. Tampa's insurance line is the Tampa Bay layer's band for a coastal address, and inside the city the ground runs from nine feet above the bay in the Channel District to forty-nine in Seminole Heights. Hialeah's is the Miami-Dade layer's mainland figure, against a county average of about $6,045 a year, in a city where the share of residents in a mapped flood zone runs from under a tenth in some parts to all of the newest ground west of Interstate 75, and where unpermitted additions are common enough that a permit search is a standard step. Neither includes flood, a separate policy priced on the elevation certificate, which has grown costlier under the federal program's Risk Rating 2.0. And the two are moving in different directions: Tampa grew 7.3% from 2020 to 2025, while Hialeah grew 3.5% and lost 2,210 residents in 2024-25, the year Miami-Dade shrank by 10,115.
Better here
- City median household income was $84,114 in 2024, $26,963 more than Hialeah's $57,151, so the carry is about 41% of it against 72%.
- Mortgage, property tax and insurance come to about $2,906 a month on the June 2026 typical home, $519 less than Hialeah's $3,425 at the same 6.67% rate.
- Zillow's observed rent index was $1,999 in June 2026, about 29% of median income, against $2,374 and 50% in Hialeah.
- Tampa General has been the region's top-ranked hospital for 11 straight years through 2026-2027, and Moffitt is an NCI-designated comprehensive cancer center.
- Tampa International, which handled 24,811,007 passengers in 2025 on 635 daily flights, is in the city.
- The city grew 7.3% from 2020 to 2025, against 3.5% in Hialeah, which lost residents in 2024-25.
Worse here
- On the FBI's 2024 counts violent crime ran 445 per 100,000, against about 178 in Hialeah, and the department's own 2025 count gives about 375.5.
- There were 17 homicides in 2025, about 4.1 per 100,000, against 3 and about 1.3 in Hialeah.
- Metro unemployment was 4.8% in July 2026, not seasonally adjusted, against 3.7% around Miami.
- Sales tax is 7.5% in Hillsborough against 7% in Miami-Dade, and a City address pays 19.8428 mills against 18.6468.
- Helene and Milton produced 10,261 flood insurance claims and about $1.1 billion in payouts in Hillsborough County in 2024.
- January averages 16.7 C, 5.4 F cooler than Hialeah's 19.7 C, and only 1.2% of workers commuted by transit in 2024.
Choose Tampa if
- you work at Tampa General, Moffitt, USF, MacDill or the port
- you want household pay that carries the typical home at about 41% of median income
- you want the streetcar, Ybor City and the Riverwalk, and the airport in your own city
- you will buy on elevation, and Tampa's higher ground is where you want to look
The Tampa guide · Neighborhoods · Tampa rent vs buy · Tampa mortgage calculator
Better here
- Violent crime was about 178 per 100,000 on the FBI's 2024 and 2025 counts, against Tampa's 445 in 2024, and there were 3 homicides in 2025 against 17.
- Metro unemployment was 3.7% in July 2026, not seasonally adjusted, against 4.8% around Tampa Bay, and the city's own rate 2.3%.
- January averages 19.7 C with no freezing nights on the normals, against 16.7 C at Tampa International.
- Two Metrorail stations are inside the city, Tri-Rail stops on its southern edge, and the City runs its own free buses.
- A City address pays 18.6468 mills against Tampa's 19.8428, because the City runs its own fire department and library, and sales tax is 7% against 7.5%.
- Miami International, which handled 55,314,661 passengers in 2025, is about 5.4 miles south of the city's center.
Worse here
- Mortgage, property tax and insurance come to about $3,425 a month on the June 2026 typical home, roughly 72% of median household income, against $2,906 and 41% in Tampa at the same rate.
- City median household income was $57,151 in 2024, the lowest of the Florida cities this site compares and $26,963 below Tampa's.
- Zillow's observed rent index was $2,374 in June 2026, about half of median income, against $1,999 in Tampa.
- The uninsured rate was 15.1% in 2024, against Florida's 10.9%, and both of the city's hospitals went through Steward Health Care's bankruptcy.
- About two in five residents at the 2020 census lived in a mapped flood zone on the City's layer, and the rain normal, 1,852 mm, is the most of any Florida city here.
- The FBI's property crime count carries almost none of the city's car thefts, so the published rate is low, and the population fell by 2,210 in 2024-25.
Choose Hialeah if
- you want well under half of Tampa's violent crime rate and a metro with unemployment under 4%
- you work in Miami-Dade's hospitals, shipping, warehouses or groceries, or near the airport
- you want a 19.7 C January and Metrorail into Miami
- you want to live in Spanish, and will check the flood zone for rain and the permits for additions
The Hialeah guide · Neighborhoods · Hialeah rent vs buy · Hialeah mortgage calculator
Tampa or Hialeah, in short
Is Tampa or Hialeah cheaper to live in?
Tampa, on the house, the rent and against local pay. Both headlines are Zillow's typical home value for June 2026, priced at the same 6.67% rate, so the figures net directly: $380,283 in Tampa and $445,331 in Hialeah. The mortgage at 20% down is $1,957 against $2,292, property tax about $6,712 a year against $7,534, and insurance $390 a month against $505, so the three lines come to about $2,906 and $3,425, roughly 41% and 72% of each city's median household income, $84,114 and $57,151. Neither includes flood cover. Zillow's observed rent index was $1,999 in Tampa and $2,374 in Hialeah. Neither city levies income tax, and sales tax is 7.5% in Hillsborough against 7% in Miami-Dade.
Is Tampa or Hialeah safer?
Hialeah, on violent crime and homicide; property crime is close once its missing car thefts are counted. On the FBI's 2024 counts, the one year with figures for both, Tampa had 445 violent and 1,465 property offenses per 100,000 and Hialeah about 178 and 1,558, a figure that carries 22 car thefts where the state's file has 488; with the state's count Hialeah's would be about 1,760. For 2025 Hialeah's FBI counts give 178 and 1,417, and Tampa's own preliminary count about 375.5 violent crimes. Homicides in 2025 were 3 in Hialeah, about 1.3 per 100,000, and 17 in Tampa, about 4.1, the lowest there in more than 50 years. Both are falling: Tampa's total crime fell 21.3% in 2025, and Hialeah's violent offenses for January to July 2026 were 22% below the same months of 2025.
Which has the better job market, Tampa or Hialeah?
Hialeah's metro has the lower unemployment and Tampa's households the higher pay. On the same unadjusted basis BLS put July 2026 unemployment at 3.7% for the Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach metro and 4.8% for Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater; the City of Hialeah was 2.3%. Tampa's anchors are the port, MacDill, Tampa General, USF and Moffitt, and finance and insurance; Hialeah's largest employers are Palmetto General, the City, UPS and Hialeah Hospital, and most of its workers commute elsewhere in Miami-Dade. Median household income was $84,114 in Tampa and $57,151 in Hialeah in 2024.
Which is more exposed to storms and flooding, Tampa or Hialeah?
Both, in different ways, and neither figure here includes flood. Tampa's risk is surge: Helene flooded coastal Tampa Bay neighborhoods in September 2024, Milton followed two weeks later, and Hillsborough County generated 10,261 flood insurance claims and about $1.1 billion in payouts that year; flood cover is effectively required in much of the city. Hialeah is inland and floods from rain on flat, low ground: FEMA puts City Hall in zone AH, a shallow ponding zone with a base flood elevation of 8 ft, and about two in five of its residents at the 2020 census lived in a mapped flood zone on the City's layer. Its last hurricane-force gusts were Irma's in 2017, 85 mph at Opa-locka Airport just north of the city. In both, the elevation certificate prices the flood policy.
Where the figures come from
Housing figures are the ones behind each city's calculators, dated on those pages. The rest are listed here with the date they were retrieved. See the methodology for how facts, estimates and opinion are kept apart.
- Tampa, FL Population (2025), citing US Census Bureau PEP Vintage 2025 · Every City in the USA (compiling US Census Bureau) · retrieved Supports: City population, Five-year growth
- Resident Population in Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater, FL (MSA), TMAPOP · FRED, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis (US Census Bureau data) · retrieved Supports: Metro population, Five-year growth
- Florida Metropolitan Statistical Areas, 2025 Estimate · Florida Office of Economic and Demographic Research · retrieved Supports: Metro population
- Tampa Police Department Annual Report 2025: Strength in Partnerships · City of Tampa · retrieved Supports: Violent crime rate, Homicides, Crime trend, Property crime rate
- Tampa crime drops in 2025, outpacing national trend: TPD · FOX 13 Tampa Bay · retrieved Supports: Crime trend
- Tampa police sees drop in homicides, violent crime for 2025 · WTSP 10 Tampa Bay · retrieved Supports: Homicides
- Tampa, St. Pete homicides, other crimes drop to lowest level in 50+ years · FOX 13 Tampa Bay · retrieved Supports: Homicides
- Tampa Police Release Mid-Year Crime Stats Showing Significant Reductions · City of Tampa · retrieved Supports: Crime trend
- Tampa, FL Crime Rates: Stats & Map (FBI UCR 2024 data) · AreaVibes · retrieved Supports: Property crime rate, Homicides, Violent crime rate
- US Climate Normals 1991-2020, station USW00012842 Tampa International Airport (Access Data Service) · NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information · retrieved Supports: January mean, July mean, Annual precipitation, Annual snowfall
- Milton misses worst-case scenario, devastates Florida · Cotality (formerly CoreLogic) · retrieved Supports: Climate hazards
- Flooding the zone · UF Warrington College of Business · retrieved Supports: Climate hazards
- FEMA Exercises Borrowing Authority for National Flood Insurance Program · FEMA · retrieved Supports: Climate hazards
- Tampa, FL profile, ACS 2024 1-year · Census Reporter (US Census Bureau ACS) · retrieved Supports: Median household income, Transit commute share, Walk and cycle commute share
- ACS 2024 1-year tables B08301 and B19013 for Tampa city and Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater MSA · Census Reporter API (US Census Bureau ACS) · retrieved Supports: Median household income, Transit commute share, Walk and cycle commute share
- Unemployment Rate in Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater, FL (MSA), TAMP312URN · FRED, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis (BLS LAUS data) · retrieved Supports: Unemployment rate
- What is the unemployment rate in the Tampa, FL area right now? · USAFacts (BLS data) · retrieved Supports: Unemployment rate
- Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater, FL: Southeast Information Office · US Bureau of Labor Statistics · retrieved Supports: Labour market
- Occupational Employment and Wages in Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater, FL, May 2025 · US Bureau of Labor Statistics · retrieved Supports: Labour market
- Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater, FL · Data USA (Census ACS) · retrieved Supports: Main sectors, Labour market
- TIP 25A01-12: Hillsborough County Surtax Rate Update · Florida Department of Revenue · retrieved Supports: Sales tax
- 2025 Tax Brackets · Tax Foundation · retrieved Supports: Top marginal income tax, Income tax on $100,000
- Hillsborough Area Regional Transit (citing APTA Transit Ridership Report Q4 2025) · Wikipedia · retrieved Supports: Transit ridership
- TECO Line Streetcar · Wikipedia · retrieved Supports: Transit ridership
- TPA Fact Sheet: Activity Report, Calendar Year 2025 · Tampa International Airport / Hillsborough County Aviation Authority · retrieved Supports: Airport passengers
- Tampa General Is the Top-Ranked Hospital in the Tampa Bay Region for the 11th Year in a Row, According to U.S. News & World Report · Tampa General Hospital via PR Newswire · retrieved Supports: Health care
- Tampa General again named the top hospital in Tampa Bay; OB-GYN rises to No. 5 in the U.S. · USF Health · retrieved Supports: Health care
- State University System of Florida 2025-2026 Matrix · Florida Board of Governors · retrieved Supports: Education
- HCPS data shows total county enrollment has declined since last year · Plant City Observer · retrieved Supports: Education
- 2024 Annual Report, Growth Management · Hillsborough County Public Schools · retrieved Supports: Education
- Annual Estimates of the Resident Population for Incorporated Places of 50,000 or More (all states, SUB-EST2025) · US Census Bureau · retrieved Supports: City population, Five-year growth, Violent crime rate, Property crime rate, Homicides, Crime trend, Character, Hialeah city 223,143 (April 2020 base), 222,417 (2020), 220,961 (2021), 225,281 (2022), 230,169 (2023), 233,178 (2024) and 230,968 (2025); Miami city 489,812; Hialeah Gardens 22,777; Miami-Dade County 2,802,029; national and Florida ranks and the 129 cities of 200,000 or more
- Annual Resident Population Estimates and Components of Change for Metropolitan and Micropolitan Statistical Areas and Their Counties: April 1, 2020 to July 1, 2025 (CBSA-EST2025-ALLDATA) · US Census Bureau · retrieved Supports: Metro population, Five-year growth, Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach MSA (CBSA 33100) 6,138,329 (April 2020 base) and 6,391,072 (2025), 8th of 387 metros; Miami-Dade County 2,701,762 and 2,802,029, with its births, deaths and migration by year
- 2025 Gazetteer Files: Places, Florida · US Census Bureau · retrieved Supports: point, City population, Character, Climate normals, Airport passengers, Hialeah city: 21.592 sq mi of land, 1.224 sq mi of water, internal point 25.869941, -80.302865; Miami city 35.997 sq mi of land
- Hialeah, Florida (history, demographics, economy, education, library, transportation) · Wikipedia · retrieved Supports: City population, Main sectors, Transit system, Education, Character
- Crime Data Explorer summarized agency data, Hialeah Police Department (FL0130400): violent crime, property crime, homicide, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, larceny, motor vehicle theft and arson, January 2021 to September 2026 · FBI · retrieved Supports: Violent crime rate, Property crime rate, Homicides, Crime trend, Character, 2025: 412 violent (3 + 22 + 31 + 356), 3,273 property (236 + 3,018 + 7 + 12); 2022 to 2024 violent 474, 431 and 415, property 4,329, 4,017 and 3,632; motor vehicle thefts 528, 396, 22 and 7 for 2022 to 2025; agency population 238,769 for 2025; data refreshed 15 September 2026
- FIBRS offense data by agency and month, 2021 to August 2026 · Florida Department of Law Enforcement · retrieved Supports: Violent crime rate, Property crime rate, Homicides, Crime trend, Hialeah Police Department, every month of 2021 to 2025 and January to August 2026: 432 violent and 3,667 property offenses in 2025; motor vehicle thefts 541, 566, 488 and 337 for 2022 to 2025; homicides 3 in 2025
- US Climate Normals 1991-2020, station USC00083909 Hialeah (cooperative station) (Access Data Service) · NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information · retrieved Supports: January mean, July mean, Annual precipitation, Annual snowfall, Climate normals, Climate hazards, January 67.4F, July 83.3F and August 83.5F, the monthly highs, lows, rain and snow with their completeness flags and years, and annual mean 76.6F, 72.93 in of precipitation, 0.0 in of snow, 91.0 days at 90F, 0.2 at 100F and none at freezing from dataset=normals-annualseasonal-1991-2020 for the same station
- US Climate Normals 1991-2020, station USW00012839 Miami International Airport (Access Data Service) · NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information · retrieved Supports: Climate normals, January 68.6F, July 84.1F, 67.41 in of precipitation from 30 years, 91.4 days at 90F
- US Climate Normals 1991-2020, station USW00012882 Miami Opa Locka Airport (Access Data Service) · NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information · retrieved Supports: Climate normals, No snowfall normal; temperature and precipitation normals flagged representative, from 18 to 23 years
- NCEI data search, normals-monthly-1991-2020 stations within 26.0N to 25.7N and 80.45W to 80.15W · NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information · retrieved Supports: Climate normals, USC00083909 Hialeah at 25.8175N, 80.2858W, USW00012839 at 25.7906N, 80.3164W and USW00012882 at 25.9069N, 80.2803W among ten stations, the rest farther or precipitation only
- Global Historical Climatology Network daily summaries, Miami International Airport (USW00012839), 2010-2026 · NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information · retrieved Supports: Climate hazards, 72.0 mph gust and 5.18 in of rain on 10 September 2017; 9.70 in on 22 May 2012, 7.53 in on 15 November 2023, 6.25 in on 12 June 2024; 139 days at or above 90F in 2023 and 115 in 2026 through 29 September; 100F on 18 August 2026; 35F on 10 January 2010 and 1 February 2026
- Average Annual Sunshine in US Cities · Current Results (NCDC Comparative Climatic Data, 1961-1990) · retrieved Supports: Sunshine hours, Climate normals, Miami, Florida: 3,154 hours, 70% of possible, 74 clear days; no Hialeah station
- Tropical Cyclone Report: Hurricane Irma (AL112017) · NOAA National Hurricane Center · retrieved Supports: Climate hazards, Landfalls near Cudjoe Key at 1300 UTC and Marco Island at 1930 UTC 10 September 2017; inland Miami-Dade and Broward stations just below hurricane force; Opa Locka Airport 56 kt sustained and 74 kt gust at 1903 UTC; Miami International gust 63 kt; about 1,000 Miami-Dade homes with major damage
- National Flood Hazard Layer: flood hazard zones and FIRM panels at Hialeah City Hall · Federal Emergency Management Agency · retrieved Supports: Climate hazards, Zone AH with a static base flood elevation of 8 ft; panel 12086C0284L, effective 11 September 2009 (layer 3)
- ACS 2024 1-year tables B19013, B25003 and B01002 for Hialeah and the other Florida cities this site compares, Miami-Dade County, the Miami MSA, Florida and the US · Census Reporter API (US Census Bureau ACS) · retrieved Supports: Median household income, Character
- ACS 2024 1-year table B08301 (means of transportation) for Hialeah city, and the 2020-2024 5-year table for Hialeah city and Miami-Dade County · Census Reporter API (US Census Bureau ACS) · retrieved Supports: Transit commute share, Walk and cycle commute share, Labour market
- ACS 2024 1-year table B08301 (means of transportation) for Miami-Dade County · Census Reporter API (US Census Bureau ACS) · retrieved Supports: Transit commute share, Walk and cycle commute share
- ACS 2024 1-year tables B08007 (place of work by county), B08008 (place of work by place), B08013 (aggregate travel time), B08101 (means of transportation by age) and B08303 (travel time to work) for Hialeah city and Miami-Dade County · Census Reporter API (US Census Bureau ACS) · retrieved Supports: Labour market, Character
- ACS 2024 1-year table B27001 (health insurance coverage) for Hialeah city, Miami-Dade County, the Miami MSA, Florida and the US · Census Reporter API (US Census Bureau ACS) · retrieved Supports: Health care
- ACS 2024 1-year tables B03001 (Hispanic or Latino origin by specific origin) and B05002 (place of birth by nativity) for Hialeah, Miami, Miami-Dade County and Florida · Census Reporter API (US Census Bureau ACS) · retrieved Supports: Character, Hialeah: 95.3% Hispanic or Latino, 72.7% Cuban, 77.1% foreign-born
- ACS 2020-2024 5-year table C16001 (language spoken at home) for Hialeah, Miami and Miami-Dade County · Census Reporter API (US Census Bureau ACS) · retrieved Supports: Character, Hialeah: 91.9% speak Spanish at home, 59.5% speak English less than very well; the 1-year release has no language table for the city
- Local Area Unemployment Statistics, Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach, FL MSA (LAUMT123310000000003), Miami-Dade County (LAUCN120860000000003) and Hialeah city (LAUCT123000000000003), not seasonally adjusted · US Bureau of Labor Statistics · retrieved Supports: Unemployment rate, Character
- Current Employment Statistics, Miami-Miami Beach-Kendall, FL Metropolitan Division: total nonfarm (SMU12331240000000001), construction, manufacturing, supersectors (SMU1233124xx00000001), wholesale, retail, transportation and local government · US Bureau of Labor Statistics · retrieved Supports: Main sectors, Labour market
- FY2025 Annual Comprehensive Financial Report, including Principal Employers (Current Year and Nine Years Ago), Property Tax Rates (Direct and Overlapping) and Assessed Values · City of Hialeah (filed with the Florida Auditor General) · retrieved Supports: Main sectors, Labour market, Tax notes, Health care, Character, Principal employers 2025: Palmetto General Hospital 1,635, City of Hialeah 1,492, United Parcel Service 1,119, Hialeah Hospital 1,032, Publix 771, Fresco y Mas 741, Larkin Community Hospital Palm Springs Campus 683, Sedano's 545, La Colonia Medical Centers 527, Bullet Line 450 (7.79% of city employment together); the 2016 list; a City operating rate of 6.3018 in every year from 2016 to 2025; taxable value $22.18 billion in 2025, up 11.0%
- Discretionary Sales Surtax Information for Calendar Year 2026 (DR-15DSS) · Florida Department of Revenue · retrieved Supports: Sales tax, Miami-Dade 1%: 0.5% from January 1, 1992 and 0.5% from January 1, 2003, no expiration
- Discretionary Sales Surtax · Florida Department of Revenue · retrieved Supports: Sales tax, The surtax applies to the first $5,000 of the sales amount of an item of tangible personal property
- Florida Tax Rates & Rankings · Tax Foundation · retrieved Supports: Top marginal income tax, Income tax on $100,000, Tax notes
- 2026 Tax Brackets and Federal Income Tax Rates · Tax Foundation · retrieved Supports: Top marginal income tax, Income tax on $100,000
- Property Tax Exemptions and Additional Benefits · Florida Department of Revenue · retrieved Supports: Tax notes
- 2025 adopted millage rates and 2026 proposed millage rate table · Miami-Dade County Property Appraiser · retrieved Supports: Tax notes, Education, Millage code 0400 Hialeah: 18.6468 for 2025 and 18.6638 for 2024, with a City rate of 6.3018 and blank Fire Rescue and Library columns (as carried in lib/metro-miami/market.ts); 18.6134 proposed for 2026 at the same City rate
- Documentary Stamp Tax · Florida Department of Revenue · retrieved Supports: Tax notes, 60 cents per $100 in Miami-Dade against 70 cents elsewhere, plus a 45-cent surtax not due on a document that transfers only a single-family dwelling
- Zillow Home Value Index and Observed Rent Index, city files, June 2026 · Zillow Research · retrieved Supports: Tax notes, Hialeah all-homes value $445,331, down 1.5% on the year, and observed rent $2,374 (as carried in lib/metro-miami/market.ts)
- Monthly Module Adjusted Data Release, complete monthly ridership with adjustments and estimates (County of Miami-Dade, NTD 40034, and South Florida Regional Transportation Authority, NTD 40077) · Federal Transit Administration, National Transit Database (via data.transportation.gov) · retrieved Supports: Transit ridership
- Getting around Hialeah? The city offers free public transportation options · NBC 6 South Florida · retrieved Supports: Transit system, Transit ridership
- Miami International Airport (annual passenger traffic, 2000 to 2025) · Wikipedia · retrieved Supports: Airport passengers
- Status of State Medicaid Expansion Decisions · KFF · retrieved Supports: Health care
- Steward Health Care (Florida hospitals and their 2024 sale) · Wikipedia · retrieved Supports: Health care, Hialeah Hospital and Palmetto General Hospital bought from Tenet in August 2021; sale to Healthcare Systems of America approved on October 25, 2024
- Hialeah Hospital · Wikipedia · retrieved Supports: Health care, 378 beds (from the hospital's site, 2015); owned by Medical Properties Trust and operated by Healthcare Systems of America
- Miami-Dade County School Board to review future of 27 schools amid sharp enrollment decline · WLRN · retrieved Supports: Education
- Miami-Dade schools report nearly 19,000-student enrollment drop on first day, district says count is not final · CBS News Miami · retrieved Supports: Education
- Final 2025 millage rates by taxing district · Hillsborough County Property Appraiser · retrieved Supports: Published totals of 19.8428 for Tampa, 19.5319 for Temple Terrace, 18.2926 for Plant City and 18.2515 for the unincorporated county, Every component behind them, including the 0.5583 library services levy Temple Terrace and Plant City are outside and the 0.5000 transit authority levy Plant City is outside, A county General Purpose MSTU of 4.6163 paid in the unincorporated area in place of a municipal rate
- Millage rates levied for 2025 taxes · Pinellas County Tax Collector · retrieved Supports: A published real estate total for every taxing district in Pinellas County, from Redington Shores at 15.1568 to Belleair at 20.4449, including St Petersburg at 19.9197 and Belleair Beach at 15.4466, Countywide components: general fund 4.5423, health department 0.0713, emergency medical services 0.8050 and school 6.2930, Other districts totalling 1.0256: planning council 0.0175, Juvenile Welfare Board 0.8250 and the Southwest Florida Water Management District 0.1831, The Transit District at 0.7300 and which districts are inside it, and the Pinellas Suncoast Fire District at 0.6700 and which are inside that
- Table 1: Comparison of Taxes Levied, county and municipal governments, fiscal years 2024-25 and 2025-26 · Florida Department of Revenue, Property Tax Oversight · retrieved Supports: Independent confirmation of each municipality's own adopted 2025-26 levy in both counties
- Annual estimates of the resident population for incorporated places, 2020 to 2024 · United States Census Bureau, Population Estimates Program · retrieved Supports: 2020 census counts and 2024 estimates for each municipality, Tampa at 414,547 and St. Petersburg at 267,102; Indian Shores at 1,190
- Hurricane Helene storm surge and Pinellas County flooding, September 2024 · Latent Insurance, on National Weather Service and Pinellas County data · retrieved Supports: The largest storm surge on record for St. Petersburg, over six feet in the city and more than seven on the barrier islands, Thousands of Pinellas homes flooded, many of which had never flooded before, St. Petersburg single-family homeowners insurance of roughly $3,900 to $5,500 a year with wind coverage, and higher on the barrier islands
- Home insurance in Tampa, Florida: 2026 rates · InsuranceQuotes · retrieved Supports: Tampa homeowners insurance averaging about $2,400 a year in 2026, A Tampa Bay range of roughly $3,285 to $5,100 across Hillsborough, Pinellas and Pasco
- Primary Mortgage Market Survey · Freddie Mac · retrieved Supports: 30-year fixed-rate mortgage averaging 6.67%
- Governmental leasehold intangible personal property tax and the non-recurring intangible tax on mortgages · Florida Department of Revenue · retrieved Supports: A non-recurring intangible tax of 2 mills: 0.2%, on the obligation secured by a mortgage on Florida real property
- Chapter 2023-17, Laws of Florida: preemption of rent control · The Florida Senate · retrieved Supports: The repeal of the referendum exception that had allowed a local rent control ordinance in a declared housing emergency
- 2025 millage rates and taxing authorities, Miami-Dade County · Miami-Dade County Property Appraiser · retrieved Supports: A published combined rate for unincorporated Miami-Dade of 16.9317 mills, Its components: school district 6.4990, countywide 5.7361, regional water districts 0.3911, Fire Rescue 2.3965 and UMSA 1.9090, which this layer's stack reproduces exactly, Millage code 0100, the City of Miami, at 19.9878 mills for 2025: 7.1080 of city operating levy and 0.2536 of city debt service on the countywide 12.6262, Opa-locka's municipal operating levy of 8.9797, and a 2025 total of 24.0024 for millage code 0800, A city debt service column, which nine of the twenty-four municipalities here carry: Miami 0.2536, Miami Beach 0.2779, North Bay Village 1.1666, Golden Beach 0.6000, Miami Shores 0.1331, North Miami Beach 0.2000, Miami Gardens 0.4331, Doral 0.4810 and Homestead 0.2446, A blank library district column for Hialeah, North Miami, North Miami Beach, Homestead, Miami Shores, Bal Harbour and Surfside, which are outside the county library district, A blank Fire Rescue column for Miami, Miami Beach, Coral Gables, Hialeah and Key Biscayne, which is the five this layer flags
- About Fire Rescue · Miami-Dade Fire Rescue · retrieved Supports: The Fire Rescue district covering the unincorporated county and twenty-nine municipalities, Miami, Miami Beach, Coral Gables, Hialeah and Key Biscayne operating their own fire departments and lying outside the district
- Average cost of home insurance in Florida, 2026 · MoneyGeek · retrieved Supports: A Miami-Dade County average of about $6,045 a year: below Palm Beach County's $6,614, A Florida average of about $3,815 and a national average of about $2,543
- TIGERweb, Census 2020: census blocks, with the 2020 population and housing unit counts · United States Census Bureau · retrieved Supports: A 2020 census count of 223,109 residents and 77,475 housing units in Hialeah city, the sum of the blocks in the 2020 place, The resident counts by area and by flood zone on these pages, from the blocks whose internal point falls inside each line
- City Boundary layer (BaseMaps/Parcels_Map, layer 2) · City of Hialeah, ArcGIS Server · retrieved Supports: One feature, NAME HIALEAH, of 14,634 acres, taking in the same census blocks as the 2020 place
- Flood Zones layer (Environmental/Flood, layer 3) · City of Hialeah, ArcGIS Server · retrieved Supports: 90,311 of the city's 2020 residents in a special flood hazard area: 77,666 in zone AH and 12,645 in zone AE, Zone AH with a base flood elevation of 8 feet at City Hall, 501 Palm Avenue
- National Flood Hazard Layer · Federal Emergency Management Agency · retrieved Supports: The effective flood map for Hialeah, panel 12086C0284L, effective 11 September 2009, The same zone and base flood elevation as the City's layer at each point checked, including City Hall
- Hialeah 2050 Master Plan: District Master Plan Recommendations · Plusurbia for the City of Hialeah · retrieved Supports: Six areas and 29 numbered districts covering the whole city, drawn on street lines (Map 01, City of Hialeah Neighborhoods and Districts), Adoption by the City Council in June 2025