A study to find the best small towns in America suggested that Ocala is one of the worst small towns in which to live, saying it ranked 1,027th in affordability, 1,111th in education, and 1,288th in safety out of the 1,318 cities examined.
WalltHub, a personal finance company, published its Best Small Cities in America 2025 list last October.
In order to determine the cities on the list, the company says it compared more than 1,300 cities in the United States with populations between 25,000 and 100,000 using 45 key factors of “livability.”
Those factors were broken into five main categories of affordability, economic health, education, to quality of life, and safety.
According to the company, Ocala was in the 26th percentile of cities, with a total score of 54.14 points out of 100.
In addition to its low rankings in affordability, education, and safety, the city ranked 703rd in economic health. The one outlier for Ocala was quality of life. In that category, the city ranked 41st.
“The best small cities offer strong job markets, high-quality education, good health care, safe living conditions and plenty of local flair to help you achieve a high quality of life. While small cities may lack some advantages of big cities, like robust public transportation systems, they make up for these shortcomings in other areas” said Chip Lupo an analyst at WalletHub.
To calculate the city’s quality of life, factors like average commute time, average weekly work hours, bars and restaurants per capita, and parks per capita were considered.
To calculate affordability, the company used factors like median household income, cost of living, and homeownership rate, among others.
For safety, factors like violent-crime rate, property-crime rate, and motor vehicle crash deaths per capita were considered.
In reference to fatal crashes, on Tuesday, the Ocala Police Department Chief Mike Balken reported that his officers had handled over 3,500 vehicular accidents and 14 traffic fatalities throughout 2024.
Additionally, last year, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reported that Ocala had the third-highest rate of fatal accidents in the country.
In spite of WalletHub’s list, the Ocala area has not seen a slowdown in population growth.
On Monday, Ocala-News.com reported that Ocala topped U-Haul’s list of the fastest growing cities in the United States in 2024. It is the third time in the past three years that the city has been ranked in the top two.
For more information on the list, or to read the company’s complete rankings, visit WalletHub’s Best Small Cities in America webpage.
