Melvindale, MI population, income and ZIP codes

Melvindale city is a mid-size town in Michigan, with 12,605 residents counted in the Census American Community Survey 2019-2023 ACS 5-year estimates, which places it #83 of 745 ranked by population — larger than 88% of them. The median age here is 31.6 years against 39.1 nationally, a distinctly younger profile, typical of places with students, military posts or a fast-growing family population. Places under 65,000 residents only appear in the five-year release, never the one-year file, so these values pool sixty months of responses and lag the current year by design.

Households in Melvindale city earn a median of $41,356 a year, 47.3% below the national figure of $78,538 and 33% below the $61,715 median for the 438 Michigan cities we cover. This figure covers the household, not the worker: two people on ordinary wages at one address outrank a single professional in the same table. Poverty reaches 34.4% of residents here, well above the 12.4% national rate, which is the single clearest signal in this dataset that median income here is carried by a narrow band of households.

The typical owner-occupied home in Melvindale city is valued at $113,100, 62.7% below the national figure and 32% below the $166,100 peer median, while median gross rent runs $1,116 a month, 20.6% below the national figure, or roughly $13,392 across a full year. A household on the local median income would put about 32.4% of gross pay toward that rent against the federal 30% cost-burden threshold, so renting here is a stretch on median earnings. The home-price-to-income ratio works out to 2.7×, against roughly 3.9× nationally, so buying is easier here than in the average US market. 60% of occupied homes are owner-occupied versus 65% nationally, so the market leans more heavily on renters. The rent line includes utilities paid by the tenant, a definition worth remembering when comparing it against a landlord's quoted rate.

Melvindale city is the unusual combination of expensive to rent and cheap to buy: rent takes 32.4% of median income while homes cost only 2.7× it. Where that pattern shows up, the gap is normally down to down-payment and credit barriers rather than price.

All values below were released by the Census for this exact geography, with no gap-filling on our side. Small-area estimates still carry wider margins of error than state or national figures, so check the linked ACS tables before relying on them for lending, appraisal or legal work.