Cost of Living
per year
per month
How Gresham's prices compare to the US city average across major spending categories.
How far does your salary go in Gresham?
Your $100,000 in Gresham has the same purchasing power as $89,278 in the average US city. You'd need $10,722 more here to maintain that standard of living.
Demographics and workforce data from the US Census ACS 5-Year.
bachelor's or higher
Climate, safety, and walkability indicators.
See a side-by-side breakdown of cost of living, housing, and salaries.
Popular comparisons
Sorted by affordability — most affordable first.
Within 10 points of Gresham's cost index of 112, sorted by closest match.
These are the reasons people actually move to Gresham, ordered roughly by what shows up loudest in the data. Daily errands don't require a car and a bike-friendly city by us standards lead, plus 1 more things worth knowing — the rest unpacked below.
With a citywide Walk Score of 63/100, Gresham sits firmly in the walkable-by-US-standards camp. Pick a central neighborhood and most daily errands happen without keys in your hand. Transit Score comes in at 57/100 too, so even the trips that are too far to walk are usually doable on a bus or train.
Bike Score of 76/100 in Gresham. That puts it in the small group of US cities where you can do groceries, commute, and run errands on a bike without it being a feat of urban survival.
Average AQI in Gresham comes in around 43, well into the "good" band. Clean air isn't a thing you appreciate until you've lived somewhere it wasn't — and this is the side of that line you want to be on.
Reasons are pulled from Gresham's actual data — Census ACS, BLS, BEA, NOAA, EPA AQS, FBI, and Walk Score. We don't list positives that aren't supported by the numbers, which is why different cities show different sections.
Not really a snow town. With winters averaging 36°F, Gresham sits in the mild-cold band where snowflakes appear occasionally and everything melts within a day. Most years see one storm worth talking about.
Cool, not cold. Winters in Gresham sit around 36°F — sweater-and-jacket weather most days, with the occasional cold front that reminds you it's still winter.
Warm without being brutal. Summer in Gresham sits about 80°F on average. Afternoons can push into the high 80s, but mornings and evenings are usually genuinely pleasant.
Zone 9, give or take a half-zone. Gresham's typical winter low puts it in that band on the USDA Hardiness map, which is what nurseries label plants against. Use Zone 9 as your starting filter; the USDA's interactive map is more precise for borderline cases.
Around 387 feet (118 m) above sea level — flat enough that nothing about Gresham's altitude shows up in daily life.
Middle of the pack. Gresham comes in around 3,430 per 100,000, basically the national average. The interesting question is usually which neighborhood, not which city — that's where the real variation lives.
More expensive than average — by enough to plan around. Gresham's composite index is 112 versus 100 for the US, with rent and home prices driving most of the gap. Salaries in higher-paying industries usually move together, but the math still tightens for everyone else.
In parts, yes. With a citywide Walk Score of 63/100, Gresham has genuinely walkable neighborhoods alongside more sprawled stretches. Transit Score is 57 out of 100. If walkability matters to you, the neighborhood choice will matter more than the city-level number.
As a rule of thumb, plan on about $78,407 to live in Gresham the way a $70,000 earner lives in a typical US city. The math gets less forgiving the lower you go below that. Median rent in Gresham runs about $1,452/mo — keeping housing under 30% of gross income points to a similar floor on what you'd want to earn.