Everything else equal, we can all agree that living in a cheaper place is better than living in a more expensive place.
I’d much rather pay $500/mo in rent than $1,000. And I’d rather pay $2 for coffee than $5.
And while every neighborhood in Eugene might be more expensive than living in rural Oregon, there are certain neighborhoods that are definitely cheaper.
What exactly are those Eugene neighborhoods where your dollar goes a little further — you can get that one bedroom instead of the studio?
Instead of relying on public opinion and speculation, we wanted to get the facts straight and determine which neighborhoods in Eugene are the cheapest using Saturday Night Science.
111 cost of living index
99 cost of living index
119 cost of living index
109 cost of living index
121 cost of living index
105 cost of living index
111 cost of living index
109 cost of living index
137 cost of living index
130 cost of living index
The receipts
Compare the top ten
Pick a metric. The bars rescale. The red line is Oregon’s statewide median.
Saturday Night Science
Methodology: How we determined the cheapest Eugene hoods in 2026
To rank the cheapest places to live in Eugene, we had to determine what criteria define “cheap” and then apply Saturday Night Science.
Using Census and extrapolated BLS data, we arrived at the following set of criteria:
- Overall Cost Of Living
- Rent To Income Ratio
- Median Home Value To Income Ratio
We then ranked each neighborhood with scores from 1 to 21 in each category, where 1 was the cheapest.
Next, we averaged the rankings for each neighborhood to create a cheap neighborhood index.
And finally, we crowned the neighborhood with the lowest cheapest neighborhood index, the “Cheapest City Neighborhood In Eugene.” We’re lookin’ at you, Churchill Area.
We updated this article for 2026. Skip to the end to see the list of all the neighborhoods in the city, from cheapest to most expensive.
The full plate
Detailed list of the cheapest neighborhoods to live in Eugene for 2026
Click any column to sort. Search by neighborhood name.
| Rank | Neighborhood | Cost Of Living Index |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Churchill Area | 111 |
| 2 | Active Bethel | 99 |
| 2 | Southeast | 119 |
| 4 | West Eugene | 109 |
| 5 | Santa Clara | 121 |
| 6 | Far West | 105 |
| 7 | River Road | 111 |
| 8 | Trainsong | 109 |
| 9 | Laurel Hill Valley | 137 |
| 10 | Crest Drive | 130 |
| 11 | Amazon | 126 |
| 11 | Industrial Corridor | 122 |
| 13 | Cal Young | 129 |
| 14 | Harlow | 123 |
| 15 | Friendly Area | 125 |
| 16 | Whiteaker | 111 |
| 17 | Jefferson Westside | 113 |
| 18 | Downtown | 117 |
| 19 | Fairmount | 140 |
| 20 | South University | 141 |
| 20 | U Of O Campus | 134 |
Source: U.S. Census ACS 2020-2024. All 21 Eugene neighborhoods.
Summary
Summary: Lowest cost places to live in Eugene
If you’re measuring the neighborhoods in Eugene where prices are low, and it’s cheap to live, this is an accurate list.
The most affordable neighborhoods in Eugene are Churchill Area, Active Bethel, Southeast, West Eugene, Santa Clara, Far West, River Road, Trainsong, Laurel Hill Valley, and Crest Drive.
As mentioned earlier, the neighborhoods in Eugene aren’t all cheap. U Of O Campus takes the title of the most expensive neighborhood to live in Eugene.
We ranked the neighborhoods from cheapest to most expensive in the chart below. Not sold on Oregon? Take the two-minute Find Your Place quiz and see which state actually fits you.
Questions and answers
Cheapest Neighborhoods In Eugene FAQs
What is the cheapest neighborhood in Eugene?
Churchill Area is the cheapest neighborhood in Eugene for 2026. It posts the best combination of overall cost of living, rent against income, and home prices against income. Active Bethel and Southeast are next.
What are the cheapest neighborhoods in Eugene?
The cheapest neighborhoods in Eugene are Churchill Area, Active Bethel, Southeast, West Eugene, Santa Clara, Far West, River Road, Trainsong, Laurel Hill Valley, and Crest Drive. We ranked all 21 neighborhoods in the city.
How do you decide which neighborhoods are cheapest?
Three measures: an overall cost of living index, rent-to-income, and home-value-to-income, all from Census tract data. Scoring costs against local incomes keeps one luxury tower from skewing the math.
Is a cheap neighborhood a bad neighborhood?
Not necessarily — this ranking measures what things cost relative to income, nothing else. Check our safest neighborhoods in Eugene ranking before you sign a lease, because cheap and safe are separate questions.
What is the most expensive neighborhood in Eugene?
U Of O Campus lands at the expensive end of the 21 neighborhoods we scored. If your budget disagrees with it, the rest of the list runs cheaper.
