Is Your City One of America’s Safest—or One of the Most Dangerous?

Nashua, NH: DenisTangneyJr/iStock

Tired of crime? Yearning to live in an ultrasafe city? Well, it may be time to pull up roots and move to New England, my friends.

Nashua, NH, was named the safest city in America by personal finance website WalletHub. This city on the New Hampshire–Massachusetts border, about an hour north of Boston, earned high marks for having next to no violent crimes and thefts.

It also has low unemployment and poverty rates.

The personal finance website looked at 35 criteria in more than 180 cities to come up with the list. Those criteria included home and community safety statistics (e.g., terrorist attacks, other crimes, fatalities); natural disaster risk; and measures of financial safety (e.g., unemployment rate, poverty rate, and median credit score).

“The top-ranking cities tend to … not only have low rates when it comes to crime, but offer financial safety as well,” WalletHub analyst Jill Gonzalez said in a statement. “Safety is one of the most important factors that need to be considered when looking for a place to live. Cities that offer a safe environment for their residents do better in other aspects of living as well, such as education and health care.”

The other cities making up the safest top three were South Burlington, VT, and Warwick, RI, which is outside of Providence. South Burlington had some of the fewest assaults per capita and the lowest unemployment rate, at just 2.1%.

The safest cities

1. Nashua, NH
2. South Burlington, VT
3. Warwick, RI
4. Columbia, MD
5. Gilbert, AZ
6. Fargo, ND
7. Lewiston, ME
8. Plano, TX
9. Portland, ME
10. Brownsville, TX

Fort Lauderdale, FL, topped the most dangerous cities list for its higher-than-average crime. It also had one of the lowest percentages of households with emergency savings and some of the nation’s highest traffic fatalities per capita.

Meanwhile, St. Louis had one of the largest numbers of assaults per capita. Detroit had the top unemployment rate of the cities on the list, at 10.9%.

The most dangerous cities “have high crime rates, with a high number of murder, thefts, sexual assault, and hate crimes,” Gonzalez said. “Residents in these cities can also fear for their financial safety as unemployment rates are high, job security is low, and poverty is rampant.”

The most dangerous cities

1. Fort Lauderdale, FL
2. St. Louis, MO
3. San Bernardino, CA
4. Oklahoma City, OK
5. Detroit, MI
6. Little Rock, AR
7. Orlando, FL
8. Chattanooga, TN
9. Baton Rouge, LA
10. Jackson, MS

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