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A Nationwide Look

Explore Safety in America

We want communities to reclaim the conversation about what safety actually is, so we developed an interactive platform that analyzes 6 safety domains for 11 major U.S. cities.

Safe Cities is a first-of-its-kind platform that offers a comprehensive view of what shapes safety in these places, rather than focusing solely on crime data.

A safe community is one where fear is absent – not just fear of violence but also fear of being evicted, unemployed, or affording health care.

Jump to the map view or table view.

Key Takeaways

Safety is shaped by today's social and economic conditions.

Here are the metrics that have changed the most from 2019 to 2023.

Housing

Metric is up Metric is up

Average rent burden increased in 10 out of 11 cities we track, with an average increase of 6.9% from 2019 to 2023.

Education

Metric is up Metric is up

High school education rate increased in 10 out of 11 cities we track, with an average increase of 2.3% from 2019 to 2023.

Research finds that crime goes up when inequality grows.

We’ve seen dramatic racial disparities across the cities we’re tracking.

Economic Security

Not equal Not equal

Poverty rate for Black people is on average 3 times higher compared to White people in 11 out of 11 cities we track in 2023.

Housing

Not equal Not equal

Average rent burden for Black people is on average 37% higher compared to White people in 11 out of 11 cities we track in 2023.

Over the last 2 years, crime has declined in 10 out of 11 cities we're tracking, by an average of 6.7%.

Motor vehicle theft and homicide are the most accurately tracked crime offenses. Therefore, we’ve specifically separated them from other property and violent offenses here.

Property crime

Metric is down Metric is down

Motor vehicle theft is down 22.2% on average across all cities in the last 12 months ending with June 2025 compared to the 12-month period 1 years earlier ending with June 2024.

All other property crimes are down 1.4% on average across all cities over the same 1 year time periods.

Violent crime

Metric is down Metric is down

Homicide is down 16.9% on average across all cities in the last 12 months ending with June 2025 compared to the 12-month period 1 years earlier ending with June 2024.

All other violent crimes are down 9.2% on average across all cities over the same 1 year time periods.

Filters

Rent burden
in 2023 was down Metric is down vs.
1990
in 0 of the 11 tracked cities.

Put it in Context: Safety ≠ Crime

For decades, America has measured public safety all wrong. We’ve treated it like a scoreboard – counting arrests, tracking crime rates, and equating bigger police budgets with safer communities. But those numbers don’t tell the real story - they reflect a culture of fear and punishment instead of the reality of community safety.

Take a deep dive in our city scorecards

For generations, we’ve defined public safety as crime control – tethering safety to law enforcement, surveillance, and incarceration. Crime data has been used to reinforce racist narratives and fuel racialized responses to social problems facing historically disinvested Black and Brown communities.

The safest communities are those where people’s basic needs are met.

Continue exploring to discover the factors that impact our communities.