This city in Texas is one of the safest in America, report says
One of the safest cities to call home is right here in the Lone Star State, according to a new report from WalletHub.
Plano ranked third on the personal finance website’s list of the safest cities in the U.S., released Monday.
Columbia, Maryland, nabbed the top spot. Rounding out the top five were South Burlington, Vermont; Plano; Nashua, New Hampshire; and Lewiston, Maine.
WalletHub assessed 180 cities — the 150 most populous in the U.S. and at least the two most populous in each state — on 42 factors across three categories: home and community safety, natural disaster risk and financial safety.
Plano’s highest score was in the home and community safety category, which looked at factors such as the average number of COVID-19 cases in the last week per 100,000 residents and the number of assaults, hate crimes and law enforcement employees per capita. Plano ranked third in the category.
The Dallas suburb’s next highest score was in the financial safety category, where it landed in the No. 30 spot. Analysts determined its rank using factors such as unemployment and underemployment rate, median credit score, job security and employment growth.
Plano’s lowest score was in the natural disaster risk category — it ranked 113th. Analysts assessed cities on their risk levels for tornadoes, hail, flooding, hurricanes, wildfires and earthquakes.
How other Texas cities performed
Two other Texas cities landed in the top 50: Brownsville ranked 43rd and and Laredo ranked 49th.
San Antonio and Fort Worth ranked 94th and 95th on the list, respectively, and Austin landed in the No. 99 spot. Houston ranked 127th and Dallas 161st.
El Paso and Corpus Christi had the 4th and 5th fewest hate crimes per capita of all cities in the report. Brownsville ranked 2nd for lowest natural disaster risk level followed by Corpus Christi in 3rd.
The five cities with the highest percentage of uninsured population were all in Texas: Brownsville, Laredo, Dallas, Garland and Houston.
This story was originally published November 30, 2020 at 8:17 AM.