DENVER (KDVR) — There’s more to safety than just crime levels.
Denver is one of the nation’s least safe cities, according to a data analysis from financial advisor website WalletHub. The study analyzed 182 U.S. cities for home and community safety, natural disaster risk and financial safety, then gave each city an overall score with the results.
Home and community safety ranked crime rates, concentrations of first responders, homelessness, traffic deaths and drug overdose rates. Natural disaster risk accounted for the likelihood of floods, earthquakes, wildfires, hail, hurricanes and tornados. Financial safety considered a city’s unemployment and foreclosure rates, household financial metrics such as job security and savings levels and other economic indicators.
Of 182 cities, Denver ranks 164th for overall safety, one of the nation’s lowest.
Denver is sandwiched in between Little Rock and New Orleans in terms of overall safety.
The nation’s safest cities overall are Columbia, Maryland; Nashua, New Hampshire; Laredo, Texas; Portland, Maine and Warwick, Rhode Island. The least safe are St. Louis, Missouri; Fort Lauderdale, Florida; San Bernardino, California; Detroit, Michigan and Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
Breaking Denver’s safety down by category
Colorado’s largest city ranked 166th for home and community safety, in between Baltimore and Fort Lauderdale. Colorado’s recent troubles with elevated violent and property crime, low first responder recruitment, high homelessness concentrations and growing drug overdoses play large roles in the low ranking.
While it does not risk hurricanes or earthquakes, Denver ranks highly for natural disaster risks. With its risks of wildfire, hail and tornados, Denver ranked 139th for natural disaster risk.
On the plus side, Denver ranks highly for financial security.
Of 182 cities, Denver ranked 62nd for financial safety. The city’s high concentrations of high-income workers and rebounding post-COVID unemployment likely pushed most personal financial measurements higher.
Two other Colorado cities were included in the ranking; Colorado Springs, which came in at No. 157 overall, and Aurora, which came in at No. 111 overall.