New Year's resolutions can come in many forms, and if relocating to a safe Houston-area suburb is high on the list for 2025, Pearland is the place to be.
Pearland was declared the No. 13 safest city in America for 2025 in a new study by personal finance advisors MoneyGeek. The website's experts examined the most recent FBI crime statistics (from 2023) to determine the cost of crime in 292 U.S. cities with populations over 100,000 residents.
The estimated cost of crime in this Houston suburb – which the study calculated as the "societal cost of crime per resident" – was $471 in 2023.
Pearland's crime cost per capita is far lower the national crime cost, which was $2,178 per resident.
The report also analyzed the city's violent crime and property crime rates, and Pearland had the 11th lowest rate of violent crime in 2023 with only 106 crimes committed for every 100,000 residents.
The city didn't fare as well with its property crime rate; there were 1,669 property crimes committed in 2023 per 100,000 residents, which was the 68th lowest rate out of all 292 U.S. cities.
However, that's still a better rate than most places in the country. Pearland residents can be smug that they don't live in Oakland, California, which had the highest property crime rate in the nation with 10,117 crimes committed per 100,000 residents.
Finally, MoneyGeek determined each city's total cost of crime, which the study defines as the "economic losses attributed to crime and its cost to society (individuals, community and nationally) in millions."
In this metric, Pearland had the seventh-lowest total crime cost, which was less than $60 million in 2023.
While some of these statistics may seem scary, Tulane University associate professor of political science Geoffrey T. Dancy warns it is unwise to make assumptions about a city based solely on its crime rates.
"We live in an unequal society," said Dancy in the report. "One often overlooked indicator of that inequality is who gets to engage in the politics of safety. Those who are objectively safe often fear crime and act on it in the counterproductive policies they support. Those who are actually victimized by crime and terrorized by gun violence pay the price and are rarely heard."
Elsewhere in Texas, the Dallas suburb of Frisco nearly topped the list as the No. 2 safest city in America with a $287 crime cost per capita. Other safe Texas cities in the report include Plano (No. 18), Sugar Land (No. 20), McKinney (No. 22), Round Rock (No. 26), Grand Prairie (No. 42), and League City (No. 48).
The top 10 safest American cities for 2025 are:
- No. 1 – Ramapo Town, New York
- No. 2 – Frisco, Texas
- No. 3 – Irvine, California
- No. 4 – Fishers, Indiana
- No. 5 – Lakewood Township, New Jersey
- No. 6 – Cary, North Carolina
- No. 7 – Pembroke Pines, Florida
- No. 8 – Elk Grove, California
- No. 9 – Surprise, Arizona
- No. 10 – Sterling Heights, Michigan
For the purpose of the study, violent crime rates were determined based on the number of murders and non-negligent manslaughters, rapes, robberies and aggravated assaults per 100,000 residents; and property crimes were defined as the rates of burglary, larceny-theft and motor vehicle theft offenses per 100,000 residents.
