These Bay Area cities are among the safest, survey says
Sunnyvale is the second safest place to live in California, according to a recent survey.
Other Bay Area cities making the top 25 list are Santa Clara, Fremont and San Mateo.
The cities were selected based on the amount of violent, property and hate crimes, as well as household income, average rent and health insurance, by Safety.com, a company that researches safety products and services.
The company used data from the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Gun Violence Archive, a Washington, D.C., nonprofit that provides information about gun-related violence in the United States.
Also on the list of safest California cities: Berkeley at 38, Hayward at 42, San Jose at 56, Antioch at 47 and Concord at 50.
The city selection also took into account the vulnerability of residents for a natural disaster.
Sunnyvale, with a population of 155,637, was ranked just below Thousand Oaks in Ventura County.
The report noted Sunnyvale’s low crime rate and that the average household income is $167,144, with income a factor in financial safety. The average rent in the city is $27,984. There were 3.86 reported violent crimes per 10,000 residents, according to the report. The Silicon Valley city’s population is about 140,000.
Also on the list was Santa Clara, which the report pointed out is home to tech companies such as Intel and Hitachi, as well as the San Francisco 49ers Museum and California’s Great America amusement park. It came in at 14th.
San Mateo, which has a population of about 104,000, was ranked 16th, with a household average income of $154,600 and a violent crime rate of 4.35 per 10,000 residents.
The report said Fremont, which ranked 25th and has about 240,000 residents, has one of the higher household incomes compared with other cities throughout California — $150,309 annually — with an unemployment rate of 4.1%.
Its violent crime rate was listed at 6.22 per 10,000 residents.
It was not immediately available whether the data was collected before the COVID-19 pandemic and the economic hit that has followed.
The report highlighted Fremont’s Ardenwood Historic Farm, part of the East Bay Regional Park District, saying the farm serves as a wedding venue, promotes green energy through solar power and offers community outreach to local hospitals by providing patients and staff with flowers.
“Our team diligently identified the safest cities beyond just looking at crime rates,” Antonio Lopez Jr., an analyst for Safety.com, said in a release. “We wanted to get the full picture and have our data extend beyond what people would originally look at for the safety of a city, especially in these tough economic times. We took a step further by looking at factors that measure socioeconomic, health and natural disaster safety, in addition to public safety in this study.”