Boston vs Hialeah: which should you move to?

Violent Part One offences fell from 3,636 in 2023 to 3,615 in 2024 and 3,409 in 2025 on BPD's own year-end counts, and property offences went 12,777, then 13,354, then 13,120, so the three-year direction is down on both. Homicides moved the other way and are the number people argue about: 36 in 2023, then 24 in 2024, a low the city had not seen in decades, then 31 in 2025. Even at 31 the count sits below the 38.2 five-year average, and BPD reports shootings still more than 30% under that average. All of these are preliminary until UCR coding is complete, and BPD's violent crime definition runs below the FBI's, which recorded 4,138 violent offences in Boston in 2024 against BPD's 3,615.

What the rates cover: Computed: Boston Police Department counted 3,409 Part One violent offences between 1 January and 28 December 2025 (31 homicides, 150 rapes, 760 robberies, 914 domestic aggravated assaults, 1,554 non-domestic aggravated assaults), divided by the 672,973 Vintage 2025 city population. The FBI's 2024 file for Boston gives a higher figure, 4,138 violent offences and 628 per 100k, almost all of the gap in aggravated assault; BPD's counts are its own and are preliminary until UCR coding is complete.

Homicides: City of Boston, 31 homicides in the 1 January to 28 December 2025 count, up from 24 in 2024 and down from 36 in 2023. Three of the 31 were deaths from earlier years ruled homicides in 2025. That is about 4.6 per 100,000. Commissioner Michael Cox put the 2025 total 16% below the five-year average of 38.2, and 19 of the 31 victims were shot.

Down for violent crime, and down for property crime by less than the FBI's totals suggest. On the FBI CDE's counts violent offenses went from 474 in 2022 to 431 in 2023, 415 in 2024 and 412 in 2025, about 210, 187, 178 and 178 per 100,000 on each year's Vintage 2025 population, and January to July 2026 brought 192 against 246 in the same months of 2025, a fall of 22%, mostly in aggravated assaults (165 against 214). Robberies halved, from 66 in 2022 to 31 in 2025. The CDE's property totals fell from 4,329 in 2022 to 3,273 in 2025, but about 500 of that fall is motor vehicle thefts the FBI's series stopped carrying in October 2023; without them property offenses went from 3,801 in 2022 to 3,621 in 2023, 3,610 in 2024 and 3,266 in 2025, a fall of 14% over three years, with larceny down from 3,565 to 3,018. FDLE's file, which kept counting car thefts, has them falling too, from 541 in 2022 and 566 in 2023 to 488 in 2024 and 337 in 2025. January to July 2026 property offenses (1,969) were level with 2025 (1,962). The CDE counts were read on 2 October 2026 from a feed last refreshed on 15 September 2026, whose August 2026 property count (139, about half a normal month) and September figures (none) are incomplete and are not used.

What the rates cover: Computed: 412 violent offenses (murder, rape, robbery and aggravated assault) in the FBI Crime Data Explorer's summarized data for the Hialeah Police Department (ORI FL0130400) in calendar 2025, divided by the 230,968 Vintage 2025 estimate for July 2025; on the CDE's own agency population of 238,769 the rate is 173. The department has reported to the FBI through the incident-based system since January 2021 and the CDE has every month from then to August 2026. 2025 is the year the Miami, Tampa, Jacksonville, Port St. Lucie and St. Petersburg profiles use. That is half Miami's 359, below Tampa's 376, St. Petersburg's 502 and Jacksonville's 514, and above Port St. Lucie's 130 and Cape Coral's 122 for 2023. Aggravated assault is 356 of the 412. The Florida Department of Law Enforcement's incident-based (FIBRS) file, which feeds the FBI and counts somewhat more broadly (its forcible sex offenses include fondling), has 432 violent offenses for the department in 2025, about 187 per 100,000.

Homicides: 3 murders and nonnegligent manslaughters in 2025 in the FBI CDE, about 1.3 per 100,000 on the city population; FDLE's file also has 3. The CDE series is 12 in 2021, 6 in 2022, 6 in 2023, 2 in 2024, 3 in 2025 and 2 in January to August 2026. Miami had 26 in 2025, Tampa 17, St. Petersburg 9 and Port St. Lucie 4.

BLS counted 2,747,200 nonfarm jobs in the Boston-Cambridge-Newton MSA in July 2026, up 0.3% on the 2,739,800 of July 2025, so the metro job market is flat rather than growing. Inside the city the largest industries by employment in 2024 were health care and social assistance (68,674), professional, scientific and technical services (59,267) and educational services (50,798), and the best-paid were management of companies ($120,536 median), finance and insurance ($111,396) and professional and technical services ($104,866). Hospitals and universities are not a sideline here, they are the base of the economy, which makes the city unusually exposed to federal research funding and to international student flows. bls.gov answered 403 to the fetcher, so the employment counts come through FRED and the industry mix through Data USA, both of which restate Census and BLS series.

Main sectors: Health care and social assistance (Mass General Brigham, Beth Israel Lahey, Boston Children's), Higher education and research, Professional, scientific and technical services, Finance and insurance, especially asset management and custody banking, Life sciences and biotech, in the Longwood Medical Area and along the Charles.

Property tax is the local levy that matters. Boston's certified fiscal 2026 residential rate is $12.40 per $1,000 of full and fair cash value, and an owner who is domiciled in the home gets a residential exemption of $351,108 off the assessed value, worth $4,353.74 a year at that rate; it is not automatic on purchase and has to be filed for by 1 April. Proposition 2 1/2 caps the levy a municipality may raise rather than the rate, so a rate can fall in a year when every bill rises. Massachusetts reassesses the whole residential class at full value every year, with no cap, no freeze and no reset on sale, which means the seller's current bill is a fair guide to what a buyer will pay. Nothing is charged to take title or to borrow: no buyer transfer tax and no mortgage recording tax, only the deeds excise at $4.56 per $1,000, which MGL c.64D s.1 puts on the seller. Massachusetts does levy an estate tax, unusual among the states on this site: estates over $2 million file, and since the 2023 change a credit of up to $99,600 means only the value above $2 million is taxed, at 0.8% to 16%.

BLS counted 1,349,400 nonfarm jobs in the Miami-Miami Beach-Kendall metropolitan division, which is Miami-Dade County, in August 2026 (not seasonally adjusted, preliminary), up 6,200 or 0.5% on the year. Professional and business services (+5,300, or 2.5%, to 221,300), private education and health services (+4,600, or 2.0%, to 229,600), leisure and hospitality (+2,900, or 1.9%, to 153,400) and wholesale trade (+1,500, or 1.8%, to 82,800) added the most, while financial activities lost 5,100 (-5.0%, to 96,700), government 1,100 and transportation, warehousing and utilities 1,000. Trade, transportation and utilities is the largest supersector at 324,900, 24% of the county's jobs. The City's 2025 financial report lists its ten principal employers, led by Palmetto General Hospital (1,635), the City (1,492), UPS (1,119) and Hialeah Hospital (1,032), at 8,995 jobs, 7.8% of employment in the city on the City's count; six of the ten carry exactly the headcount they had in 2016, so the list has not been recounted for most of them. Most residents work elsewhere in the county: 61.8% of the city's workers (74,100 of 119,984) worked outside Hialeah in 2024, but only 9.8% (11,754) outside Miami-Dade. 13.2% worked from home, and the mean commute for the rest was 30 minutes, with 11.4% spending an hour or more (ACS 2024 1-year, B08007, B08008, B08013, B08101 and B08303).

Main sectors: Health care: Palmetto General Hospital (1,635 staff) is the city's largest employer, and Hialeah Hospital (1,032), Larkin Community Hospital's Palm Springs campus (683) and La Colonia Medical Centers (527) are also among its ten largest, in a county sector (private education and health services, 229,600 jobs) that added 4,600 jobs over the year, Shipping, wholesale and warehousing: United Parcel Service (1,119) is the third-largest employer, in a city beside Miami International Airport; Miami-Dade's wholesale trade employs 82,800 and its transportation, warehousing and utilities 98,400, Groceries and retail: Publix (771), Fresco y Más (741) and Sedano's (545) among the ten largest employers, the many independent shops and supermarkets on the main streets that Wikipedia describes, and Westland Mall, in a county with 143,700 retail jobs, City government: the City of Hialeah (1,492, down from 1,755 in 2016), which runs its own police, fire department, library and free bus service, Light industry: the garment and manufacturing plants that made Hialeah an industrial city in the 1970s and 1980s have mostly gone, replaced in part by electronics and technology businesses (Wikipedia); Miami-Dade's manufacturing employs 46,800, 3.5% of its jobs.

Property tax is the local levy that matters. Tax Foundation puts Florida's effective property tax rate on owner-occupied homes at 0.78%, and a homestead exemption takes as much as $50,000 off a permanent residence's taxable value and brings the Save Our Homes limit on how fast its assessment can rise (Florida Department of Revenue). A property in the City of Hialeah (Miami-Dade millage code 0400) paid 18.6468 mills for 2025 on the Miami-Dade Property Appraiser's adopted chart, down from 18.6638 in 2024: the City's own 6.3018 plus the 12.3450 of school, county and regional levies every municipality in the county pays. Hialeah runs its own fire department and its own library, so it pays neither the county Fire Rescue district's 2.3965 mills nor the library district's 0.2812. The City has held its rate at 6.3018 for at least ten years while taxable value rose 11.0% in fiscal 2025 to $22.2 billion (City of Hialeah financial report), and the appraiser's proposed 2026 table keeps it there, for a total of 18.6134. Miami-Dade is also the one Florida county with its own deed tax: 60 cents per $100 rather than the statewide 70, plus a 45-cent surtax that is not due on a transfer of a single-family dwelling only (Florida Department of Revenue), so a house at Hialeah's typical value of $445,331 carries about $2,672 and a condominium or duplex at the same price about $4,676, the seller's by convention. Zillow's typical home value for the city was $445,331 in June 2026, down 1.5% on the year, and its observed rent $2,374; the bills, insurance and flood exposure that follow belong to the housing layer.

Health care

Massachusetts has the lowest uninsured rate in the country, 2.8% in 2024 against 8.2% nationally, which is the legacy of its own 2006 coverage law and of MassHealth, the Medicaid program, expanded under the ACA. Care is still paid for through employer plans, ConnectorCare and marketplace plans, Medicare and MassHealth, and what a household pays out of pocket depends entirely on the plan. The teaching hospitals are the draw. Massachusetts General and Brigham and Women's were both named to the U.S. News 2026-2027 Best Hospitals honor roll, the top 20 in the country, with Mass General first nationally in psychiatry and McLean second, Brigham and Dana-Farber third in cancer, Brigham second in obstetrics and gynecology and eighth in neuroscience, and Mass General sixth in heart and vascular care. Beth Israel Deaconess, Tufts Medical Center, Boston Children's and the rest of the Longwood Medical Area cluster fill in the rest. Density of hospitals is not the same as an appointment: this file did not verify a wait time figure for primary or specialist care.

Education

Boston Public Schools enrolled 44,416 students in 2025-26 on the state's count, down 1,678 or 3.6% from 46,094 the year before, which itself was up from 45,742 in 2023-24. Address does not settle where a child goes. Assignment runs through a choice application, and the three exam schools, Boston Latin School, Boston Latin Academy and the John D. O'Bryant School, admit on a composite score that is 70% grade point average and 30% the MAP Growth test, with applicants competing only inside one of four socioeconomic tiers drawn from where they live. The School Committee voted 4 to 2 in November 2025 to set aside 20% of seats for the highest scorers citywide regardless of tier, and to drop the bonus points for students at high-poverty schools; the district's own simulation put Black students' share of invitations falling from 20% to 15% and white students' rising from 27% to 33%. Higher education is the city's other anchor and a large part of its economy: Boston University counted 37,737 students in fall 2024, Northeastern is the other large private university inside the city, and Harvard and MIT are across the Charles in Cambridge.

Living there

Boston is small, old and dense in a way no other city on this site is. The median home was built in 1947, 64% of occupied homes are rented, and a quarter of workers get to work on the MBTA, against about one in a hundred in Tampa. That buys a life much of the city can live without a car, and it costs the most money of the American cities here: Zillow's typical value for June 2026 is $791,816. Winter is the part people underestimate, a 49 inch snow normal and a January mean below freezing, and the housing stock that gives the city its look is the housing stock that has to be heated. The open question is on the waterfront. The Seaport was built out over the last twenty-five years on filled land at the harbor's edge, the January 2018 tide showed what a nor'easter can do at high water, and the city now designs its coastal defenses to 2070 sea levels.

Health care

Care is paid for through employer or marketplace insurance, Medicare and Medicaid, and Florida is one of the ten states that have not expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act (KFF). The City of Hialeah's uninsured rate was 15.1% in 2024 (35,490 of 234,398, ACS 2024 1-year), above Miami-Dade's 12.4%, Florida's 10.9% and the national 8.2%. The city has two acute care hospitals, Hialeah Hospital and Palmetto General Hospital, which Steward Health Care bought from Tenet in August 2021 and lost in its bankruptcy: a court approved their sale to Healthcare Systems of America on 25 October 2024, and Hialeah Hospital is now owned by Medical Properties Trust and operated by that company (Wikipedia). Palmetto General is the city's largest employer (1,635 staff) and Hialeah Hospital its fourth (1,032), with Larkin Community Hospital's Palm Springs campus (683) and La Colonia Medical Centers (527) also among the ten largest (City of Hialeah). Wikipedia gives Hialeah Hospital 378 beds from the hospital's own site of 2015; this file did not verify a current bed count for either hospital, or a wait time figure for primary or specialist care.

Education

Miami-Dade County Public Schools runs the city's public schools. The district counted 18,910 fewer students on the first days of 2026-27 than at the end of 2025-26, a first-day snapshot it says the October count will refine, with private school vouchers, the cost of living and immigration enforcement among the reasons given; it had already closed or consolidated nine schools, and the 27 more it has put under review or reassessment do not include any named in Hialeah (WLRN; CBS News Miami). Wikipedia's list of the schools serving the city includes Hialeah Senior High, Hialeah-Miami Lakes Senior High and Westland Hialeah Senior High, with the José Martí MAST 6-12 magnet academy and the City of Hialeah Educational Academy, a charter school (Wikipedia). Miami Dade College has had a Hialeah campus since 1980. The City runs its own public library system, founded in 1924, a year before the city was incorporated, and outside the county's library district, which is why the county library levy does not appear on Hialeah tax bills (Wikipedia; Miami-Dade Property Appraiser).

Living there

Hialeah is the most Cuban city in the United States. It was laid out in 1921 by the aviator Glenn Curtiss and the cattleman James Bright on a prairie between Biscayne Bay and the Everglades, incorporated in 1925, the year Hialeah Park's racetrack opened, and became a working-class city after 1959 as successive waves of Cuban exiles settled there (Wikipedia). On the ACS 2024 1-year estimates 95.3% of its people are Hispanic, 72.7% are of Cuban origin and 77.1% were born outside the United States, against 55.3% for Miami-Dade; 91.9% speak Spanish at home and 59.5% speak English less than very well (2020-2024 5-year). It is dense, about 10,700 people per square mile of land, and one of the few places in the county with a street grid numbered separately from Miami's. It has the second-lowest household income of the Florida cities this site compares ($57,151, above only Tallahassee's) and, after Miami and Orlando, the lowest share of owners (42.8%), but its unemployment is low (2.3% in July 2026) and most of its workers have jobs inside Miami-Dade. It is also older than its reputation, with a median age of 46.0. It barely grew from 2020 to 2025 (3.5%) and lost people in the last year, as Miami-Dade did. Violent crime in 2025 was 178 per 100,000, half Miami's, with three homicides. Its own government does more than most: it runs its fire department, its library and free buses, and its property tax rate has not moved from 6.3018 mills in a decade.