Port St. Lucie vs St. Petersburg: which should you move to?

Port St. Lucie's record is short and broken by a change of system, so no trend can be read from it with confidence. The FBI CDE carries no 2021 data for the department, annual totals for 2022 and 2023 under the old summary system (267 and 243 violent offenses, 1,745 and 1,840 property offenses, about 115 and 98 violent offenses per 100,000), only June to December of 2024, after the switch to incident-based reporting in late June (182 violent and 995 property offenses in those seven months), and a full twelve months for 2025 (349 and 1,708). The 2025 violent count is higher than 2023's mainly because of aggravated assaults, 298 against 182, and the department itself says the two systems count crime differently. What does hold across every year is the level: violent crime at about a third of Miami's and Tampa's rates or less, a quarter of Jacksonville's and a sixth of Orlando's, and three to six homicides a year in a city of more than a quarter of a million. The 2025 CDE counts were read on 1 October 2026 from a feed last refreshed on 15 September and can still be revised.

What the rates cover: Computed: 349 violent offenses (murder, rape, robbery and aggravated assault) in the FBI Crime Data Explorer's summarized data for the Port St. Lucie Police Department (ORI FL0560200) in calendar 2025, divided by the 268,062 Vintage 2025 city population. On the CDE's own agency population of 273,427 the rate is 128. That is the lowest of any city this site compares, less than half El Paso's 288 and about a third of Miami's 359 and Tampa's 375.5. 2025 is the first full year of incident-based (NIBRS) reporting for this agency: the department moved to Florida's incident-based system in late June 2024 and says the old and new counts are not comparable, so a full-year 2024 rate could not be determined (PSLPD annual report).

Homicides: 4 murders and nonnegligent manslaughters in 2025 in the FBI CDE, about 1.5 per 100,000 on the city population, the lowest count and rate of any US city this site compares (Orlando had 10, Tampa 17, Miami and El Paso 26). The CDE series is 6 in 2022, 5 in 2023, 3 in the seven months of 2024 it covers and 4 in 2025. A department of 335 sworn officers and 89 civilian staff in 2025 (PSLPD annual report) polices a city that counted 10 traffic deaths in 2024, more than twice its homicides.

Down, and clearly so in 2025. On the FBI CDE's annual totals violent offenses were 1,622 in 2022, 1,519 in 2023, 1,642 in 2024 and 1,325 in 2025, about 618, 573, 618 and 502 per 100,000 on each year's Vintage 2025 population, so 2025 was 19% below 2024 after three flat years. Property offenses fell from 7,052 in 2023 to 6,528 in 2024 and 5,437 in 2025, down 17% in the last year, with motor vehicle theft more than halved from 917 in 2023 to 407. The department's own figures agree in direction and nearly in count: it reported overall crime down 16% in 2025, 175 robberies against a five-year average of 224, and 406 auto thefts against an average of 735 (Patch). The CDE counts were read on 1 October 2026 from a feed last refreshed on 15 September and can still be revised.

What the rates cover: Computed: 1,325 violent offenses (murder, rape, robbery and aggravated assault) in the FBI Crime Data Explorer's summarized data for the St. Petersburg Police Department (ORI FL0521400) in calendar 2025, divided by the 264,033 Vintage 2025 city population. On the CDE's own agency population of 269,098 the rate is 492. That is close to Boston's 507 and Jacksonville's 514, above Tampa's 375.5 (on the Tampa Police Department's own counts) and Miami's 359, and almost four times Port St. Lucie's 130. The department reports to the CDE as annual totals rather than month by month, and the CDE carries a full year for each of 2022 to 2025 and nothing for 2021.

Homicides: 9 murders and nonnegligent manslaughters in 2025 in the FBI CDE, about 3.4 per 100,000 on the city population, against Tampa's 17 (4.1), Orlando's 10 (3.0) and Port St. Lucie's 4 (1.5). The department's own count, announced in January 2026, is 10 homicides, which it called the fewest since 1967, when the city had six, and 44% fewer than the 18 of 2024 (Patch, reporting the St. Petersburg Police Department). The CDE series is 16 in 2022, 13 in 2023, 18 in 2024 and 9 in 2025.

BLS counted 177,800 nonfarm jobs in the Port St. Lucie MSA in August 2026 (not seasonally adjusted, preliminary), up 900 or 0.5% on the year, a slower pace than the population. Private education and health services added the most (+800, or 2.3%, to 34,900), then leisure and hospitality (+700, or 3.3%, to 21,800) and manufacturing (+300, to 8,500), while professional and business services lost 600 (-2.4%, to 23,900) and mining, logging and construction 400 (-2.5%, to 15,500); government held at 20,200, of which federal employment is only 1,100. The seasonally adjusted series (SMS12389400000000001) was 178,800 in August 2026, 0.1% above August 2025. Many residents work elsewhere: 40% of the city's workers (47,007 of 117,414) worked outside St. Lucie County in 2024, almost all of them elsewhere in Florida, and 13% of those who commute spend an hour or more getting there (ACS 2024 1-year, B08007 and B08303). The city has tried to change that with the jobs corridor in Tradition's Southern Grove: Cheney Brothers opened its distribution center there in late 2023 and expects 700 to 800 jobs, and WPTV described the city's pitch as a way out of being a bedroom community of commuters. Tradition itself, a former cattle ranch west of I-95 developed by Core Communities from 2006 with room for more than 18,000 homes, and St. Lucie West before it, are where most of the city's commercial land and new building are (Wikipedia). Clover Park, the Mets' 7,160-seat spring training stadium, opened for the 1988 season, when the team moved from St. Petersburg.

Main sectors: Health care, the metro's fastest-growing large sector (private education and health services, 34,900 jobs in August 2026): HCA Florida St. Lucie Hospital, Cleveland Clinic Tradition Hospital, and in Fort Pierce HCA Florida Lawnwood Hospital, Retail and the rest of trade, transportation and utilities, the metro's largest sector by payroll jobs (37,200 in August 2026, 23,600 of them in retail), Logistics and distribution in the Tradition and Southern Grove area off I-95: an Amazon delivery station, a FedEx Ground sortation center and Cheney Brothers' food distribution center at Legacy Park, and a 1.87-million-square-foot Costco depot that opened in 2026, Construction and real estate, building out a city platted in the 1960s and the master-planned communities of St. Lucie West and Tradition (mining, logging and construction, 15,500 jobs), Spring training and leisure: the New York Mets have trained at Clover Park since 1988, and the St. Lucie Mets play the minor league season there (leisure and hospitality, 21,800 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, with the Save Our Homes limit on how fast its assessment can rise (Florida Department of Revenue). On 28 September 2026 the City Council unanimously adopted a $971.6 million budget for fiscal 2027 and cut the city's operating rate for the eleventh year in a row, from 4.9750 to 4.8750 mills, about $4.88 per $1,000 of taxable value; the city says the rate is 25% lower than in 2016 and the third-lowest municipal rate among Florida's 20 largest cities (WFLX). The county, school board and other levies on the same bill belong to the housing layer.

BLS counted 1,559,600 nonfarm jobs in the Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater MSA in August 2026 (not seasonally adjusted, preliminary), up 14,200 or 0.9% on the year. Private education and health services added the most (+9,700, or 3.8%, to 264,400), then professional and business services (+6,000, or 2.1%, to 288,800) and construction (+1,600, to 99,600), while information lost 1,700 (-5.6%, to 28,600) and federal employment 1,000 (to 30,900). The city's own employment picture is a headquarters town's: the ten principal private employers in its 2025 financial report, led by Raymond James (4,800), Johns Hopkins All Children's (2,800), Power Design and Jabil (1,700 each), employ 17,837, or 12.5% of the 147,705 people working in the city, against 20,300 for the 2016 list, which then included HSN, FIS and Bayfront Medical. Much of the commercial activity is in the Gateway area in the city's north, which it shares with Pinellas Park (Wikipedia). Unlike Port St. Lucie, most residents work in their own county: 14% of the city's workers (20,739 of 144,736) worked outside Pinellas County in 2024, 21.3% worked from home, and the mean commute for the rest was 25 minutes, with 5% spending an hour or more (ACS 2024 1-year, B08007, B08013, B08301 and B08303).

Main sectors: Finance and insurance: Raymond James, headquartered in the city and its largest private employer with 4,800 staff, Franklin Templeton (1,200) and the credit union service organization PSCU (800), in a metro with 142,400 financial activities jobs in August 2026, Health care: Johns Hopkins All Children's Hospital (2,800 staff), BayCare's St. Anthony's Hospital (1,437), HCA (1,350) and Orlando Health Bayfront Hospital, in a metro sector (private education and health services, 264,400 jobs) that added 9,700 jobs over the year, Manufacturing and engineering: Jabil, the electronics manufacturer headquartered in the city (1,700), Catalent Pharma Solutions (800) and Power Design, an electrical contractor (1,700), Utilities: Duke Energy Florida, headquartered in the city (1,250 staff), Tourism, arts and sports: the Dali Museum, the Pier, seven miles of public waterfront parks, the Rays at Tropicana Field and the IndyCar Grand Prix on downtown streets (leisure and hospitality, 167,300 metro 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, with the Save Our Homes limit on how fast its assessment can rise (Florida Department of Revenue). A St. Petersburg home paid 19.9197 mills for 2025 on the Pinellas County Tax Collector's published total, of which the city's own rate is 6.4525; a little above Tampa's 19.8428 in the same layer. On 17 September 2026 the City Council voted 6 to 2 to keep the city rate at 6.4525 mills for fiscal 2027, the rate it has levied since fiscal 2025, which is above the 6.3854-mill rolled-back rate and so needed a two-thirds vote; rising taxable values, about $39.3 billion, bring the city about $14.8 million more (St Pete Catalyst). Zillow's typical home value for the city was $355,759 in June 2026, down 3.9% on the year, and its typical rent $2,058; the bills, insurance and flood exposure that follow from them belong to the housing layer.

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). Florida's uninsured rate was 10.9% in 2024 (2,509,782 of 23,038,464), against 8.2% nationally, on the ACS 2024 1-year estimates; the City of Port St. Lucie's was 9.9% (25,579 of 257,314), St. Lucie County's 11.4% and the metro's 11.0%. Two hospitals are in the city. HCA Florida St. Lucie Hospital, formerly St. Lucie Medical Center, has 282 licensed beds and treats more than 90,000 patients a year, by HCA's own figures. Cleveland Clinic Tradition Hospital opened in Tradition in 2013 with 90 beds and has since grown to nine stories and 177 private rooms; it was Martin Health System's Tradition Medical Center until Martin Health joined Cleveland Clinic as a full member in January 2019, and it runs a 24-hour emergency department and maternity care. The region's trauma center is in Fort Pierce: HCA Florida Lawnwood Hospital is a Level II trauma center serving St. Lucie, Martin, Indian River and Okeechobee counties, with a Level III neonatal intensive care unit. This file did not verify a wait time figure for primary or specialist care.

Education

St. Lucie Public Schools, the county district, had 45,661 students in March 2025 and was adding about 1,500 a year; its superintendent said the schools were 'busting at the seams' (WFLX). It opened Legacy High School in Port St. Lucie in August 2025 and is building Western Grove K-8, a $70 million school and the first K-8 in Tradition, for 2026, and in November 2024 voters extended its half-cent sales tax for school construction to the end of 2036 (Florida Department of Revenue). Indian River State College, a public college founded in Fort Pierce in 1959 that has offered bachelor's degrees since 2008 and won the Aspen Prize for Community College Excellence in 2019, has its Pruitt campus in Port St. Lucie and enrolled 15,429 students in 2024-25, 61% of them part time (IPEDS, as compiled by UnivStats). FAU Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute, founded in 1971 and part of Florida Atlantic University since 2007, works from a 144-acre campus on the Indian River Lagoon north of Fort Pierce and accounts for about a third of FAU's research activity (Wikipedia); Keiser University also has a campus in the city (Wikipedia).

Living there

Port St. Lucie was a land sale before it was a city. In 1958 the General Development Corporation bought about 40,000 acres along the North Fork of the St. Lucie River, and the city was incorporated in 1961 under its ownership; GDC platted more than 80,000 quarter-acre lots and sold most of them by mail on installment plans to buyers across the country and abroad, with little thought, the city's own comprehensive plan says, for water, sewage, roads or drainage (City of Port St. Lucie; Wikipedia). The result is a city of single-family houses on small lots laced with canals, whose water and sewer system the city bought in 1994, after GDC's bankruptcy, and began extending to the platted lots in 1996. Newer, planned growth came west of I-95, in St. Lucie West in the 1990s and Tradition from 2006. It has grown faster than any other US city of 200,000 people since 2020, 30.9%, almost entirely on people moving in from elsewhere, and it is older than the other Florida cities here, with a median age of 44.3. It is car-dependent even by Florida standards: 0.5% of workers take transit, the lowest share of any city this site compares, and 40% of workers leave the county for work. It is also, on the FBI's counts, the safest city here, with 130 violent offenses per 100,000 and four homicides in 2025, and its household income, $86,241, is the highest of the Florida cities here. The risks are water and wind: Frances and Jeanne came ashore a few miles away within three weeks in 2004, a Milton tornado killed six people just north of the city in 2024, and discharges from Lake Okeechobee have turned the St. Lucie River's estuary green with algae. The open questions are growth's: schools at capacity, the highest unemployment rate of any US metro here at 5.3%, and whether the jobs corridor in Tradition can make a commuter town into a place people also work.

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). Florida's uninsured rate was 10.9% in 2024 (2,509,782 of 23,038,464), against 8.2% nationally, on the ACS 2024 1-year estimates; the City of St. Petersburg's was 7.3% (19,374 of 263,881), below Port St. Lucie's 9.9%, Pinellas County's 9.0% and the metro's 10.0%. The city is the county's hospital center. Orlando Health Bayfront Hospital, the city's oldest, on the site of a five-room hospital of 1910, is Pinellas County's only Level II trauma center and has a Level III regional perinatal intensive care center and the Bayflite helicopter program (Wikipedia). Johns Hopkins All Children's Hospital, founded in 1926 and part of Johns Hopkins Medicine since 2011, has 259 beds and a Level I pediatric trauma center (Wikipedia). BayCare's St. Anthony's Hospital and HCA's hospitals are also among the city's ten largest private employers (City of St. Petersburg). This file did not verify a wait time figure for primary or specialist care.

Education

Pinellas County Schools, the countywide district, is shrinking: it reported more than 3,000 fewer students in 2025-26 than a year earlier (Bay News 9), its schools were 68% full against 87% ten years before, and in February 2026 the board voted to close two schools, Cross Bayou Elementary in Pinellas Park and Disston Academy in Gulfport, at the end of the 2025-26 year and to merge others (FOX 13). In higher education the city has the University of South Florida St. Petersburg, a downtown campus of about 6,500 students; Eckerd College, a private liberal arts college founded in 1958; St. Petersburg College, founded in 1927, a state college with four of its eleven campuses and centers in the city; and the Poynter Institute, the journalism school that owns the Tampa Bay Times (Wikipedia). Stetson University's law school is next door in Gulfport.

Living there

St. Petersburg is the smaller and older half of Tampa Bay's urban core: a city of 264,033 on the southern tip of the Pinellas peninsula, with more water than land inside its limits, connected to Tampa by the Gandy and Howard Frankland bridges and to Bradenton by the Sunshine Skyway. It was a railroad town before it was a resort (the Orange Belt Railway arrived in 1888 and the town was incorporated in 1892) and a retirement town for most of the twentieth century; its median age is still 43.0, the second-oldest of the Florida cities here after Port St. Lucie, though Wikipedia notes a younger turn since the Great Recession. Downtown is the draw, with the Dali Museum, the rebuilt Pier, seven miles of public waterfront parks, more than 600 murals and the Rays at Tropicana Field, who returned in April 2026 after Hurricane Milton tore off the roof but will leave: Hillsborough County voted 5 to 2 on 28 August 2026 to put $796 million toward a $2.3 billion stadium in Tampa for 2029 (WUSF). Its economy is a set of headquarters (Raymond James, Jabil, Duke Energy Florida) and hospitals (Johns Hopkins All Children's, Bayfront). The numbers set it apart from its Florida neighbors. It grew only 2.2% from 2020 to 2025 and lost residents in the year of the 2024 storms, in a county that is now losing people. Its median household income, $73,048, is $11,066 below Tampa's; its violent crime rate, 502 per 100,000 in 2025, is higher than Tampa's but falling, and its nine homicides were the fewest the police department has counted since 1967. It has the highest transit share of the Florida cities here outside Miami, at 2.1%. And it learned in 2024 what living in Tampa Bay costs: a record surge from Helene, which drowned twelve people in the county, and 18 inches of rain from Milton two weeks later.