Raleigh vs Hialeah: which should you move to?

On the FBI's definitions, violent offenses in Raleigh went from 2,573 in 2023 to 2,399 in 2024 and 2,007 in 2025, a 16% drop in the last year, and property offenses from 12,665 to 13,854 and then 11,725. RPD's own 2025 report shows motor vehicle thefts down 32% (2,444 to 1,664), thefts from vehicles down 27%, non-fatal shooting incidents down from 91 to 79 and aggravated assaults without a firearm down 12%, while its all-assault total was flat at 7,418 and murders held at 25 after 24. The 2025 CDE counts were read on 26 September 2026 from a feed last refreshed on 15 September and can still be revised.

What the rates cover: Computed: 2,007 violent offenses (murder, rape, robbery and aggravated assault) in the FBI Crime Data Explorer's summarized data for the Raleigh Police Department (ORI NC0920100) in calendar 2025, divided by the 506,306 Vintage 2025 city population. On the CDE's own agency population of 508,719 the rate is 395. RPD's 2025 annual report does not publish a count on this definition: its total violent crime of 8,541 counts every assault, simple assaults included (7,418 in all), and lists no rapes, so it runs more than four times the FBI figure and measures something else.

Homicides: 25 murders and nonnegligent manslaughters in 2025 in both RPD's annual report and the FBI CDE, against 24 in 2024, about 4.9 per 100,000 on the city population. RPD's wider count of homicide incidents, which adds one negligent manslaughter and two justifiable homicides, was 28. The high point in the CDE series since 2021 is 45, in 2022.

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 784,100 nonfarm jobs in the Raleigh MSA in July 2026 (not seasonally adjusted), up 15,900 or 2.1% on the year. Construction grew fastest (+6.8%), then education and health (+4.7%), while information (-5.9%), manufacturing (-1.7%) and trade, transportation and utilities (-0.4%) shrank. Professional and business services is the largest sector at 156,200 jobs, and government, with the state capital and NC State inside it, employs 107,400. The seasonally adjusted series (FRED RALE537NA) reached 786,100 in August 2026, 2.5% above August 2025. Average weekly wages across Wake, Johnston and Franklin counties were $1,621 in the first quarter of 2026 against $1,654 nationally. The newest large employers are drug plants in Holly Springs: Fujifilm Diosynth plans 1,400 jobs there by 2031 after a $1.2 billion expansion announced in April 2024, and Amgen about 725 across two plants after a $1.02 billion second one announced in December 2024.

Main sectors: Professional and business services, the metro's largest sector, Government (the state capital, NC State University, the county school system), Education and health care (WakeMed, UNC Health Rex, Duke Raleigh), Trade, transportation and utilities, Biomanufacturing and life sciences (Fujifilm and Amgen in Holly Springs, Research Triangle Park between Raleigh and Durham).

North Carolina's flat rate has come down every year since 2022: 4.99% (2022), 4.75% (2023), 4.50% (2024), 4.25% (2025) and 3.99% for 2026 and later, with further cuts from 2027 only if revenue triggers are met. Property tax is separate, with Wake County and the City of Raleigh each levying a rate on assessed value.

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

Care is paid for through employer or individual private insurance, Medicare and Medicaid, and North Carolina expanded Medicaid on December 1, 2023; about 740,000 people are covered by the expansion. Federal changes narrow it: non-citizen eligibility rules tighten from October 1, 2026, and from January 1, 2027 most expansion adults face a work requirement of 80 hours a month (or equivalent earnings) and renewals every six months. Three systems run Raleigh's hospitals. WakeMed's Raleigh Campus is a Level I trauma center, with a Level III center at WakeMed Cary, and WakeMed describes itself as Wake County's only provider of trauma services. UNC Health Rex, founded in 1894, is the UNC Health hospital in the city, and Duke Raleigh Hospital has 204 inpatient beds for cancer, heart, neuroscience and gastrointestinal care. The academic medical centers of Duke in Durham and UNC in Chapel Hill are inside the same region. This file did not verify a wait time figure for primary or specialist care.

Education

The Wake County Public School System is one county-wide district and enrolled 160,413 students in 2025-26, 702 fewer than the year before; it projects 161,461 across 204 schools for 2026-27. More than a quarter of the county's students now attend charter or private schools or are home-schooled, according to the News & Observer. Every address has a base school, and families can also apply to magnet and year-round calendar schools. NC State University enrolled 40,503 students in fall 2025 (30,504 undergraduate, 9,999 graduate) and is the city's research university; Meredith College, William Peace University, Shaw University and Wake Technical Community College are also in Raleigh, and Duke and UNC-Chapel Hill are in Durham and Chapel Hill. Saint Augustine's University, a historically Black university in the city, filed for Chapter 11 in April 2026 after a long fight over its accreditation and is offering no classes in fall 2026.

Living there

Raleigh is a state capital and a university town at the center of a metro of 1.6 million, and most of it lives like a ring of suburbs around a compact downtown. Two workers in three drive to work alone, fewer than one in fifty rides a bus, and more than one in five works from home. The city's greenways run for more than 100 miles along its creeks and the Neuse River, yet walking and cycling together carry 1.5% of commutes. Work is spread across the Triangle rather than gathered in the city: state government and NC State in the city, Research Triangle Park between Raleigh and Durham, drug plants in Holly Springs, and Durham and Chapel Hill close enough to share the airport. Summers are long, hot and humid, with a July mean of 80.5F, and winters are mild. The open question is whether the region can build the transit its growth now calls for. The half-cent tax Wake voters approved in 2016 is paying for more buses and a first bus rapid transit line on New Bern Avenue, due by the end of 2028, but the commuter rail at the center of that plan is back at the study stage, so for now living here without a car depends on choosing exactly where to live.

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.