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

On the FBI's definitions, violent offenses in San Antonio went from 11,219 in 2021 to a peak of 13,105 in 2022, then 10,440 in 2023, 9,173 in 2024 and 8,241 in 2025, a 10% drop in the last year and 37% below the peak, and property offenses from 61,559 to 74,787 and a peak of 80,789 in 2023, then 70,657 and 60,693, 25% below the peak. Motor vehicle theft drove most of that swing: 8,912 in 2021, 19,090 in 2023 and 9,527 in 2025, half the peak. In 2025 the CDE shows aggravated assaults down 9% (6,037 to 5,506), robberies down 17% (1,656 to 1,380), rapes down 8% (1,354 to 1,249) and murders down 16% (126 to 106). SAPD's own January-to-November comparison points the same way: all reported crime down 13% (143,529 to 124,314), crimes against property down 18.1%, motor vehicle theft down 26.5% and robberies down 16.4%, while crimes against society rose 15.4%, which the chief put down to more drug arrests. A University of Texas at San Antonio evaluation of the city's Violent Crime Reduction Plan found violent street crime fell 22% in treated hot spots in 2024 against 9.6% citywide (San Antonio Report). The 2025 CDE counts were read on 30 September 2026 from a feed last refreshed on 15 September and can still be revised.

What the rates cover: Computed: 8,241 violent offenses (murder, rape, robbery and aggravated assault) in the FBI Crime Data Explorer's summarized data for the San Antonio Police Department (ORI TXSPD0000) in calendar 2025, divided by the 1,548,422 Vintage 2025 city population. On the CDE's own agency population of 1,549,306 the rate is also 532. No SAPD total on this definition was found in anything fetched. Its year-end report to the City Council's Public Safety Committee in December 2025 counted NIBRS crimes against persons, which include simple assaults, and put them at 28,361 for January through November 2025, down 9% from 31,179 in the same months of 2024 (KSAT).

Homicides: 106 murders and nonnegligent manslaughters in 2025 in the FBI CDE, against 126 in 2024, about 6.8 per 100,000 on the city population. SAPD's own count for January through November 2025 was 99 against 119 in the same months of 2024, a drop of nearly 17% (KSAT); a full-year SAPD figure was not found in anything fetched. The high point in the CDE series since 2021 is 233, in 2022, a year whose count includes the 53 migrants found dead in a tractor-trailer on the Southwest Side (San Antonio Report).

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.

BLS counted 1,191,700 nonfarm jobs in the San Antonio-New Braunfels MSA in August 2026 (not seasonally adjusted, preliminary), up 6,100 or 0.5% on the year. Professional and business services grew fastest (+4.8%, to 162,400), then construction (+2.9%) and trade, transportation and utilities (+2.8%), while information (-7.7%), government (-3.1%, to 181,800) and private education and health services (-2.0%, to 180,300) shrank; federal government employment fell 6.7%, from 38,700 to 36,100. Trade, transportation and utilities is the largest sector at 216,300 jobs. The seasonally adjusted series (SMS48417000000000001) was 1,195,900 in August 2026, 0.8% above August 2025. BLS's federal line is far smaller than the base itself: the Texas Comptroller counts 74,713 direct employees at Joint Base San Antonio in 2025, 33,256 of them active-duty military, and estimates the base supported 223,349 Texas jobs and $33.9 billion of the state's GDP ($53.5 billion of output). Greater SATX, the regional economic development group, calls it the largest joint base in the US military. UT San Antonio, formed when UTSA and UT Health San Antonio merged in September 2025, calls health care and biosciences, a $44.1 billion sector, the city's largest industry. H-E-B, USAA, Valero Energy and iHeartMedia are all headquartered in the city.

Main sectors: Military and federal installations: Joint Base San Antonio (Fort Sam Houston with Brooke Army Medical Center, Lackland Air Force Base with the Air Force's basic military training and the 16th Air Force, and Randolph Air Force Base with the Air Education and Training Command), Health care and biosciences (the South Texas Medical Center, University Health, UT Health San Antonio and UT San Antonio, Methodist Hospital, the Audie L. Murphy Memorial Veterans Hospital), Tourism and hospitality (Visit San Antonio counts $23.4 billion of economic impact and more than 150,000 jobs in 2024), Trade, transportation and utilities, the metro's largest sector by payroll jobs (H-E-B, headquartered in the city; CPS Energy; San Antonio International Airport's cargo), Financial services, energy and media headquarters (USAA, Valero Energy, iHeartMedia).

Property tax is the local levy that matters. Tax Foundation puts Texas's effective property tax rate on owner-occupied homes at 1.40%, and school districts must exempt $140,000 of a homestead's value from their tax. On 17 September 2026 the City Council voted 7 to 4, with Mayor Gina Ortiz Jones in the minority, to raise the city's own rate for the first time since 1992, as part of a plan to close a $158 million deficit over two years that also includes cuts, fee increases and a second rate increase planned for fiscal 2028. The fiscal 2027 rate is 56.288 cents per $100 of taxable value: 35.138 cents for maintenance and operations, two cents more than before, and 21.150 cents for debt service. The two outlets that gave a figure for the average homestead disagree: KSAT put it at about $49 more a year on a taxable value of $231,356, and the San Antonio Report at $35.43 on a $234,000 home. Senior and disabled homeowners with a tax freeze, about 47% of the city's homesteads, are unaffected (KSAT). The county, school district, University Health, San Antonio River Authority, Alamo Colleges and other levies on the same bill belong to the housing layer.

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.

Health care

Care is paid for through employer or marketplace insurance, Medicare and Medicaid, and Texas is one of the ten states that have not expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act (KFF, August 2026). It had the highest uninsured rate of any state in 2024: 16.7%, or 5,152,427 of 30,799,312 people, against 8.2% nationally and 12.0% in Georgia, the next highest, on the ACS 2024 1-year estimates. The City of San Antonio's rate was 18.0% (268,665 of 1,496,335), Bexar County's 15.8% and the metro's 14.5%. The South Texas Medical Center on the Northwest Side covers more than 900 acres around the medical school that opened there in 1968 and holds the Audie L. Murphy Memorial Veterans Medical Center and a dozen other hospitals; a UTSA study cited by the San Antonio Report in 2022 put its annual economic effect on the region at $24.5 billion. University Health, the Bexar County Hospital District, runs University Hospital there, a 716-bed teaching hospital and a Level I trauma center for adults and children, and the 300-bed Women's & Children's Hospital that opened on the same campus in 2023; it plans to open two community hospitals elsewhere in the county in 2027. Brooke Army Medical Center at Fort Sam Houston has about 8,500 staff. UT Health San Antonio, the clinical arm of UT San Antonio, counts more than 2.5 million patient visits a year. This file did not verify a wait time figure for primary or specialist care.

Education

No single school district covers the city. Northside ISD, the largest in the San Antonio area with about 98,000 students, faced a $35 million deficit in March 2026, down from nearly $108 million, and its superintendent said closures were possible but not expected for 2026-27 (KSAT). North East ISD lost about 2,000 students in 2025-26, now serves about 55,000, closed three campuses the year before and will accept students from anywhere in the region from 2026-27 (San Antonio Report). San Antonio ISD has closed 25 schools in the last decade and in March 2026 voted to close Rhodes Middle School and hand three other campuses to a charter operator, Third Future Schools, citing falling enrollment and state accountability ratings. Districts say they cannot yet tell how many students the state's new education savings accounts, which help pay private school tuition from 2026-27, will draw away. UT San Antonio, formed on 2 September 2025 when UTSA merged with UT Health San Antonio, has about 40,000 students and 17,000 employees and calls itself the third-largest public research university in Texas by research spending, and the Alamo Colleges District runs five community colleges.

Living there

San Antonio is the second city of Texas and the seventh-largest in the country, and unlike Dallas it is still growing inside its own limits: it added 14,359 residents in 2024-25, the third-largest gain of any US city, and 8.0% since 2020. The military has shaped it for three centuries, and Joint Base San Antonio, with 74,713 direct employees, sits beside the South Texas Medical Center and a tourism trade Visit San Antonio values at $23.4 billion as the pillars of the economy. Household income is lower than in Dallas or Austin, and 18.0% of residents have no health insurance. VIA runs buses only, 2.4% of workers take them and 68.2% drive alone, and the Green Line along San Pedro Avenue, the city's first rapid transit line, is due in April 2028. Summers are long and dry rather than humid, with 122 days a year at 90F or above and 75 at 100F in 2023, and water is the killer: the creeks rise within minutes, and a single night of rain on 12 June 2025 drowned 13 people. The open questions are fiscal and civic: the council raised the city's property tax rate for the first time since 1992 on a 7 to 4 vote the mayor opposed, with a second increase planned, and the big school districts are shrinking, closing campuses and competing for each other's students as the state's education savings accounts begin.

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.