The Number

Niche, a website that compiles information for potential homebuyers and students, has ranked Thousand Oaks No. 3 on its 2018 Safest Cities in America list. The Conejo Valley city ranked “very high” on the list released earlier this month because of its low crime and public health statistics, said Jessica Hair, media relations coordinator at the company’s headquarters in Pittsburgh, Pa. Niche utilized data from the FBI’s Uniform Crime Report and numbers from the Centers for Disease Control to create the list. “Crimes are weighed roughly in the order of severity, with the exception that the murder rate is only 15 percent because those crimes are so infrequent and sporadic,” Hair explained. “Assault and robbery are more common, and mostly what people think of when they think about the safety of an area. Nothing is weighted higher than 20 percent so no one factor can widely skew the results.” Although Thousand Oaks had a high-profile crime last month – a murder and attempted suicide at the Oaks shopping mall – residents who responded to a Niche survey “rate the town pretty safely,” Hair said. In other Niche rankings, Thousand Oaks placed No. 4 among Cities With the Best Public Schools and No. 22 on the Best Places to Raise a Family list. Among the six criteria used to evaluate cities, T.O. only received a “C” grade for housing. It has a median home price 3.4 times the national average and rents double the national average. The safety survey covered 220 cities in the United States. Two other Valley region cities ranked high on the list. Glendale placed among the top 10 cities with a No. 8 position, while Burbank finished at No. 13. Five of the top 10 cities on the list were located in California. The cities ahead of Thousand Oaks on the list are No. 1 Naperville, Ill. and No. 2 Irvine. – Joel Russell