Toronto safety trends by the numbers from Hausworth.com
2020 was an unusual year for all of us, and it was especially unusual for residents of metropolitan areas around the world, as we discussed in our blog articles. Toronto and the Greater Toronto Area, one of the top metropolitan areas in the world, were, of course, no exception.
In this article we are going to look at the impact that year 2020 with its closures, lockdowns, and financial challenges had on safety of Toronto neighbourhoods and its residents, and how safety is evolving so far in 2021.
Spoiler alert: safety in most of the city improved in 2020 as compared to 2019, and only a very small number of neighbourhoods saw a negative trend in their safety numbers.
For the purposes of this article, we analyzed the published numbers for home-related incidents across the city in the following categories: breaking and entering, auto theft, and theft over $5,000 (which excludes auto theft). We then adjusted the numbers based on each neighbourhood’s population to reflect the likelihood of each type of crime impacting a single resident. And finally, we looked at the overall combined trend year of year for all of the 3 key crime rates described above.
The City of Toronto recognizes 140 official neighbourhoods within its boundaries. In 30 neighbourhoods safety remained roughly the same in 2020, only in 14 it significantly declined, and in 96 it improved compared to 2019.
We have limited data for 2021 so far as Toronto Police releases detailed statistics only once a year, but based on the cumulative numbers available to date, overall home and property related crime in Toronto appears to be trending to be slightly better than in 2020.
Looking back at the stats by neighbourhood, here are 10 Toronto neighbourhoods with the most improvements in safety stats in 2020:
- Kensington-Chinatown
- University
- Church-Yonge Corridor
- Cabbagetown-South St.James Town
- Regent Park
- Bridle Path-Sunnybrook-York Mills
- Roncesvalles
- Moss Park
- Niagara
- Edenbridge-Humber Valley
Also, here are 10 safest neighbourhoods in Toronto based on our analysis of the 2019/2020 data:
- Flemingdon Park
- Centennial Scarborough
- Ionview
- L’Amoreaux
- Guildwood
- Steeles
- Caledonia-Fairbank
- Woodbine-Lumsden
- High Park North
- Malvern
Let’s look at the numbers for Kensington-Chinatown as an example.
In 2019 there were 278 instances of breaking and entering in the neighbourhood (which translates into approximately 0.01351 instances per resident, or roughly 1 in 65 chance to be impacted by a break-in over the course of a year), whereas in 2020 the number dropped to 175 (approximately 0.00826 instances per resident, or about 1 in 120 chance to be impacted).
Auto theft numbers for Kensington-Chinatown in fact increased slightly from 43 in 2019 to 56 in 2020, which means an approximately 1 in 378 chance to be impacted by an individual resident.
However, theft over $5,000 numbers dropped – from 37 in 2019 to 27 (or 0.0012 per resident) in 2020.
You can find a lot more detailed information about safety of each of Toronto neighbourhoods on HausWorth.com. You will also be able to compare overall neighbourhood standing based on additional criteria, such as school quality, demand for houses etc, as well as see resident profiles in each of the neighbourhoods.
