Money magazine has named its 100 best places to live in the United States -- and not one Houston community is on the list.
The No.1-ranked city is Fishers, Indiana, followed by Allen, Texas, at No. 2.
The magazine ranked communities nationwide with populations between 10,00-100,000 people.
Four cities around Dallas made the list, but the magazine overlooked Houston.
Among the overlooked: Fort Bend at large --the most diverse county in America – and such Houston-area cities as Sugar Land, Galveston, Katy and Richmond. (The Woodlands’ population is just over 100,000, so it wasn’t eligible.)
Leaders in those unranked areas, however, suggest that that they can see every day what the magazine missed in making up its rankings.
The magazine explained it this way:
“To create MONEY’s Best Places to Live ranking, we looked only at places with populations between 10,000 and 100,000. We eliminated any place that had more than double the national crime risk, less than 85% of its state’s median household income, or a lack of ethnic diversity. This gave us 2,400 places.
“We then collected about 170,000 different data points to narrow the list. We considered data on each place’s economic health, cost of living, public education, crime, ease of living, and amenities, all provided by research partner Witlytic. Our partners at realtor.com contributed data on housing market costs and growth. We put the greatest weight on economic health, cost of living factors, and public school performance.
“Finally, reporters researched each spot, interviewing residents, checking out neighborhoods, and searching for the kinds of intangible factors that aren’t revealed by statistics. To ensure a geographically diverse set, we limited the list to no more than four places per state and two per county. In the top 15, we allowed only one place per state.”