Is Austin safe in 2026? Crime, traffic, neighborhoods

I have lived in New York, Paris, and San Francisco. Mueller feels safer than any of them. I have also had two things stolen here in eighteen months.

The first was February 12, 2025, a Wednesday, 2:14 a.m. Our Ring caught a man in a gray hoodie trying the handle of my Outback on Berkman Drive, then the neighbor's, then walking off toward Airport Boulevard. Nothing taken.

I filed with APD online because you are supposed to, not because they were going to do anything. They did not. The second was November 3, 2025, a Monday, 2:30 p.m.

Someone cut the catalytic converter off the same Outback in the Mueller H-E-B lot during a 20-minute grocery run. Insurance covered the cut. The $500 deductible did not, and neither did the $1,428 of Enterprise Kia Soul at $34 a day for six weeks past my rental-reimbursement cap.

The Prius Ezra's carseat is in has a converter cage welded on in our driveway by a mobile mechanic named Hugo for $280 and 40 minutes. Everyone in Mueller has one now. Nobody has ever tried to hurt me here.

Someone is going to try to steal from you here. You install cameras, you leave nothing in the car, and you learn which blocks to walk at which times.

East 4th between Chicon and Poquito is a block in active transition. My landlady Aracely bought our bungalow in 1998 when it was Latino working class, and the block mostly still is, though the Airbnb two doors down and the new-build 4-bedroom on the corner are signals. Seven months in: one scare, no actual incidents.

The scare was November 22, 2025, a Saturday, 11:40 p.m., walking home from Javelina on East 6th. Three men were standing near the abandoned pink house at Chicon. One asked something I did not catch.

I said 'what's up' because my Brooklyn reflex is to answer a question. Another asked for a light. I said I do not smoke, sorry, and kept walking.

My Fitbit showed 142 bpm for the whole eight-minute walk. The actual property story is my Civic on Waller Street in January, 1 a.m., passenger window smashed, $29 Baggu tote with gym clothes and an unused Moleskine taken. Window replacement was $215 at Luis y Hijos on East 7th, a shop that exists because East Austin supports a dedicated window-repair economy.

That is what this feels like at 26, male, white. My friend Sarah, 26, does not walk home from East 6th. She takes an $11 Lyft every time and says it is the right trade.

I believe her.

I am not going to pretend Teravista is the Austin safety experience. It is the Round Rock suburban safety experience. In three years I have had zero property crime.

My car has been unlocked in the driveway more nights than I can count. Our front door is a Schlage and an Eufy that has caught a UPS driver and a neighborhood cat named Franklin. Round Rock PD, not APD, services us.

Published response time is under four minutes. I have never called. The only context in which I have felt unsafe is driving.

The 15 miles of I-35 between Round Rock and downtown has featured at least one accident a week. In March 2024 I passed a crash at Parmer Lane where a car had hit a concrete barrier hard enough that the front folded into the cabin. I thought about it for two weeks.

In October 2024 a car fell off the I-35 upper deck at 7th Street and killed the driver. My friend Deepa, a nephrologist commuting Pflugerville to Dell Medical, stopped using I-35 entirely. She takes 130 then 45 for $14 a day and 8 minutes.

So do I now. My suburb is quiet. The road between my suburb and downtown is not.

I pay $14 a day in tolls to avoid it.

West Lake Hills is the safest neighborhood I have ever lived in. You pay for that in the house price. In 14 months I have had zero property crime and zero encounters I would describe as unsettling.

I have had one encounter worth describing. January 2025, 6:40 a.m., I was walking our dog Bridger around the Redbud Trail loop. A man named Dennis, 60-ish, whom I had never met, walked up and asked whether I 'lived around here.'

I said I did, pointed up the hill, said I had moved from Newton. Dennis said he was 'noticing' a lot of new people and wanted to 'make sure we were fitting in all right.' I answered politely and kept walking.

That conversation would not have happened in Newton. It would not have happened because people in Newton do not know their neighbors that well. Rachel, who is Chinese American, has had two versions of Dennis since we moved, one at the Eanes Farmers Market and one at Jo's on Bee Caves Road.

She said both were friendly. She also said she had to work harder at friendly than she is used to. My relocation research said West Lake Hills has no crime.

That is true. It is not the whole thing I wish I had known.