In observance of October being National Disability Employment Awareness Month, the personal finance website WalletHub released its report “2023’s Best & Worst Cities for People with Disabilities.”
For this report, WalletHub compared 182 cities across 33 key indicators of disability-friendliness, ranging from wheelchair-accessible facilities per capita to the rate of workers with disabilities to the quality of the public hospital system.
For the best cities for people with disabilities, Scottsdale, Arizona, topped the list. Also in the top five cities were Denver, Minneapolis, St. Louis and Virginia Beach, Virginia.
On the flipside, Gulfport, Mississippi, was ranked last among the bottom five cities. Bridgeport came in 177th among the 182 localities – other regional cities in the list included Yonkers in 17th place and New Haven in 157th place.
The report found Lewiston, Maine, has the highest share of people with disabilities living in the area, 21%, which is 3.8 times higher than in Irvine, California, the city with the lowest at 5.6%.
Overland Park, Kansas, has the lowest share of people with disabilities living in poverty at 8.15% while Rochester, New York, had the highest at 42.44%.
Brownsville, Texas, has the lowest median annual cost of in-home services, $34,320, which is 2.7 times lower than in Bismarck, North Dakota, the city with the highest at $93,877. And
Fremont, California, has the highest median annual earnings for people with disabilities, $48,653, which is 6.6 times higher than in Burlington, Vermont, the city with the lowest at $7,398.
