Best cities for veterans, according to Navy Federal Credit Union

Two cities in Florida and a handful of cities across the country ranked as best cities for veterans, according to a study by Navy Federal Credit Union and Sperling’s BestPlaces.

Sarasota, Florida, ranked as the No. 1 ‘best city after service’ overall, followed by Norwich, Connecticut; Derry, New Hampshire; Omaha, Nebraska; Portland, Maine; and Sebastian, Florida. Cities in Virginia, Oklahoma, Minnesota and South Dakota rounded out the top ten.

“Navy Federal worked with Sperling's BestPlaces to evaluate and rank more than 400 U.S. cities and towns across the country based on a variety of quality-of-life metrics,” said Clay Stackhouse, Navy Federal’s regional outreach manager, in an email to The Center Square. “Using these findings, Navy Federal and Sperling's BestPlaces determined which cities best meet the needs of Veterans overall, and then specific to those looking to start a small business, retire from the workforce, buy a home and prefer living in small towns.”

Quality-of-life metrics included veterans’ average income, proximity to veteran community, affordability, economic health, climate and environmental health, recreational opportunity and proximity to amenities like arts and culture, crime rate, and quality of schools, among others.

The study also devised separate rankings for best cities for retired veterans – the top five for this category strongly overlapped with the top 10 overall cities, starting again with Sarasota – best cities for veterans to buy a house, best cities for veterans to start a business, and best small towns for veterans. Each list contained cities from every region of the United States. Altoona, Pennsylvania, Coeur D’Alene, Idaho, and Glens Falls, New York, placed first in the final three categories.

This year was the fourth iteration of the study, with previous ones completed in 2018, 2020 and 2022.