Des Moines, Washington

There are 19.1 students for every full-time teacher across 11 public schools, more than in most measured places.

66.9% of students here are eligible for free or reduced-price lunch. That describes the circumstances families arrive with rather than how the schools perform, which is why AreaProfile shows it and does not score it.

Public schools only, from the NCES Common Core of Data. Schools are placed by ZIP code, so this is which schools are in this place rather than which one a particular address is zoned for — district boundaries do not follow municipal ones, and enrollment zones change. Fully virtual schools are excluded: they enroll students from across the state while reporting one administrative address, and counting them here would describe a school population this place does not have. The assessment covers grades 3 through 8, so a high school shows no proficiency figure — a dash in those columns means the test was not given at that school, not that it performed badly. Proficiency is measured against Washington’s own standard, so it compares cleanly within the state and only broadly against other states; AreaProfile therefore ranks it within state. The directory is current, while the proficiency figures are from the last school year with national coverage before the pandemic interrupted testing.

Population has grown 1% since 2020, reaching 33,207 in 2024.

Permitting has turned downward after moving the other way the year before: 9 units authorized in 2025, 73% below the year before.

97% of the 358 units permitted over the past twelve months are in buildings of five or more homes, so new supply is concentrated in apartments and condominiums rather than detached houses.

At 10.9 permitted units per 1,000 residents, building activity is above the median for measured US cities.

The hazards accounting for most of this area's expected annual loss are earthquake, heat wave and avalanche, with earthquake alone responsible for 72% of it.

Hazard ratings are AreaProfile calculations derived from the FEMA National Risk Index v1.20.0 (December 2025). FEMA publishes at county level. City values are the population-weighted mean of the counties the city overlaps, using AreaProfile place-to-county land-area weights. FEMA does not endorse this presentation. Higher physical resilience means lower exposure.

Below these are deaths rather than offenses, published for the county. The two measure different things and are not comparable with each other.

Des Moines's police department reported 231 violent offenses per 100,000 residents, near the middle of places with a department reporting. Property crime runs at 2,247.

King County records 3.9 homicide deaths per 100,000 residents a year, near the middle of counties measured. The CDC does not publish this below county level.

Firearm deaths of all intents run at 8.0 per 100,000 — more than the homicide rate, because nationally most firearm deaths are suicides.

Drug overdose deaths run at 32.8 per 100,000 residents in King County.

Firearm deaths count every intent together, and nationally the majority are suicides rather than homicides. The two columns overlap and should not be added.

Offenses are reported to the FBI by Des Moines’s own police department, for the population it serves, and are shown only where it reported every month of the year — a partial year is withheld rather than scaled up. Reported crime counts what was reported to and recorded by police, which is not the same as what happened, and a place that draws a large daytime workforce carries incidents its residents did not generate. Age-adjusted rates from provisional death certificate records, published by the CDC for King County as a whole — these rates are not published below county level. A county can hold both a dense city center and a quiet suburb whose experience of it is nothing alike, so this describes the county around Des Moines rather than Des Moines itself. That is why AreaProfile shows these figures and does not put them in the Area Score. Where fewer than ten deaths were recorded the count is suppressed at source, and a rate built on single figures moves sharply between releases. What this measure has that reported crime does not: a death certificate is filed whether or not the local police agency submitted a return that year, so the figures stay comparable between places and over time.

2 major airports lie within 100 miles, the nearest Seattle-Tacoma Intl at 4 miles.

Airport identity, position and runway data come from the FAA. “Major airport” is an AreaProfile classification — a public-use civil airport with a paved runway of at least 8,000 feet — not an FAA hub designation. Distances are straight-line, not driving distance.