Method
How we built the Phoenix data
The Phoenix data page draws on three public datasets that cost nothing to use. One script downloads them; another condenses them into a single JSON file; the site build reads that file. No figure is entered by hand.
Housing: Census American Community Survey
We use the US Census Bureau's ACS 5-year estimates for 2020-2024 (release 2024), requested from api.census.gov, covering 41 ZIP Code Tabulation Areas wholly or mostly within Phoenix city limits. Some of those ZIPs reach into neighboring towns or unincorporated county land. The five neighboring city pages switch to Census places, meaning each city as a whole.
- Renters: B25003_003 over B25003_001.
- Moved in 2020 or later: B25038 owner and renter households whose householder moved in 2020 to 2022 or 2023 and later (cells 003, 004, 010, 011), over occupied units.
- Built before 1960: B25034 cells 009 to 011 (1940 to 1959 and earlier) over B25034_001. Built before 1980 adds cells 007 and 008.
- In buildings of 10 or more units: B25024 cells 007 to 009 over B25024_001.
- No vehicle: B25044 cells 003 and 010 (owner and renter households with no vehicle) over B25044_001.
- Median year built: B25035_001.
Caveats: each figure is a survey estimate pooled across five years, and the margin of error widens as the area shrinks. ZIP boundaries ignore Phoenix's urban villages and neighborhood lines, so treat our area labels as rough.
Crime: FBI Crime Data Explorer
For burglary and motor vehicle theft we take the FBI's summarized agency counts and rates per 100,000 residents from 2010 to 2025. The agencies are Phoenix PD (ORI AZ0072300) and the police departments of Mesa (AZ0071700), Tempe (AZ0072900), Scottsdale (AZ0072500), Glendale (AZ0071300) and Chandler (AZ0070500). A year is used only if the department reported all twelve months. That rule removes 2021 for three of the six departments, Phoenix among them; it was the year many agencies switched to the FBI's incident-based reporting. Because each agency reports only crimes inside its own boundaries, read these as city numbers rather than metro totals.
Heat: NOAA NCEI daily summaries
Temperatures are the daily highs and lows (TMAX and TMIN) recorded at Sky Harbor International Airport, GHCND station USW00023183, which is the city's official weather station. For each year with at least 350 days of data, we count the days that hit 100°F and the days that hit 110°F, along with nights that stayed at 90°F or warmer. Recent averages cover 2016 to 2025, the comparison period is 1995 to 2004, and the year-by-year chart starts in 1995. The monthly bars use the recent ten-year window. Sky Harbor sits amid pavement that releases heat through the night, so suburbs on the desert edge often cool off a few degrees more after dark.
Refresh
Once a month a scheduled job downloads all three sources again, regenerates the JSON file and hashes it. If the hash matches last month's, nothing changes; if it differs, the site rebuilds and the date at the top of this page moves. The Census publishes new ACS estimates every December, and the FBI's annual numbers come out in the fall.
Cite this
Phoenix Key Desk, "Phoenix lock and heat data by ZIP," https://phoenixkeydesk.com/phoenix-lock-data/, data as of October 29, 2026. Sources: US Census Bureau ACS 2020-2024; FBI Crime Data Explorer; NOAA NCEI.