neighbourhood in Leiden
Pesthuiswijk
2,265 residents · postal code 2333 · Part of Boerhaavedistrict, Leiden
Everything close by, safety lags
Three per cent of Pesthuiswijk is under fifteen, three per cent is over 65. Everything that counts sits in between, and more than four in five households consist of one person. This is not a residential area in the usual sense but a collection of small addresses, almost all of them put up after the turn of the century.
The number of reported offences here is almost five times the national figure. Most of it is property crime, but violence is also far above the median, which rules out the reassuring reading that things mainly go missing here. With a 3.4 for safety, both are involved.
The 3.9 for quiet & nature comes mostly from noise: 71 decibels Lden, far above what an average Dutch neighbourhood has to put up with. And the 4.0 for wealth & income does not rest on across-the-board poverty. The share of high incomes is slightly above the national middle and social assistance well below it; it is the property values and the large share of low incomes that pull the figure down. What is missing is the middle group.
- no. 11,979 of 13,075 neighbourhoods with a grade
- no. 49 of 53 in Leiden
How Pesthuiswijk scores
Do some of these matter more to you than others?
Is Pesthuiswijk a safe neighbourhood?
For 2025, Pesthuiswijk comes out at 114 recorded crimes per 1,000 people present; the national middle is 24. That is high: Pesthuiswijk is among the 20% of Dutch neighbourhoods with the most recorded crimes.
The figures ⌄Safety
Registered crimes per 1,000 people present per year: residents plus business activity. Figures for small neighbourhoods are smoothed.
In 2025, 440 crimes were recorded here. The figures above are per 1,000 people present (residents + businesses).
Tick = Dutch median
The safest neighbourhoods in Leiden →The most dangerous neighbourhoods in Leiden →
The figures ⌄Amenities
Average distance to everyday amenities, compared with the Dutch median.
Tick = Dutch median
The figures ⌄Wealth & income
What the homes are worth, what residents earn and how many homes stand empty. It describes the area, not the people living in it.
Not counted
Part of this score's subject, but not part of the grade.
Tick = Dutch median
The figures ⌄Quiet & nature
How tightly the addresses sit together, how much noise there is, and how much green, trees and water surround it.
Not counted
Part of this score's subject, but not part of the grade.
Not part of the grade: air quality varies mostly between regions, barely between neighbourhoods within one municipality. WHO guideline: 5 µg/m³. Calculated annual mean, RIVM 2024.
Tick = Dutch median
The figures ⌄Families
How practical this area is with children: distance to school and childcare, and how many children already live here.
Tick = Dutch median
Who lives here
Pesthuiswijk has strikingly many young people aged 15 to 25: 33%, against 11% in the average Dutch neighbourhood.
Age profile
- 0–153%
NL median 14%
- 15–2533%
NL median 11%
- 25–4554%
NL median 22%
- 45–657%
NL median 28%
- 65+3%
NL median 22%
Share of residents per age group (CBS, 2025). All five bars share one scale, so their lengths can be compared with each other.
Average household size
1.2 — far smaller than average
NL median 2.3
Single-person households
82% — far more than average
NL median 31%
Households with children
4% — far fewer than average
NL median 35%
Residents per km²
4,708 — far more densely populated than average
NL median 2,364
Tick = Dutch median. Households with children counts towards Families, population density towards Quiet & nature; the other figures here get no grade.
Frequently asked questions
Is Pesthuiswijk a safe neighbourhood?
For 2025, Pesthuiswijk comes out at 114 recorded crimes per 1,000 people present; the national middle is 24. That is high: Pesthuiswijk is among the 20% of Dutch neighbourhoods with the most recorded crimes. One caveat: the figure counts per person present, not per resident. In a neighbourhood with many visitors — a centre, a station, a shopping area — it therefore comes out higher than residents experience. The figure is about what the police record, not about the people who live there.
How much crime is there in Pesthuiswijk?
In Pesthuiswijk the police recorded 440 crimes in 2025: theft, burglary, violence and vandalism combined. The comparison figure above (114 per 1,000) is not simply that count divided by the number of residents: we count residents plus workplaces, so a shopping street or station is not unfairly penalised, and for small counts we pull the figure towards the national average — otherwise a single incident would make a small neighbourhood look unsafe.
How is the grade for Pesthuiswijk calculated?
Pesthuiswijk scores 3.1 as its total score. That grade is a national position: we weigh five equally heavy scores — safety, amenities, wealth & income, quiet & nature and families — and see where Pesthuiswijk lands among every neighbourhood in the Netherlands. So it is not the mean of the five grades, but a place in the queue. All from open data published by CBS and the police.
The best and worst neighbourhoods of Leiden
Same total grade, same yardstick — from the top to the bottom of Leiden.
Highest grades
Lowest grades
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