Top 6 Things I Hate About Cincinnati (Cleveland, Toledo: buy, school, salary)

[hillside]

Originally Posted by Cle440

Hillside, since you know a lot about Cincinnati and you asked me the same thing about Cleveland, do you have any pictures of the bad areas in Cincinnati? I have been to Cincinnati lots of times and been to almost every part of the city and a couple suburban areas. There is no doubt that there was some bad areas but I didnt see anything like as bad as you are talking about. I wouldnt say its anywhere near 80% true ghetto, Detroits not even 80% ghetto.

You could count the neighborhoods, and the proportion of high crime to low crime areas will be around 75-80 pct for high crime. To be candid, I don't understand the denial about Cincinnati. It's a rust belt city with multiple crises involving housing, health, crime, race relations, disenfranchisement in poorer communities and an impotent City Hall. The taxes are high and the money is low for most of Cincinnati. The worst areas I seen when I was in Cincinnati last week were Fairmount, Walnut Hills, Avondale, Bond Hill, Price Hill, Milvale, Northside, Carthage and downtown, although it seems the city is moving the drug trade from there right now. Walnut Hills looked horrible and the open air drug market was on fire on McMillan as well as Gilbert and Victory. Fairmount, Milvale, Price Hill, Northside and Avondale are all very bad. Northside is eclectic and good if you want to shop or eat, but to live in most of Northside is not great at all. I lived off of Chase avenue and it was an adventure living out there with all of the robbing and shooting.

You could drive from Westwood Northern ave in Westwood to Beekman in Fairmount, to State in Price Hill, to 8th on downtown to Vine, from Vine to Auburn in Mt. Auburn to Corryville, to Mcmillan headed to Walnut Hills, to Gilbert in Evanston, over to Victory in Avondale back up to Rockdale ave en route to Reading and on to Bond Hill and Roselawn, over to Seymour and back on Vine, through Carthage and Elmwood Place, to Kings Run in Winton Place on to Winton Road in Winton Terrace, to Spring Grove in Northside, up Hamilton to College Hill and over to North Bend in College Hill, back down Mt. Airy Via Colerain, and guess what? You're back on Beekman. That route will take you through from one ghetto to another, with only small pockets of improvement in between, if that. It's a pretty large circle of the city, and I didn't even mention Kennedy Heights, Madisonville, or Camp Washington.

For every person that's saying that tired old argument, "I go/live in Cincinnati and nothing happens to me so how is it that bad", there is someone somewhere saying, "I just got robbed", or "my cousin got killed", and "I gotta get out of this city". Sometimes it seems some people won't accept that a place is dangerous until somebody actually shoots them or pistol whips them in a robbery and strips all their clothes at 12pm on a busy street (which has been VERY popular lately btw). For me, as a black male, Cincinnati is not safe at all. I don't knock the opposite perception, I just don't understand it because all of the signs point the other way.

[Hartwell Girl]

Mr. Hillside, with all due respect, you have no idea what you are talking about. Most of your posts say the same thing...bad things about the City. And throwing Carthage (our sister neighborhood) into the mix of dangerous neighborhoods shows me how little you know about this City. I am not in denial and I do not live in fear. As a white woman (as if that really matters but since you included it, I figured I would as well) I have no fear of going to any of those neighborhoods. And I dont care if your perception is from the view of a black man or mine is from a white female--you are wrong. I am tired of defending this City to people who continue to bring it down. There are a lot of places in this world people can CHOOSE to live in...I choose to make this City my home and cannot understand why if you say this City is SO dangerous with "multiple crisis" why you chose to stay. And more importantly, what are YOU doing to make a positive change? Distorting the facts about this City on this forum does nothing positive for Cincinnati. And if your distored views deter one person from living in this City...shame on you! If I would have listened to people when I wanted to move to Hartwell and buy this fine old house, I wouldnt be here now. And all I realize 7 years later is how wrong those people were and how great this City is!

[captaincatfish]

Hi Hartwell...first of all, with all due respect, I think it's wrong to say that Hillside 'doesn't know what he's talking about'...I've read more than a few of his posts here and on other forums as well, and he comes across to me as someone who knows his city, and will defend it when necessary, but also as someone who wil not bite his tongue when it comes to being frank and honest about the less savory parts of the city. You have every right in the world to express and then defend your opinion---but don't say he's ill-informed when he doesn't do a Chamber of Commerce-like 'happy dance', and speak in glowing terms about Cincy.

I (like he) am a black man, and, coming from Cleveland and having lived in the Cincinnati area at least twice in the last 10 years, I could curl a few of your hairs with information about the bad parts of MY hometown as well...

Hillside, for what it's worth, please don't ever stop with your (as I call 'em LOL) 'dispatches from the war zone'...people who both live here, and are thinking about living here, need to hear from BOTH sides of the fence, not just the happy side...it's only through candid and honest assessments like these that folks can form their OWN opinions about moving to/from the city.

Hillside to me is like that savvy tour guide who narrates the tour from the front of the tour bus---he knows where the 'bodies are buried' so to speak, and he ain't afraid to say so

[Ohiogirl81]

Everyone has different experiences, points of reference and points of view. People that come to this site for information want to hear all opinions from a variety of residents (at least, I think they do).

I owned a home in Madisonville for 13 years, and loved it. About the worst thing that happened to me personally was when the bratty kids behind me wrote foul words on the back of my garage (in pencil ).

On the flip side, a neighbor down the street had her car broken into a half dozen times within several years. She moved to Anderson.

My neighbor's perception of Madisonville's safety was different from mine because of our varied experiences, experiences that were separated only by a few dozen feet. But because her perception of Madisonville was negative and mine was positive, does that make her view "distorted" or "wrong"? Of course not. Her feelings about our neighborhood were just as valid and correct as mine.

[Hartwell Girl]

I can say Hillside is wrong because of his post "The worst areas I seen when I was in Cincinnati last week were Fairmount, Walnut Hills, Avondale, Bond Hill, Price Hill, Milvale, Northside, Carthage and downtown, although it seems the city is moving the drug trade from there right now". Okay, first question, when you were in Cincinnati last week..so do you not live here? Second, seriously, you want Carthage on that list? Adding that neighborhood on your list shows me you have no idea what you are talking about. Got some crime stats handy? You might want to check those or maybe attend a Carthage council meeting to get the police report directly or hear from the community which would inform you correctly.
Also, I asked "what are you doing to make a positive change?" Its easy to knock something down, but what about building it back up? This City needs more positive energy and people, not posts about what a bad City Cincinnati really is. There are far more good people in this City than bad.

[BelieveInCleve]

Hillside, I am not denying that Cincinnati is a rough city, I am just saying that its not as bad as you say it is. Cincinnati is not the best place, but there are a lot of cities that are rougher than it. You just sound like you are making it out to be the worst place in the country.

First off I dont think that the city is anywhere near 80% ghetto. Ghetto to most people means a mostly black/sometimes hispanic area that has a high poverty rate, crime rate, and is decayed. Cincinnati is over 50% white so that means that it cant be that ghetto. If you mean ghetto with just decay and crime it still isnt that high. Obviously almost every neighborhood in a big city is going to have a high crime rate compared to the US average, if thats what you based it on. The most murders Cincinnati ever had was 89, and it only averages about 40 per year and thats not bad.

Another thing is decay in the city. Cincinnati is the oldest big city in Ohio so obviously its buildings are going to be old and maybe decayed. I think for every person saying they got robbed in Cincinnati there is TONS of people saying that they came to Cincinnati and nothing ever happened to them. I know a lot of people from where I live that went to Cincinnati or lived there and said it was just like an average place and said the city wasnt bad. I wouldnt mind that much if you were basing it on actual stories and facts but you are just plain trying to make the city look worse than it is.

[Cincy-Rise]

Originally Posted by hillside

... cinci has pockets of excellence, but for the 80% majority, it's a true ghetto and a tough place to live by all standards of measurement.

Hillside, this is probably the most uneducated & ludicrous thing I have ever read from you on City-Data. lol!

You've made the statement (and the majority seems to disagree with you) ... so back it up! Let's see some numbers. I'm curious on how you drew this conclusion and I'm not talking "proof" as in subjective evidence. Also, for reference please use links, not this Cincinnati is under blah, blah, blah ... We need to see where you're drawing your sources from.

[hillside]

Hey yalll,

Captaincatfish is right. Both sides of the argument should be presented in fairness. I do not live in Cincinnati anymore, I'm in Columbus. But I grew up in Cincinnati, my family is in Cincinnati, and that's the only place I will EVER call home. I have credibility on this, as opposed to newcomers to the city and such. I grew up in the ghetto, so my perception is firsthand, not statistics online somewhere. I've had a gun stuck in my face for my money. I've had the family car stolen at dawn while we're getting up ready to go to work. I've had to try to sleep through gunfire for 18 years. I've had bulletholes in my building and in the window of the room that I laid my head at night. I've had 4 of my friends/relatives murdered in Cincinnati. I could get into more, but then I'd be snitching, and I don't do that. It's been very real for me, so when someone suggests I don't know what I'm talking about, or dismisses my statements, it shows to their ignorance and unwillingness to believe that this world is about more than you. A lot of people live in Cincinnati. Some get robbed, some don't. A lot do well, and a lot suffer. This is true. So to come up with this peachy scenario doesn't make much sense. Cinci wouldn't be the 3rd poorest city, or a top ten murder city, or a city with a $74 million dollar school deficit, or a city with three million dollars to its name if it didn't have serious systematic and institutional issues. There was a major riot. The city was boycotted by a loose collective of folks who see Cincinnati as an unjust city with massive problems. Are they wrong? Is the FBI wrong for investigating Cincinnati PD til this day? It's becoming comical to me that all of this renaissance talk has overshadowed all of the problems of the city. I LOVE Cincinnati to the death and beyond. But I take the good with the bad. Some of us don't seem strong enough to accept that reality. And reality is the only world I'll ever live in.

Cle440,

What if I said you make Cleveland out to be worse than it really is? Which I could argue because according to the last released FBI report, Cincinnati's piddling 90 homicides was enough to best Cleveland's murder rate for the year 2006. It seems that if things are happening in Cleveland, it's real and if it's happening in Cincinnati, it's artificial; media-driven. Cleveland is a bad city, but Cincinnati is just as bad. Why do you think Cincinnati lost 100,000 people in the 90's? Not the 70's or the 80's. The 90's. That means the precipitous fall not only went through the 70's and 80's, but things actually got worse at a time where most cities were getting their act together, or at least stopping the bleeding. Again, I know what I know, and everyone is entitled to their beliefs, but the ones I hold aren't going anywhere. If they did, I would be disrespecting all of the people I know that have been killed, shot, robbed, kidnapped, jailed (both justly and unjustly), kidnapped and missing to this day, and just plain going crazy trying to keep their heads above ground on the streets of Cincinnati.

Hartwellgirl,

Trust believe, I know Cincinnati. I lived in Avondale, Bond Hill, Northside and Mt. Airy. I worked in the West End off Central Ave at a candy factory. I've rode the metro and seen people get jumped while holding their kids. People walking on buses robbing folks. And I grew up near Carthage, so I know that area too. It is NOT safe, it is overrun with addicts and highly impoverished. Carthage has a cool business district that people shop at, but so does Northside, and everybody knows it ain't safe out there. Since you know so much about Cincinnati, take that tour I gave you and see if it doesn't pan out like I said. That is one big ghetto tour and you know it. And those aren't side streets either. Beekman, Vine, Reading, McMillan, Colerain. Those are main drags. And while you're at it, tell the good folks on here about the occasional violence that seems to occur at Kroger's in your own Hartwell on Reading. I know of at least 2 murders that have occured in that very parking lot in the past. Hartwell is a mixed bag, but it's still the city. As far as I'm concerned, all bets are off.

[jlrosen]

"Why do you think Cincinnati lost 100,000 people in the 90's?"

It didn't, it lost 33,000

"And I grew up near Carthage, so I know that area too. It is NOT safe"

Last year Carthage was 32nd in Crime in Cincinnati; Hartwell had slightly more crime than Carthage last year

[Cincy-Rise]

Originally Posted by Cincy-Rise

You've made the statement (and the majority seems to disagree with you) ... so back it up! Let's see some numbers. I'm curious on how you drew this conclusion and I'm not talking "proof" as in subjective evidence. Also, for reference please use links, not this Cincinnati is under blah, blah, blah ... We need to see where you're drawing your sources from.

Hillside, just as I expected.