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Ugh. -- The water is fine. In fact it's no worse than most old cities in the nation, but you wouldn't know that if you watch the news.
Not talking about lead. Lead is not a threat to me anyway. The water is just gross or seems gross. Smells funny, tastes funny, not related to lead, But that may just be the locations I was in.
Actually sometimes the Detroit water is pretty awful smelling/tasting (mostly Chlorine). It varies through eh year, but there are times when it is really heavily chlorinated. It is fine when run through a basic britta filter though (actually, with chlorine, just leave the water in sunlight for a few hours and the chlorine is gone or sufficiently reduced so you do not know it is there). Detroit supposedly has the cleanest water of any major municipality - so any place can have smelly bad tasting water.
Geo-Aggie, I can't rep you at the moment, but I would if I could
Nothing I hate more than people who have never been here, or haven't been here in decades, bashing it. No one says it is perfect, but it also isn't what people make outsiders believe.
But overall most of Flint is a pretty typical small city that has good parts, bad parts, and lots of in-between parts. Luckily for any prospective students, the universities are in the good parts. Crime is high, but it has plummeted over the past few years as the economy has rebounded in the area, seeing its murder rate cut in half. Unemployment has fallen, income has spiked, and overall the city is doing quite well given the circumstances - but this makes sense based on the resilience and skilled blue-collar workforce you'll find in the quaint industrial town. Now I'll admit, Flint isn't upscale or for those who need a Starbucks on every corner, but it's a good little city with good people and given the low cost of living, and three schools (UM-Flint, Mott, Kettering) right around the education/cultural district, it would make a great destination for college.
Now would you like to explain more about how all of Flint is a deindustrialized urban wasteland? Or would you rather admit that you've misjudged a city based on some clickbait blog or pseudo-news site? My advice: next time you wish to act as though you know a place well and talk crap on it, at least have visited it once - because my guess is that you know as much about Flint as I do about Utrecht.
I think you may be a little too optimistic. The link you posted says Flint's violent crime rates are 4 - 5 times the national average. Many would consider that too high. I did some more streetviewing after opening the links to streetview you posted and although there are good parts indeed, it seems overall Flint is in a pretty bad condition. Many rough looking areas, boarded up homes and stores, abandoned industrial buildings, and empty lots. Many would not want to live in a city with so many bad areas.
The high crime and overall condition Flint finds itself in can easily be determined without ever having been there thanks to technology like streetview. No need to go there and potentially put yourself in harms way.
There are many cities with 4-5 times the violent crime rates as the national average, but the reality is that violent crime doesn't impact most people, even in these cities. Most of them have good parts and bad parts, like Flint. Most of them are old cities that have seen population loss, like Flint. Most of them have median incomes well below average, like Flint. Most of them, well, you get the point. Flint isn't the place where you buy a home to impress your family, so if that's your thing - Bloomfield Hills is 35 minutes to the south, but for a small city to attend university in? There is nothing wrong with Flint. Downtown is safe. The university is safe. And when you finish your degree you'll be able to get a good job and you'll have far less debt than your counterpart who studied in Ann Arbor, simply based on COL alone.
So for the OP - Flint is fine.
As for putting yourself in harms way, you're faaaarrr more likely to die of heart disease than your typical person in Flint is likely to be murdered, so remember that next time you put yourself in harm's way by eating some bacon or drinking a milkshake
Last edited by Geo-Aggie; 12-11-2016 at 01:22 PM..
Thank you, i visited flint before. I was never talking crap about it. I just wanted to get opinions so i could make my decision easier. But thank you your posts really helped!
There are many cities with 4-5 times the violent crime rates as the national average, but the reality is that violent crime doesn't impact most people, even in these cities. Most of them have good parts and bad parts, like Flint. Most of them are old cities that have seen population loss, like Flint. Most of them have median incomes well below average, like Flint. Most of them, well, you get the point. Flint isn't the place where you buy a home to impress your family, so if that's your thing - Bloomfield Hills is 35 minutes to the south, but for a small city to attend university in? There is nothing wrong with Flint. Downtown is safe. The university is safe. And when you finish your degree you'll be able to get a good job and you'll have far less debt than your counterpart who studied in Ann Arbor, simply based on COL alone.
So for the OP - Flint is fine.
As for putting yourself in harms way, you're faaaarrr more likely to die of heart disease than your typical person in Flint is likely to be murdered, so remember that next time you put yourself in harm's way by eating some bacon or drinking a milkshake
I may be true that (violent) crime mostly affects people engaging in illegal activities like narcotics trade but it affects regular law abiding citizens as well. A while ago some one over here in the forums told about a friend of her mother, a white woman in her fifties who moved into a 'bad part' of Flint and got three molotov cocktails through her front window before she understood she wasn't welcome there.
I read the news in cities like Flint and Detroit regularly on mlive for example and it always seems something bad like a shooting has happened. I'm generally interested in rust belt cities and especially in Flint and Detroit and wish they will recover as soon as possible but there is no need to make them look better than they really are.
I may be true that (violent) crime mostly affects people engaging in illegal activities like narcotics trade but it affects regular law abiding citizens as well. A while ago some one over here in the forums told about a friend of her mother, a white woman in her fifties who moved into a 'bad part' of Flint and got three molotov cocktails through her front window before she understood she wasn't welcome there.
I read the news in cities like Flint and Detroit regularly on mlive for example and it always seems something bad like a shooting has happened. I'm generally interested in rust belt cities and especially in Flint and Detroit and wish they will recover as soon as possible but there is no need to make them look better than they really are.
Idk Flint that well at all but it sounds like it's more to the story than that. Unless this happened back in the 70's or something. And it's not about making Flint or Detroit sound better than they really are... it's about giving them the credit they deserve for being so underrated. As I understand... Flint is underrated.
Yeah, that story about Molotov cocktails just not realistic, in 2016. I get that we're trading anecdote for anecdote here, but having personally spent many days working in Flint I tend to trust my anecdote more. I'm an incredibly stereotypical white guy, and I spent time last winter and spring working on the streets of Flint, going door to door in all neighborhoods and even going into the basements of people's homes to check their water systems. I saw the good, the bad, and the very bad of Flint, and it was very rare that I felt any sort of threat. In fact, I'd say the most threatening situations I ran into all involved pitbulls, rather than people. I don't know much about the neighborhoods of Detroit, but I can assure you that people in the neighborhoods of Flint generally don't want to mess with you for no reason.
Yeah, I experienced a few things there that I wouldn't ever see in my moderately-upscale suburb; I saw a dude jump out the window and run when I knocked on his door, I met a family who had sewage in their basement, I saw more broken windows than I could count, found many basement grow operations - some likely illegitimate, I met a 31 year old grandmother, and I even heard gunshots one afternoon (though likely a block or two away) - but not once did I ever feel my life was personally in any danger. People in the neighborhoods there are poor. Sometimes poor people are driven to make bad decisions, but when you have no reason to be involved in those bad decisions or you're living in the town's business/university districts (as a student at UM-Flint would), you really have no reason to worry.
Naturally there are precautions to take - note I said I worked there in the day. I never went into the neighborhoods at night. I also rarely wandered the neighborhoods alone (though it did happen), it was usually 2-3 of us. I always made a concerted effort to lock my truck which is something I do but rarely think about in suburbs. I always kept myself alert, mainly for pitbulls, but also for those people who have nothing better to do on a Tuesday afternoon and want to talk to you for 45 minutes while you've got a job to do (seriously, that's super annoying) - but I was never threatened, in danger, or targeted for being white (also of note, Flint is only 50% Black, the news makes it sound as homogenous as Detroit or Jackson MS, it isn't, Flint is quite diverse - Black, White, Hispanic, Asian, though these groups do segregate themselves). Flint is a poor Western city. If you've lived a sheltered life and never spent time in poor areas it might scare you. Flint is certainly not Caracas or Aleppo. One can live/work/study in Flint, and be totally safe.
Yeah, that story about Molotov cocktails just not realistic, in 2016. I get that we're trading anecdote for anecdote here, but having personally spent many days working in Flint I tend to trust my anecdote more. I'm an incredibly stereotypical white guy, and I spent time last winter and spring working on the streets of Flint, going door to door in all neighborhoods and even going into the basements of people's homes to check their water systems. I saw the good, the bad, and the very bad of Flint, and it was very rare that I felt any sort of threat. In fact, I'd say the most threatening situations I ran into all involved pitbulls, rather than people. I don't know much about the neighborhoods of Detroit, but I can assure you that people in the neighborhoods of Flint generally don't want to mess with you for no reason.
Yeah, I experienced a few things there that I wouldn't ever see in my moderately-upscale suburb; I saw a dude jump out the window and run when I knocked on his door, I met a family who had sewage in their basement, I saw more broken windows than I could count, found many basement grow operations - some likely illegitimate, I met a 31 year old grandmother, and I even heard gunshots one afternoon (though likely a block or two away) - but not once did I ever feel my life was personally in any danger. People in the neighborhoods there are poor. Sometimes poor people are driven to make bad decisions, but when you have no reason to be involved in those bad decisions or you're living in the town's business/university districts (as a student at UM-Flint would), you really have no reason to worry.
Naturally there are precautions to take - note I said I worked there in the day. I never went into the neighborhoods at night. I also rarely wandered the neighborhoods alone (though it did happen), it was usually 2-3 of us. I always made a concerted effort to lock my truck which is something I do but rarely think about in suburbs. I always kept myself alert, mainly for pitbulls, but also for those people who have nothing better to do on a Tuesday afternoon and want to talk to you for 45 minutes while you've got a job to do (seriously, that's super annoying) - but I was never threatened, in danger, or targeted for being white (also of note, Flint is only 50% Black, the news makes it sound as homogenous as Detroit or Jackson MS, it isn't, Flint is quite diverse - Black, White, Hispanic, Asian, though these groups do segregate themselves). Flint is a poor Western city. If you've lived a sheltered life and never spent time in poor areas it might scare you. Flint is certainly not Caracas or Aleppo. One can live/work/study in Flint, and be totally safe.
You walked through the wicked streets of Flint!?!? . OMG I CAN'T BELIEVE YOUR STILL ALIVE. and your WHITE!?!? how can that be? but but I looked at Flint on streetview and it looked so scary. BUT BUT BUT I saw videos of Flint on Youtube and it made me want to curl up under my bed like a lil bit ch and hide from the big bad black guys.
Well the secret is these soft green eyes of mine. Any time I feel threatened for my race, which is pretty much never, I shoot little green daggers of love from them and diffuse any situation. Also, I never tuck my shirt in, so if threatened, I can flash my pasty stomach at people and temporarily blind people, and SPF 75 sunscreen makes for a formidable sidearm, as does the $5 latte which I always have with me.
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Ugh. -- The water is fine. In fact it's no worse than most old cities in the nation, but you wouldn't know that if you watch the news.
