is sacramento ghetto? (Los Angeles, San Francisco, Fresno: salaries, to live, cost)

[Geisha]

i think sacramento isn't as ghetto as bigger cities. I come from a really small farmer's town near Bakersfield and i'm really glad i can say there is another part of the City that is ghetto rather than not having a town big enough for a ghetto. Sacramento has many good opportunities. I got lucky and I began working with Deon Taylor Enterprises which is a new film company in Sacramento. I got to see how films are made and got to meet celebrities like Flavor Flav and Gary Busey who were on Nite Tales.

[D-town 720]

RE: usejeff

So if I lived in east oakland and then moved to del paso heights, garden block, g-parkway, or lincoln village, I would have left a rose garden? You bay-area numbnuts are silly. Talk about things you dont know. Most of you are from concord or dublin and be repping info on other cities. lived in Oakland and Sac. Sac ghettos dont look a whole lot differ just not as many of them. Housing projects are housing projects brah..

[chrisisboomba]

most diverse nation: usa
most diverse state: california
most diverse county: sacramento (dont even say LA.)
most diverse city: south sacramento

all that assimilation, things are bound to go bad. so yes, sac is THAT "ghetto".

[D-town 720]

Originally Posted by chrisisboomba

most diverse nation: usa
most diverse state: california
most diverse county: sacramento (dont even say LA.)
most diverse city: south sacramento

all that assimilation, things are bound to go bad. so yes, sac is THAT "ghetto".

Why are people in LA saying its the most diverse city/county? I see this and the demographics just dont support it. In fact, when I lived in Sac and tried to tell bay area people about how diverse the river city was they called it a cowtown with lily white people. Right, I had a cow in my front yard in midtown...

[wburg]

dtown: Most folks from the Bay Area who come this way don't actually end up in the city of Sacramento. They end up in places like Roseville or Citrus Heights or Elk Grove, some of which are very, very different demographically from Sacramento (for example, Sacramento is about 40% white, while Roseville is 80% white.) A lot of this is the old legacy of housing restrictions based on race, its effects are still felt 40 years later. Now, because these Bay Area folks don't know the area around here very well, they assume that Sacramento is just as non-diverse as some of our more lily-white suburbs.

South Sacramento is not its own city, but a neighborhood of Sacramento that was annexed. North Sacramento used to be its own city but is now part of the city of Sacramento.

Some of us live here specifically because we want to live in a diverse place, where not everyone looks or dresses or sounds the same. I grew up in those lily-white suburbs and didn't care for it. For anyone who thinks that a diverse city can never work, all I have to say is "si, se puede!"

[zen_klown]

Several years ago, Time had a story claiming that the City of Sacramento was the most diverse in the country.

Welcome to America's Most Diverse City - TIME

But the issue is more complex than the article portrays it. First generation immigrants tend to want to live near people from the home country to find native foods, religions from there previous homes and fellow speakers of their first tongue.

When Vietnamese folks move to the vietnamese community off of Stocton Blvd in Sacramento, staticially they are adding to the diversity of the City of Sacramento. But when the same process has Filipinos moving to Daly City in the Bay area, to take advantage of the Filipino immigrant community there, it actually makes Daly City less diverse because the Filipino presence in Daly is already so big.

In this region, the benefits of diversity are still an open question. In the bay area, they have managed to attract a lot of highly skilled immigrants, engineers from India. High housing prices mean that immigrants with poor skills can't afford to stay in the bay area. But in this area, the immigrants we are attracting aren't as skilled. There is a big difference between getting immigrants engineers from India and Hmong refugees who had no tradition of education, nor even a written language back in Laos.

In this region, the children of the immigrants we are attracting are having lots of problems entering civil society. The children of the Hmong are forming some of the most dangerous gangs in the region. The hispanic immigrants are also have lots of problems finishing school, teen age pregnancy and joining gangs. What you don't want to create or add to is a permanent underclass of people who are identifiable by race. But in this region we seem to be doing exactly that.

If we adopted the Canadian immigration system, I would be among the biggest proponents of increasing immigration. I am not opposed to immigrants or immigration if it makes this place a better place to live.

Canadian Immigration and Visas | Canadian Immigration Points Calculator

But I also think we are in danger of creating a lot of the problems that Amy Chua wrote about in World on Fire. You don't want to create a situation where the market dominant minority in the region is the white folks who are surrounded by an ethnically distinct group of poor people who aren't really intergrating into civil society. In this region, we are doing exactly that. The wealthy areas like Granite Bay, Gold River, El Dorado County are very white and the poor areas are fountains of diversity.

"World On Fire" by Amy Chua - Salon.com

Amazon.com: World on Fire: How Exporting Free Market Democracy Breeds Ethnic Hatred and Global Instability: Amy Chua: Books

In the Bay area, diversity is working better, in part because high housing costs are pushing the poor underclass out of the region (often here). In Canada, diversity also seems to be working. The immigrants are entering civil society. Here, the benefits of diversity remain to be seen.

I really do hope for the sake of this country, I am wrong and wburg is right. But when I look at LA county, I fear for the future.

[iloveskateboarding]

sacramento is crap worst ****ing place to live your life. rather live in san fran or new york or L.A. you get mugged prob same with L.A but this place is just horrible horrible. really hot. poor. houses are really cheap but..like its just bad. neihborhood is bad. theres spaces that has nothing on it. alot of crime. they dont really fix ****. my parents bought this house in sacramento with no ****ing good reasons. they say its a big house then after a while they say "neihborhood is really loud and bad" i said "why did you ****ing buy it then you dumb ****s" its good to visit but ...never to live

[mom2justynsarah]

The best things to have happened in Sacramento was in 2004. That was the year my husband and I were introduced to Inez Whitlowe at "Chicks in Crisis", then we got to meet our daughter's birth parents (and extended family who ALL live in Sacramento), and of course the birth of our beautiful daughter!!! Kudos to Sutter Memorial hospital for being sensitive to the needs of both the adoptive and birth parents. G-D bless all birth parents of the world who have the fortitude to do the right thing for their unborn child...

[hydro]

The fact that Sacramento is even being compared to Oakland, Detroit, and South Central Los Angeles shows that it is not a clean, beautiful city. It is not Oakland, but it is no Portland or Denver either now, is it? Living in Sacramento area, and isolating oneself from the worst areas is possible, but in all fairness, the city is ghetto. It does have very nice trees and rivers, though.

[NorCal Dude]

Do I honestly think sac is needs some work yea. But it isn't the worst out there. I feel like the American river area and the suburbs make up for what the city proper lacks.