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Oakland I think is definitely one of the "winners" here---it's like 2 different countries in the same city. Oakland 2021 is like South Africa 1981.
On the one hand, Oakland is the 6th wealthiest city among the nation's 50 largest...
50 Largest US Cities by Median Household Income, 2019
$123,859 San Francisco, CA
$115,893 San Jose, CA
$102,486 Seattle, WA
$92,266 Washington, DC
$85,507 San Diego, CA $82,018 Oakland, CA
$79,054 Virginia Beach, VA
$79,018 Boston, MA
$76,231 Portland, OR
$75,646 Denver, CO
$75,413 Austin, TX
$70,527 Colorado Springs, CO
$69,833 Raleigh, NC
$69,407 New York, NY
$69,134 Sacramento, CA
$67,804 Long Beach, CA
$67,418 Los Angeles, CA
$66,657 Atlanta, GA
$65,889 Minneapolis, MN
$65,356 Fort Worth, TX
$63,836 Mesa, AZ
$63,483 Charlotte, NC
$63,462 Nashville, TN
$61,811 Chicago, IL
$61,716 Arlington, TX
$61,305 Omaha, NE
$60,931 Phoenix, AZ
$58,713 Las Vegas, NV
$57,118 Columbus, OH
$57,709 Tampa, FL
$56,957 Jacksonville, FL
$55,567 Albuquerque, NM
$55,492 Oklahoma City, OK
$55,332 Dallas, TX
$55,259 Kansas City, MO
$54,853 Louisville, KY
$53,751 San Antonio, TX
$53,161 Fresno, CA
$52,450 Houston, TX
$50,177 Baltimore, MD
$49,661 Indianapolis, IN
$49,158 Tulsa, OK
$48,542 El Paso, TX
$47,474 Philadelphia, PA
$45,615 New Orleans, LA
$44,365 Tucson, AZ
$44,192 Milwaukee, WI
$43,794 Memphis, TN
$42,966 Miami, FL
$33,965 Detroit, MI
Source: data.census.gov
and the city shot up from way down in the ranking in the past decade as historically poor urban neighborhoods in and around downtown have seen a major influx of wealthy techies and yuppies from San Francisco and points outside of the Bay Area.
Bloomberg says my area, Piedmont(located in the Oakland Hills) is the 28th richest place in America, ahead of far more famous places like Malibu and Montecito. https://assets.bwbx.io/images/users/.../v0/560x-1.jpg
Half of the city of Oakland is quite posh and full of wealthy people who have views like this
my pic
But I only need to drive 2.3 miles to this bridge. Once I cross it, I'm in serious HOOD with high crime, the 20s(20th-29th Av), known affectionately as the 'murder dubs'. https://goo.gl/maps/gTaMyM9ja1V3L7i56
The 580 freeway in the eastside of town is like Oakland's Berlin wall.
Driving in East Oakland in particular can be quite harrowing really any time of day. I go there for polynesian food that I want and I always have to keep an eye out for people on the 'come up', and dont even think about leaving anything visible from your car window. A few saturdays ago I was deep in East Oakland visiting relatives and I had to pull over twice due to police chases, and was almost run off the road a few times by people who dont obey red lights, and drive 70MPH on a city street. That's like normal there. Living and driving in Sao Paulo for a decade I think served as good training for East Oakland tbh. LOL
true story: this^ area is dangerous as hell but this is the route that KD and Klay Thompson took to get from their homes on top of the hill to get to the coliseum. This route doubles as a crosstown expressway for lots of people from out of the area going to the arenas or the airport.
The interesting thing is there are lots of people in these areas that actually make decent money, but not decent enough to leave the hood. Their only option in many cases is to move way out to the central valley or Sacramento to have a home that they think is worth the money because even in the hood areas of Oakland, $500,000+ is normal for a crappy house.
EDIT: Don't get me wrong, there are many serious issues but there are things I love, like the food(OMG) is so damn good down there, the different cultures and people you meet from all over, the different types of music you hear all over, there are many vibrant corridors that I like such as the Fruitvale district, New Chinatown, etc.
Oakland is small and generally compact so there is no 'buffer' between rich and poor areas so crimes of opportunity are common---and the homeless situation has gotten outrageous is many areas in the past few years.
However, Lately the lines have been blurred in many areas of town like West Oakland, a neighborhood where you once had poor people, drug dealers, prostitutes and mentally ill people walking the streets, I only drove through there if I needed to take a short cut to the Bay Bridge and NEVER at night, now the area still has all of the bad things, but it's become overrun with techies and hipsters priced out of San Francisco. The result is this:
This^ is still a *VERY* high crime area. I remember when homes in West Oakland were barely $100,000 and you couldnt pay people to even go there--now there are Teslas and Land Rovers all over the place together with the scrapers blasting heavy bass and two-dollar hoes walking around lol. A homeless encampment(the homeless situation there is awful btw) next to a gated yuppie condo compound. Such an odd mix.
But these are times in which we now live. Peace.
Last edited by 18Montclair; 04-23-2021 at 10:02 AM..
It doesn't feel like it, because the crime in the district is mostly located East of the Anacostia River, where most people don't go. More than half the homicides in the city happen on about 15 sq mi of land.
I mean that's still quite bad if thats only 50-60% of the homicides. That would leave a lto fo room for homicides west/north of the anacostia
In Boston, the crime is even more concentrated... with 80% of the homicides happening in 13.5 square miles, but it's just a lot less homicide in general.
Last year, 32 of the 60 murders I counted happened in Dorchester alone (6 square miles).
30 happened west of Dorchester Ave (4 square miles). So fully half the city homicides happened in just 4 square miles.
I go with DC; even PG County has a relative high rate(it was nearly 10/100k last year if I remember correctly and is right behind SE DC in terms of raw numbers) in comparison with other high income suburban counties and higher than some major cities.
Conversely, I will say that the income is skewed in places like DC and Oakland due to the high cost of living.
Location: That star on your map in the middle of the East Coast, DMV
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Chicagoland60426
I go with DC; even PG County has a relative high rate(it was nearly 10/100k last year if I remember correctly and is right behind SE DC in terms of raw numbers) in comparison with other high income suburban counties and higher than some major cities.
Conversely, I will say that the income is skewed in places like DC and Oakland due to the high cost of living.
Adding PG County wouldn't really work here, because you can just as easily go in the opposite direction and add Arlington or Alexandria etc., and the rate drops tremendously. If you encompass the DC beltway the rate is around the national average, and not "high". I'd just stick to saying DC proper, and even then there's a gap between it and the highest homicide rate cities.
Adding PG County wouldn't really work here, because you can just as easily go in the opposite direction and add Arlington or Alexandria etc., and the rate drops tremendously. If you encompass the DC beltway the rate is around the national average, and not "high". I'd just stick to saying DC proper, and even then there's a gap between it and the highest homicide rate cities.
It’s definitely high given how wealthy the DC area is. The raw number is pretty disturbing.
Someone posted murder rates by metro area once before, but I haven't seem to be able to dig that up. DC was literally tied at the national average. So it is a fallacy to say that's "high" at the metro level period.
What is the reason why DC Area has such a high homicide rate relative to the NYC and Boston area?
Its pretty well to do, DC is the most equitable city for rail.. it doesnt add up
Honestly, citie with a higher share of ADOS cities tend to have higher robbery and gun crime rates, generally. As do cities in the south-DC is both.
In part, it's a cultural thing unique to DC when I lived in the area people from very suburban environments in PG or from solid C families liked to talk about how it was the murder capital or how wild it was and the whole time I'm kind of like...dumbfounded. Your the wealthiest black population on the planet, tons and tons of black role models and colleges, black leadership, and yet you're still on this? In Bowie? or Upshur? I don't know didn't/doesdon't add up to me either. Unlike Baltimore where the physical environment is often very depressing or intimidating, DC worst hoods really arent all that bad. Sometimes they're fairly attractive. And as you said the transit it is pretty equitable.
Super high homicide rates in these areas makes no sense to me:
I think there's a ton of DC pride but unlike lower-income/poorer/older/more disjointed Boston, there's not much of a neighborhood feel or cohesion and so I think they're not a ton of neighborhood pride or organizing. Just broadly Southeast or northeast. This results in a lot of young people slipping through the cracks and many neighborhood problems not being properly addresed. I have to imagine the same hold true for Prince Georges County.
Additionally, problems don't happen in a vacuum, and then there solved. DC crime issue was so bad in the 70s/90s the ripple effect of that-the drug economy, the broken families, the propensity for violence...those things carry over and have ripple effects.
I think too often on C-D we say oh that place "isn't so bad anymore" but it ignores the fact that most of the long terms residents are still dealing with the same issues and trauma...
Someone posted murder rates by metro area once before, but I haven't seem to be able to dig that up. DC was literally tied at the national average. So it is a fallacy to say that's "high" at the metro level period.
I mean... Washington DC alone had more homicides (198) than all of Massachusetts (168) last year. PG had 99...
MA is 9.5x more populous than DC, and less educated...
And I assume more disposable income at least in PG where houses/COL are significantly cheaper than in MA. It also has a lower poverty rate than Massachusetts...
In general, the high QOL and High homicide in DC never made sense to me all the way. Lotta talks about the struggle but when I looked around..I ain't see it. Not much anyway.
And I assume more disposable income at least in PG where houses/COL are significantly cheaper than in MA. It also has a lower poverty rate than Massachusetts...
In general, the high QOL and High homicide in DC never made sense to me all the way. Lotta talks about the struggle but when I looked around..I ain't see it. Not much anyway.
That’s one thing that always confuses me about people talking about how Chicago only looks as because it’s a big city but per capita it’s not that bad. Like Chicago had more murders than New England.
St Louis has more murders than Massachusetts and NH combined. But the issue is the county isn’t counted in the denominator.
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