Jacksonville dream crushed- Is there anything positive about living and working in Jacksonville? (Orlando: low income, crime rate)

[lindaburnette]

Many thanks for those of you and each took your time to share information with me! I feel much better now about my decision. You're right, people do tend to speak louder when they have something negative to say. I can't wait to get there, I'm going to work very hard to shorten the years to our move and get on with living by the sea! I'm sure when we get there we'll ask ourselves what took us so long to make the move! We only walk this walk once and we may as well do what makes us happy and surround ourselves with the things that make us smile like the sun dancing off the ocean on a beautiful sunny day in Jax.

[02blackgt]

Here is my opinion. I lived in Jax for 3 years and now currently in the Tampa area. Jax is ok, not good, not bad, simply ok. It will continue to be OK and overlooked and will never explode like Tampa and Miami, but this is fine. Jax has some nice areas and admittedly a lot of bad areas. Quite honestly the city just has an amazingly large population of pure trash, both white and black. It has a crime rate that looks acceptable on paper but in reality is watered down heavily by city county consolidation. The reality of Jax is that it's a very small city with a big city crime problem. Check out the Jax news for a week, it's sick. In the Tampa area we have about 3x as many people and a significantly lower number of violent crime. If you don't believe me read news4jax and baynews9 everyday for 10 days, you'll agree in the end.

Besides the crime, driving was horrible as well. Now Florida as a whole is pretty bad but Jax was insanity. I'm not going to go into to much detail but coming from NC you will immediately notice this.

With that said it does have some desirable and safe areas, it's not all bad. The beaches, mandarin, san marco, Avondale and riverside predominantly. All will get a good 2-3 well covered crimes a year and that's about it. Some will rant and rave about Springfield which does have some cool homes, but quite honestly I would never live there, it's surrounded by ghetto. If your into urban living and can deal with a shooting every now and then it's really not that bad.

All in all, I don't regret moving to Jax, but I sure as hell would never move back. I loved the beaches, the weather was great but I just didn't love the city. My advice to you would be to rent first. If you love it awesome, go buy something. if not you can pack and leave. You be the judge

[BabyBoomers2]

Originally Posted by 02blackgt

Here is my opinion. I lived in Jax for 3 years and now currently in the Tampa area. Jax is ok, not good, not bad, simply ok. It will continue to be OK and overlooked and will never explode like Tampa and Miami, but this is fine. Jax has some nice areas and admittedly a lot of bad areas. Quite honestly the city just has an amazingly large population of pure trash, both white and black. It has a crime rate that looks acceptable on paper but in reality is watered down heavily by city county consolidation. The reality of Jax is that it's a very small city with a big city crime problem. Check out the Jax news for a week, it's sick. In the Tampa area we have about 3x as many people and a significantly lower number of violent crime. If you don't believe me read news4jax and baynews9 everyday for 10 days, you'll agree in the end.

Besides the crime, driving was horrible as well. Now Florida as a whole is pretty bad but Jax was insanity. I'm not going to go into to much detail but coming from NC you will immediately notice this.

With that said it does have some desirable and safe areas, it's not all bad. The beaches, mandarin, san marco, Avondale and riverside predominantly. All will get a good 2-3 well covered crimes a year and that's about it. Some will rant and rave about Springfield which does have some cool homes, but quite honestly I would never live there, it's surrounded by ghetto. If your into urban living and can deal with a shooting every now and then it's really not that bad.

All in all, I don't regret moving to Jax, but I sure as hell would never move back. I loved the beaches, the weather was great but I just didn't love the city. My advice to you would be to rent first. If you love it awesome, go buy something. if not you can pack and leave. You be the judge

Pretty much agree! Sure glad we decided to rent and not buy.

[goolsbyjazz]

Originally Posted by LoveBoating

Pretty much agree! Sure glad we decided to rent and not buy.

Did you make it to Colorado?

[BabyBoomers2]

Originally Posted by goolsbyjazz

Did you make it to Colorado?

Not yet, but will happen within a year or so. Had a boat repair cost to handle, however definitely going to move.

[Florida2014]

Originally Posted by 02blackgt

Here is my opinion. I lived in Jax for 3 years and now currently in the Tampa area. Jax is ok, not good, not bad, simply ok. It will continue to be OK and overlooked and will never explode like Tampa and Miami, but this is fine. Jax has some nice areas and admittedly a lot of bad areas. Quite honestly the city just has an amazingly large population of pure trash, both white and black. It has a crime rate that looks acceptable on paper but in reality is watered down heavily by city county consolidation. The reality of Jax is that it's a very small city with a big city crime problem. Check out the Jax news for a week, it's sick. In the Tampa area we have about 3x as many people and a significantly lower number of violent crime. If you don't believe me read news4jax and baynews9 everyday for 10 days, you'll agree in the end.

Besides the crime, driving was horrible as well. Now Florida as a whole is pretty bad but Jax was insanity. I'm not going to go into to much detail but coming from NC you will immediately notice this.

With that said it does have some desirable and safe areas, it's not all bad. The beaches, mandarin, san marco, Avondale and riverside predominantly. All will get a good 2-3 well covered crimes a year and that's about it. Some will rant and rave about Springfield which does have some cool homes, but quite honestly I would never live there, it's surrounded by ghetto. If your into urban living and can deal with a shooting every now and then it's really not that bad.

All in all, I don't regret moving to Jax, but I sure as hell would never move back. I loved the beaches, the weather was great but I just didn't love the city. My advice to you would be to rent first. If you love it awesome, go buy something. if not you can pack and leave. You be the judge

It depends what your definition of "crime" is. If you're talking about violent crimes (murder/rape) Tampa and Jacksonville are statistically nearly even:

Violent Crimes per 1,000 residents
Tampa: 6.26
Jax: 6.59

If you're talking about property crimes like theft and vandalism, Jax is worse:
Tampa: 24.62
Jax: 37.42

Tampa is far worse in terms of crimes per square mile:
Tampa: 96
Jax: 46

So your anecdotal accounts of crime comparisons in the two cities don't exactly match what the statistics say.

[02blackgt]

Tampa and Jax violent crime are not truly even. Maybe by some standard formula they are but Jax also includes most all suburbs by default. It's not a true city versus city. Yes there is some crime on west and south side, but the stats are heavily watered down by including the almost the entire 740 some square mile county as the "city". Tampa is Tampa and the burbs are the burbs over here, tampas stats aren't watered down. It's not apples to apples. Real Jax city limits would be what? Maybe at best 140k. I'd be willing to bet if you calculated crime based on its original and true city limits and compared it Tampa that Jax would be much more dangerous. Another fair way to show it would be all of hillsbourogh county versus all of Duval, and something tells me if you do it that way Jax is going to be way higher still. I know off hand hillsborough has more ppl and at a minimum 60% less homicides

[02blackgt]

I had some free time so I did the leg work to prove my point. Based on 2015 FDLE info Duval had 97 murders and 905k people. Hillsborough (Tampa) had 76 with 1.325 million people. Pinellas (st Pete and Clearwater) had only 31 with 945k people. So Duval with 905k people had only a few less murders than the Tampa st Pete area which is close to 2.5x the population. I'd say Tampa is def safer

[Florida2014]

Murders or violent crimes?

[BlackVault1]

If crocs roam the streets of Jacksonville stalking and eating pets then Elephants roam the streets of Tallahassee crushing vehicles in a stampede