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Ridiculous. I lived in Baltimore for over 50 years and don’t recall EVER locking my back door. When I go back to visit I still walk downtown neighborhoods at night and have never been in fear. All cities have good areas and bad and it’s usually very easy to see the boundaries. Now living in Texas, I’m more fearful of road ragers with guns and aggressive driving but again, being aware of your surroundings and using common sense goes a long way.
I still wouldn't recommend living in much of Baltimore city though, especially if someone has kids. Just too much riff raff and low-performing schools.
list is goofy. Nothing wrong with tucson, SLC, or lots of others on there.
Because these lists are often written by 20/30-something avocado toast hipsters who live in SF and NYC. They dig up statistics on the internet and base their entire analyses on that. They've likely never even visited 90% of the cities in these lists.
Vegas and SLC, for example, are rather nice places with great neighborhoods scattered about. Henderson (Vegas) is one of the fastest growing cities in the country. Tucson is one of the top destinations for California retirees. Neither of these places would attract so many people if they were terrible places to live.
We left Dayton, OH a few years ago. Taxes being the primary reason. Between the state and city income tax, sales tax, and ridiculously high property taxes my cost of living is actually cheaper here in SW WA in the hot Portland metro area even though housing costs 2-3x as much.
I live in Hartford, CT #13. It's not nearly as bad as it once was in the 80's and 90's. Gang activity was rampant back then, and its only concentrated in a few neighborhoods now. It's definitely improved. Lived here for over 30 years and haven't been shot once.
I lived in Oakland CA for 3 years until recently. Some parts of it have a really cool vibe and it is a city on it's way up. But I think it's going to take another 10 years regeneration before it gets itself a decent reputation and I didn't want to wait around any longer waiting for that to happen.
Rank City State Approx. Population Violent Crime/100000 Annual Trend
1 East St Louis IL 27000 4888 -27%
2 Darby Borough PA 11000 3617 -13%
3 Opa Locka FL 16000 2807 2%
4 Florida City FL 12000 2551 0%
5 Flint MI 101000 2109 -18%
6 Detroit MI 704000 2059 -10%
7 Saginaw City MI 51000 2021 -18%
8 College Park GA 14000 1967 3%
9 Prichard AL 23000 1936 -16%
10 West Memphis AR 26000 1929 -32%
But sure, Chicago isn't winning this thing right now. It's East St. Louis that has owned the list of crappiest places in America for many years now.
I live in Hartford, CT #13. It's not nearly as bad as it once was in the 80's and 90's. Gang activity was rampant back then, and its only concentrated in a few neighborhoods now. It's definitely improved. Lived here for over 30 years and haven't been shot once.
Some of those cities definitely deserve to be on the list, but others do not.
No idea how Milwaukee, Springfield MO, Miami Beach, Tucson, and Atlanta ended up on there.
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