Bay Area is more dangerous and "ghetto" than the LA Area

[bigdumbgod]

Originally Posted by SFNative1

The Bay Area has long been more dangerous than LA. Its actually simple economics. The LA area has a more even distribution of income classes. You have a very healthy middle class, and smaller lower and upper classes amongst its cities. The Bay Area has two major classes- upper and lower. You see this all over the Bay Area, especially in San Francisco, where the very wealthy live within a baseball throw from the very poor. The lack of a middle class leads to higher crime rates, especially in terms of property crime. The same can be said for several Bay Area cities, including Oakland, which has a small upper class and middle class, but large lower class, Palo Alto and East Palo Alto, Santa Rosa, San Rafael, Redwood City, and many others.

Kind of...except the middle class isn't "very healthy" anywhere anymore, including L.A.

[john3232]

Originally Posted by Summer Suns

Where you have economic and crime problems , you have Blacks and Mexicans. There is your city problem.

Rminds of a similar issue regarding the homeless and drug/alcohol dependency.

Was it because they are homeless which turned them to drugs and alcohol?

Or was it their addiction which caused them to end up on the street?

[AngusHsu]

Originally Posted by rah

here's the break down on SF's bad side:

SF sort of has two halves, geographically...there's the mostly white and asian half that takes up the north and western parts of the city (including all the tourist areas int he northern third...this is the part of SF most people are familiar with), which has around 500,000 people and in 2008 only 10 murders. Then there's the southern/eastern half of the city, which is more diverse and much more poor/blue collar with a population that's about 30% latino, 30% asian, 15% black and 20% white (almost all of SF's black and latino population live in this half). This southeastern half has about 300,000 people, contains basically all of SF's bad neighborhoods, linked together, from north-south and had 89 murders in 2008; Oceanview, the Excelsior and Visitacion Valley are the southernmost high crime hoods, which border Daly city in the south, which then link up with Bernal Heights, Potrero Hill, the Mission, SOMA, and finally the Tenderloin and Fillmore which are the northernmost ends...it's one contiguous chunk of high crime neighborhoods, or hoods with parts that are very high crime (including most of SF's housing projects), while the western/northern half of SF is basically one contiguous chunk of safe neighborhoods.

So you have the mostly middle class and affluent white and asian half of SF that has only around 2 murders per 100,000 residents...that's the safe SF people know about.

Then you have the more diverse and mostly middle class and blue collar part of the city which contains the racial/ethnic groups of SF that tourists don't see as much of, and has around 30 murders per 100,000 residents. I'm guessing most of SF's impoverished people live there too because most of SF's projects are located there.

It's basically two halves that are split on class lines.

Here's a map of the 200 murders to occur in SF in 2007 and 2008, which illustrates what i said. 90% of the markers are in the eastern/southern half (black = multiple victims, blue = justified):



As you can see, SF's ghettos aren't exactly small and isolated. SF has many high density/population hoods that are very nice though, and it off sets the bad which are generally less densely populated.

Becuase of the small nature of the city though, you can get robbed or have your stuff stolen or be assaulted pretty much anywhere though. The southern/eastern half the city is where 90% of SF's ghetto activity/murders/drug violence/gang violence all occurs though.

Most of the crime occurs in downtown as that is where subway stations are most concentrated. Outside of the downtown core, the residential areas which are most dangerous are in a contiguous southeast corner.