Low cost living and quality of life/safety issues

[SimpleLife]

Since one of the principles of ERE is reducing your housing expenses, I presume many or at least some are doing that by living in unsavory areas where the other people in the area are not living there for ERE reasons but because they are low income thugs and thus have no other choice.

In my area, even a 250-300K house in the urban areas these days buys you a place where although you may not be in the ghetto, it is either one or more blocks away or you drive or walk through several pockets of ghetto to get home. Since quality of life is important. I know I wouldn't want to ERE in a ghetto apartment where the neighbors are gang bangers and drug dealing section 8 dead beats.

Luckily my ERE plan involves retiring to a mountain cabin far away from civilization. But in the meantime, I must tolerate living in the city with pockets of ghetto everywhere you go. I say this as a person who has carried a concealed handgun for over a decade. Perhaps I am risk averse due to the "avoidance" in "avoidance, awareness and de-escalation" that is so much more important to you when you carry a handgun for personal defense. There is no "fist fight" when you carry a gun IMO, since any altercation could lead to a life and death decision. As such I exercise a higher standard of care, hoping that I never have to draw my weapon.

Or maybe I'm just an old soul who prefers peace and quiet and the country life style. I dread what our nation has become over the last 20 years, especially more recently with unchecked illegals with who knows what kind of criminal records coming here in droves.

[workathome]

Jacob was doing the RV thing in Cali where there's also insanely-expensive housing and nearby high-crime areas.

Our area is also has a large diversity of crime/safe/ridiculously expensive McMansion areas and various degrees in-between, though there's still plenty of outdated and small/slightly run-down sub-100k housing or $500/mo apartment units in the safe areas. There's also trailer parks that, of course, aren't "nice" from a yuppie perspective, but don't have weekly or even yearly shootings either.

One option is to find a job where the areas are less crime-ridden and maybe you take a pay cut, but also perhaps take a more dramatic cost of living cut that makes it a good investment.

[dot_com_vet]

We live in a 1950's part of town where people take care of their ranch houses and obsess about their grass. People are nice, and crime isn't different than anywhere else.

It's a large enough city that there is a not so nice pocket a short walk away that is only mildly bad towards the end of summer. It has a bodega that gets robbed every few years, with a pitbull roaming the store. I avoid that.

The houses here are about 1/3 the cost of a McMansion. (There is a subdivision of McMansions a block away.) The only difference I can see if that we have one bathroom to clean instead of five. We can likely open enroll the kids in the rich area if we want.

[SimpleLife]

Thing is, with the immigration problem, it is only going to get worse. The middle class is disappearing at an astonishing pace.

[sky]

Crime and violence is a neighborhood by neighborhood, or even block by block thing. Don't move next to gangbangers to save money. Figure out where the good areas are that are low cost.

Don't bottom feed, always look for low cost quality.

[jacob]

As with everything, if you want cheap and good, you can't get it easily. You have to put in the leg work. There's no automatic correlation between cost of housing and crime. Some people simply make $30k/year and can't afford high rents. Doesn't mean they're criminals. Some immigrants come in undocumented because it's the only way. They work for what they have and are willing to work hard to get more (qualities that are disappearing from the established middle class and which is why the middle class is disappearing). While they're undocumented, that's their only crime.

Looking at crime from a block or neighborhood perspective, even a time of day perspective, or a type of person perspective is much more helpful. One example from Chicago is Oak Park which is a very low crime neighborhood with huge old Victorian houses in the $300k+ range. Sounds good, but it's surrounded by Maywood, Austin, and north Berwyn/Cicero (the south parts are great) which are all fairly sketchy areas. Now, you can drive through these areas easily. You could bike through them too. Would I send DW there on a dog walk at night? No!

The RV park was nice and low cost. We did have a single episode where someone has walked from shed to shed trying to see if they were locked and had stolen some tools (not ours). However, this also happens in McMansion neighborhoods with 500k houses.

I used to live in a cheap apartment in the high-priced Ravenswood neighborhood (where Emanuel Rahm lives or used to live). This is between sketchy/gentrifying Uptown and multicultural Albany Park (we considered buying there). Both have gang-activity and they tag in the middle which is where we lived (this is the only way we found out). However, as long as you, yourself, don't belong to a gang, you wont get harassed by them. It does mean that shots are fired. I know because I read about it in the papers. Not because I actually hear gunshots. Again, a mile away from our apartment---just don't hang out on street corners at 11pm and it's fine.

Same where we live now. I walk to the train currently in the morning where the only people around are school children walking to school (never thought I was gonna see this in the US). It's a 2 mile walk. However, DW informs me that around mid-day "questionable types" are seen on the main street.

Before we decided to live here, I was looking at rural places in WA. Riggerjack informed me that some of these idyllic looking rural places housed meth labs in the backwoods and that there had been some historic battles between loggers and motorcycle gangs.

In Chicago, a friend of mine lived in the Ukranian Village (presumable started by Russian immigrants, now it's an upscale artsy neighborhood). He later learned that the nice old gentleman living in the adjacent building was the local drug king pin.

I can also tell you that I've been specifically told not to exit certain subway stations and people have been turned back at gas stations and told not to proceed into some of the sketchier Chicago neighborhoods. This is where bullets do fly in through walls and windows on a regular basis.

In conclusion: Trouble can be avoided by not seeking it out. This requires a slightly defensive mindset. To be used deliberately, especially when moving in. It doesn't require expert street-smarts, just the general concept that you shouldn't wave your $500 smartphone around at a bus stop or leave it on the restaurant table when you go to the bath room, duh! When I have visitors (parents, in-laws, out of towners), I simply tell them not to walk past Nth street and they'll be fine. In general, a random sample of people (immigrants or non-immigrants) will be 99% good. If you drop your wallet, 99% will return it to you. Personally, I am a lot more afraid of getting run over by an idiot driver than having a crime committed against me in practically any neighborhood.

[workathome]

If you buy on the edge of a gentrifying area, you may actually get a pretty good ROI

[jacob]

As in nature, science, and real estate, the best and richest opportunities are on the edges.

[SimpleLife]

Being undocumented is their only crime? Those who steal the identities of US citizens (a serious felony: http://www.nbcnews.com/id/22562690/ns/t ... ity-theft/) to they can get work are not criminals? Are you defending the importation of crime and poverty?

The fact of the matter is they are not undocumented immigrants. The legal term for them is illegal aliens. Immigrants require a visa and background checks as well as innoculations. Illegals aliens are a threat to national security as we don't know what types of crimes they have committed where they came from and what they are really here for. Furthermore, many of these Latin American countries are helping these people come here because they are the undesirables of their countries. They are criminals in their own countries and their communities not to mention their governments are more than happy to get rid of them.

Many of them would not pass the required back ground checks to come to the US, let alone qualify for citizenship. This is why the come here without papers rather than doing it legally like everyone else. There is a reason southern states started passing their own legislation to crack down on illegals, and it isn't because they have been good for the communities in those states. Phoenix is the North American capital of kidnapping and human trafficking. As a result of the crackdown many of them fled to my state. Now the "colonias" that have formed in the souther states are forming in my community, right along with all the diseases and crime they bring with them. Ten people to a house with beer bottles and cigarette butts everywhere, broken down cars, knife fights, and their illegitimate children in schools funded by AMERICAN tax payers, etc.

One of these so called "undocummented immigrants coming here for a better life" in my old neighborhood, literally acrossed the street from me had their door kicked in by a rival group of "undocummented immigrants" and was dragged out into the driveway and beaten into the ICU. Of course some of the neighbors seemed to think "they are so nice, they are just here for a better life". What's funny is that all of the guys who were there and witnessed it, claimed they didn't know who they were. Translation, they will take care of it themselves with their gang retaliation. All the people who incorrectly think they are "undocummented immigrants" will soon realize that they are wrong when the problem arrives at their doorstep.

Luckily this was in my old neighborhood. Sadly, it is coming to a neighborhood near all of us.

[jacob]

What I meant was that illegal immigration is a victimless crime. It's only a federal offense, because it has been declared to be so. Obviously stealing identities and beating people up are NOT victimless crimes, but that's a different matter.

It's not hard to find economic studies [in most countries where people complain] that immigrants (as a group) are a net positive contribution to the economy.

Anyway you seem to feel rather strongly about this while I consider it sort of a non-issue at least when it comes to finding inexpensive places to live, so I'm just gonna leave it at that.

[SimpleLife]

Sorry if I don't share your views. Illegal immigration is not a victimless crime. The article above is one of the thousands of ways that it affects US Citizens adversely, to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars a year courtesy of the American tax payer.

The fact of the matter is that illegal immigration is a gateway crime that allows criminals from other countries to come here unchecked, and leads to identity theft, drug dealing, car theft, trafficking, violation of health and safety regulations and occupancy limits for housing, etc.

It is not just me who feels stronlgy about this issue, the vast majority of other Americans do NOT want these people here, for we have seen first hand what they have brought with them, and it is crime, disease, poverty, and a refusal to assimilate into the culture. Their failed third world culture is being imported here, and those who refuse to accept that fact will soon be affected by it as well, but by then it will be too late to do anything about it.

[RealPerson]

What I meant was that illegal immigration is a victimless crime. It's only a federal offense, because it has been declared to be so.

Depends on who you ask. Union organizers would argue that illegal immigration suppresses wages and reduces employment opportunities for (unionized) legal employees. I also assume that illegal employees don't contribute to Medicare and FICA.

As a consumer, I like the cheaper produce coming from illegal immigrant labor. This benefits me directly. Of course, illegals only come north because there is an unmet demand for cheap labor.

My libertarian incination tells me that our immigration laws are too restrictive. I would like to see much more legal immigration, so that people don't have to break the law. But that topic belongs in the politics section.

[C40]

Since one of the principles of ERE is reducing your housing expenses, I presume many or at least some are doing that by living in unsavory areas where the other people in the area are not living there for ERE reasons but because they are low income thugs and thus have no other choice.

The way you're writing in this thread makes it look like you're seeing the world in only black or white (racial pun not entirely intended). That's not how things actually work.

[workathome]

I think you wanted to vent a bit about the downsides of illegal immigration, but as-a-whole people on the forum usually take a literal and ultimately realistic/practical approach to issues.

For example: If one of the forum members knew crime was increasing in an area - they'd move and/or figure out all available options and make the best choice possible. It's much easier to change your behavior than other people's, and infinitely easier to do so than change an entire nation's. If you don't like illegal immigration, you're better off moving away from the border states than trying to change others people's behavior or opinions.

[Dragline]

For example: If one of the forum members knew crime was increasing in an area - they'd move and/or figure out all available options and make the best choice possible. It's much easier to change your behavior than other people's, and infinitely easier to do so than change an entire nation's. If you don't like illegal immigration, you're better off moving away from the border states than trying to change others people's behavior or opinions.

Yes, that's the way I would look at it. Many issues people complain about are actually highly localized issues, including crime/safety, public schools and transportation, real estate, air quality (mostly), garbage collection, traffic, unemployment and irritating or annoying neighbors, co-workers or family members.

Most aggregate (national and sometimes state) statistics are only relevant to politicians, media types and academics. Because nobody lives in the aggregate. Either its a problem for you personally or in your neighborhood, or its not.

So unless you are prepared to start or join some movement (more power to you, but I'm probably not interested), you are better off assuming that the perceived problem will NEVER be fixed at the aggregate level, and focus on the personal and local level instead.

[BeyondtheWrap]

I dread what our nation has become over the last 20 years, especially more recently with unchecked illegals with who knows what kind of criminal records coming here in droves.

Over the last 20 years, crime has actually decreased. It hasn't been getting worse as you suggest.

[Chad]

I dread what our nation has become over the last 20 years, especially more recently with unchecked illegals with who knows what kind of criminal records coming here in droves.

Over the last 20 years, crime has actually decreased. It hasn't been getting worse as you suggest.

Significantly decreasing...

http://www.examiner.com/images/blog/wys ... ecline.jpg

My family (uncles and aunts, not immediate) are always amazed I live in cities (mostly Pittsburgh and DC (Arlington)). I grew up in a small town. They always ask, "do you feel safe?" Seriously? I live in, by some measures, the richest county in the country. Other police departments in the area make fun of the Arlington police because they basically break up bar fights and escort drunk 21 year olds home. It's safer than my small town hometown, but they have no idea.

[JohnnyH]

What Jacob said. Be defensive, keep a low profile, be alert, don't advertise, don't be an easy victim... Most people assume I am relatively poor and have nothing worth stealing. The only thing needed to avoid a fight is [perceived] willingness to fight.

I'm working near the border right now... While the border and federal laws and "protection" relating to it is an absolute Charlie Foxtrot, as near as Tucson it is very pleasant. Almost indistinguishable from parts of Colorado.

Most of the immigrants I meet are very nice people; family gatherings, work but not too much, simple pleasures, some Jesus, more family, large amounts of excellent food and copious beer... I fit in with them more than I do in 90% of US suburbs and urban areas.

I do think though that if you avoid being drunk in public or being drunk at all, or ingesting/selling illegal drugs, avoid joining a gang, and simply stay away from people or places that harbor these people or activities, then you have effectively eliminated about 95% of potential harm.

If you call that living!

[JohnnyH]

I tried but they would not have me!... But you are definitely correct, inebriating yourself in questionable locations and circumstances is asking for trouble.

[Dragline]

Didn't you just talk about being alert? Keeping a low profile? Joined a gang lately? : )

"It's not a gang! it's a CLUB!"