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I'm not sure where you're from, but I live in Pittsburgh and a lot of areas in the Rust Belt just have an ineffable shittiness about them that isn't necessarily reflected by statistics, other than, of course, property values. A lot of these are technically suburbs but were built out prewar due to some local industry that isn't there anymore and had little to offer during postwar suburbanization, with more attractive alternatives nearby. Now they just sort of exist, with no hope of gentrification or investment. Mediocre housing stock, lack of local amenities, and distance from major employment centers often aren't enough to make up for relative safety and low housing costs. These places are also filled with white trash, though that hasn't necessarily stopped black people from moving into other places with low housing costs. It's also worth noting that a lot of urban violence, isn't as widespread as it can seem by crude zip code maps. I can only speak for Pittsburgh, but the areas with the most random pedestrian violence tend to be the ones with the most pedestrians, not the ones that are the most violent. Downtown and the South Side (the biggest nightlife district) take the cake when it comes to crime stats, even though no one really thinks of them as high crime areas. That perception is changing somewhat as Downtown has a problem with homeless addicts and the South Side has had a few prominent incidents, but these were the highest crime areas by volume long before such perceptions existed, and they are both still high-value areas as far as housing is concerned. In the actual poor areas, most of the violence is relegated to bad housing projects or areas with high drug activity, and is usually limited to those in gangs. These places aren't great but grandma probably doesn't have much to worry about walking down the street in the daytime. Leaving a place like Homewood to move to a place like Whitaker is probably going to be a step down in quality of life for someone with connections to the former but not the latter.
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