Seattle! Violent crime is way down from the 90s. People don’t think this is obvious because violent crime rate is not actually an immediately visible problem, since the majority of violent crime takes place in or around homes (followed by hidden places like alleyways and parking garages, chosen for not being seen).

The actual visible stuff (homeless people, trash, smell of public urination, people on drugs in public, people being mentally ill in public, shoplifting) is up. And both violent crime and rich people are more evenly distributed around the city so the “violent crime near a rich person” is up. And so people react to those.

The late 80s early 90s was the all time crime peak for a lot of places.

That's like saying the economy is up from the 1930s.

Personally I think two things are true, crime ain't that bad and you're basically framing the problem to let you lie through your teeth a politican.

What insulting shit.

To be clear, your response to the extremely reasonable request for a source of the wild claim that you made is "it's obvious"? Am I reading you correctly?

No, you are not reading me correctly.

Isn't it wonderful that we have people doing actual research on the topic, so we we can know what is actually going on instead of relying on random people's subjective impressions of what seems "obvious" from their necessarily limited viewpoints?

Come on down! Columbia SC is experiencing a bit of a renaissance…there’s growth all over the city and a lot of optimism.

Life isn’t perfect, and we have serious problems like any other city, but I took my kids bike riding through downtown yesterday evening and felt safe.

I am glad you are enjoying it, but Columbia, SC has an extremely high murder rate, even for the US which in general has terribly high murder rates.

Unfortunately, we do. For various historical and demographic reasons, my exposure to this risk is extremely low. But yes, it is a massive problem.

Is it doing better than 5-6 years ago?

I lived there for a few years, and while the river walks were very pleasant, I don’t have much to say about it particularly otherwise.

The job market was pretty bad, basically limiting you to State gov or one of the handful of insurance companies around and state government work is rough (easily the most fulfilling job I’ve had, but the salary was just way too low.

Seems hard to justify with GA and NC markets nearby unless you’re staying solely for CoL or existing ties.

Better, yes. The market has grown a ton, and was ranked #1 in the country recently. Our tax base is weak, which makes it hard to compete with GVL and CHS, plus we have worse weather.

But the Bull Street district is in a totally different place from when you were here, which creates a feeling of “coming liveliness.”

Also Scout Motors is dropping a multi billion dollar plant in Columbia which will help job market

Definitely not Greenville, but we are getting there.