What is going on everyone I think it is time to tackle a list I'd hinted at
earlier this year but never got around to when I listed the worst towns in
America I said I had to cut Southern California out because it had like 17 of
the worst 20 when you suck that bad you get your own list as the rule here a
couple of things with this list I say town but technically some of them are
small cities I'm just cutting out the major cities like Los Angeles and San
Diego proper not the big cities okay if I say cities in the title I will have a
bunch of geography nerds jumping up my butt and I don't like anything jumping
up my but especially geography nerds most of these are in the LA metro area
or LA County this is another list that I have enough here to make probably three
videos but we're gonna start with just one and see how it goes that being said
if you want to know what towns to avoid in Southern California you should
probably start with number ten Huntington Park California Huntington
Park has nothing to do with Huntington Beach they're very different one has
beaches the other has shootings Huntington Park has about 58 thousand
residents 63% of them are working in about 28% live in poverty
the average commute time for the residents here's about 31 minutes most
people consider Huntington Park a working-class neighborhood if you took
this city in its current form and plopped it down in another state like
Kansas the average house would fetch maybe a hundred K on the open market but
seeing that it's in Southern California the average home price is closer to five
or six hundred thousand when I lived in LA I went to a community meeting with
the National Guard they made me go but it was very interesting a Huntington
Park Latino activists was speaking and he had a very good point about the town
the residents feel they're not represented in Huntington Park in part
because of an extremely low voter turnout he said that you have the
typical residents who don't bother to go vote then you have a large portion in
this town that isn't authorized to be in the US so they can't vote either so you
have a whole bunch of residents that have no say in what's going on in their
town or city it's too bad that's probably why it's been a nightmare
forever you watch the news long enough and it always seems to be that the car
chases on the freeway end up in Huntington Park for some reasons weirds
number nine Bell Gardens California not too far from Huntington Park is Bell
Gardens don't let the word garden fool you it has none it's almost false
advertising at this point this is the type of city that 99% of the homes have
metal security doors on them and about 60 percent have bars on the window which
is strange talk about that minute Bell Gardens has about 42 thousand residents
sixty-three percent of them are working and almost 30 percent are living in
poverty according to one city official in 2000 the city has had to depend on a
casino for much of its tax revenue in 2002 it provided more than half the
city's revenue in 2010 it was still around there was about 45% remarkably
the crime isn't terrible in Bell Gardens like other cities surrounding it but
still the poverty level is about 90 percent higher than the national average
it's not good number 8 Lynwood California if you're from Los Angeles
you most likely know not to visit Lynwood and you really know not to live
there I guess it's 70 thousand residents never got the word or they have no
choice this was the area I was assigned to during the LA riots it sucked then
it's gotten a little bit better but it still sucks Lynwood has about 70,000
residents and 28% of them are living in poverty it was once called the best
place to live best neat little thing they had going on there but things
didn't stay that way it got bad around the 1960s and back in the late 80s it
got worse when they built the 105 freeway right through town Construction
forced thousands to move and it was completed and opened in 1993 it has
caused the residents far more headaches than it's worth
the overall crime rate in Lynwood is about 13% higher than the national
average the poverty level is about 61 percent higher than the national average
combined those two with the cost living in Lynwood being about 28% higher than
the national average you definitely don't want to live here
number 7 El Monte California El Monte was incorporated as a municipality in
1912 during the 1930s the city became a site for the New Deal's Homestead
project a resettlement administration program that helped grant single-family
ranch houses to qualified applicants lots in this town are kind of big what
sucks is back in the 1970s and 80s they started tearing down the old homes that
had these big backyards and big front yards in putting like three or four
houses on a lot this sort of destroyed what used to be a great place to live in
Los Angeles these days the income per capita in El Monte is 48 percent
the national average crime isn't terrible it also wouldn't be considered
low the unemployment rate in El Monte is 15 percent higher than the national
average and about 22 percent of the population live in poverty the average
commute time here is about 45 minutes El Monte had a lot of revenue coming in
from car dealerships but during the recession they all kind of folded and
the city's tax revenue fell it continues to have issues with its finances and now
the town's kind of struggling with marijuana production they've got some
big facilities that want to come in and start you know growing their weed there
and some of the residents aren't on board with it they might be my now but
who knows number six Palmdale California
Palmdale is the type of place you moved to when you've almost been priced out of
California sort of like a purgatory before you finally give in and move to
Vegas if there weren't houses here this would probably be a place you would just
do off-roading type things if that's what you do or bury bodies if you're a
serial killer and that's what you do I lived here for three months when I was
single because it was cheap after a couple months I decided free was too
expensive to live in Palmdale luckily I was saving so much living there I didn't
mind eating the six month lease the bad news is Palmdale still sucks and now
it's expensive not San Francisco expensive but bad enough the
unemployment rate in Palmdale is 46% higher than the national average the
poverty level in Palmdale is 36% higher than national average the cost of living
in Palmdale is 18% higher than the national average you don't want to live
in Palmdale unless you're into tumbleweeds
number five Montebello California Montebello is just south east of
downtown Los Angeles and it has a few minor problems making it a little less
appealing to most people the income per capita in Montebello is about 29 percent
lower than the national average they don't have terrible poverty but it's
their crime is up there but it's not terrible what makes this town a bad
place to live is the city next to it for one the city of commerce shares a border
with Montebello it's about 80% warehouses and factories if you've ever
lived near an industrial area like this you know it brings a host of problems
especially the number of people living in their cars and motor homes at night
you know the geico is their landlord types now what really puts the nail in
Montebello is coffin is the cost of housing for some reason with all the
problems and everything else the real estate
skyhigh in Montebello a housing expert told the New York Times in a 2019
article that prospects for first-time buyers weren't good and that
opportunities to live in Montebello weren't growing and probably won't for
years their property value is far too high for what you're getting there
Montebello has about 62,000 residents 60% of them are working and 14% live in
poverty the average commute time is about 33 minutes and this is a weird
little fact about the place about 25% of the population of Montebello doesn't
have health insurance number 4 Long Beach California the city of Long Beach
was officially incorporated in 1890 sets the town's been there while Long Beach
grew as a seaside resort with a little farming the pike was a beachside
amusement park in Long Beach from 1902 until 1979
had food games rides at a SkyWheel duel ferris wheel thing a roller coaster it
was apparently kind of nice those were the good times for Long Beach my
grandmother used to talk about how growing up Long Beach is where you
aspired to live that's where if you had money you went and moved to Long Beach
sometime around the 1970s the place nosedive the overall crime rate Long
Beach currently is 31 percent higher than the national average the cost of
housing along Beach is a hundred and sixteen percent higher than the national
average it costs far too much to live in Long Beach for what you're getting these
days a little side note to this one that amusement park the pike now they'd close
it down in 1979 it was somewhere around the mid 80s that they started actually
tearing the place down they had a like a fun house or a haunted
house type thing and when they were taking it down
they had these mannequins that you know weren't there to scare you or whatever
well one of them kind of broke they found a body inside that had been there
since the 1800s I'm not even kidding there was a body in there all those
years he'd probably been put in that it was I guess cased and wax or something
like that but this person was put in there in the late 1800 early 1900s and
they found him in the 80s that's just crazy
number three Compton California Compton has about 96 thousand residents forty
percent are working and about 25 percent are living in poverty right now not the
worst numbers but definitely not the best the city struggles with poverty and
unemployment but it's no longer as dangerous as it was back in the Straight
Outta Compton days in 1991 there were 87 murders
in the City of Compton only got ninety six thousand people that's a lot in 2018
it was down to 22 murders that's progress they had the lowest number in
decades back in 2015 with only 13 murders whenever I do a worst crime or
murder video I always get someone asking about how comes cogs not on the list or
how about why isn't Compton on the list Chicago is bad but not nearly as bad as
people think and they put it out on the news asked and Compton was extremely bad
but the 1990s ended a few years back and they're much better now as an example
the overall crime rate in Compton is 39% higher than the national average the
overall crime rate in Detroit isn't in comparison is a hundred and thirty-eight
percent higher than the national average the thing that really sucks about
Compton is all the categories used a greatest city are all graded F except
for weather so the good news is if you get robbed or assaulted it's probably
gonna be done on a sunny day number two Hemet California now this list is in no
particular order I say that because a lot of these towns on this list are
equal in the amount of suckage they possess the last two on this list are
statistically the same except for population so we'll start with him Hemet
was the place to move to back in 1995 around 1999 people started changing
their mind about Hammett about 2010 the people who had moved there realized
they'd made a horrible mistake sort of like taking my cousin sex to a buffet
Hemet has population about 85,000 people it struggled since the 2008 recession
with foreclosures and getting people back to work 25% of the people live in
poverty and crime rates are high in 2016 six hundred and twenty three cars were
stolen and Hammett 173 robberies were reported and police logged 398
aggravated assaults the most this century Hammett is definitely a place
you don't want to move to and number one Barstow California Barstow is a
wasteland of regret and despair nobody moves here willingly that's what a
friend's wife told me she grew up there in the 1990s the friend was in the
military and he stopped by there to get some gas she was working with the gas
station he just wanted gas now he's been married 15 years and has four kids
Barstow will do that to people Barstow is part of what they call the
Inland Empire in California what kind of Empires only export is residents looking
for better life not a good empire 28% of the residents
live in poverty the only reason anyone goes to Barstow or stops in Barstow is
to get gas on the way to Vegas the place sucks the overall crime rate in Barstow
is 95 percent higher than the national average there is no reason to move to
Barstow California all right so that is the worst towns in Southern California
hope you guys got some information but hope it was entertaining like I said
this one was just about Southern California I could do like five of these
it's that bad in California anyway don't forget all the links below give the
video big thumbs up tell me what you thought don't forget to subscribe if you
haven't everybody have a great day be nice to each other