What is going on everyone? Welcome back to the world according to Briggs and
another video about a city in Michigan ever since I did a video about Detroit
two or three years ago people have been asking me to do one on Grand Rapids
Michigan I've looked into it a couple times and really didn't find anything
terribly bad about this city sure it has some things that could be better and
that probably needs some work like all cities but nothing really jumps out at
you this video will have a mix of reasons you might not want to live there
complaints the locals have and things you might want to know before you move
to this city now I'm sure some of you want to say why not just make a positive
video about Grand Rapids it's a simple answer nobody watches videos like that
they get about a quarter of the views that a negative video gets I make them
occasionally but 90% aren't even worth the effort when it comes to views and if
your youtuber you need views like I always say if you want nothing but
positive information about a place contact a real estate agent or pull up
the city's tourism website alright let's see what a city with the nickname beer
city is all about number 10 bad roads if you live in Grand
Rapids you already know they have some roads that need some work in 2017 Grand
Rapids Michigan wasn't even in the top ten cities with the highest percentage
of roads considered to be in poor condition in 2018 they were number nine
and in 2019 they cracked the top five at the number five spot fifty-four percent
of the roads are considered to be in poor shape in Grand Rapids Michigan get
car insurance that might cover suspension or tire damage if you could
find it it's totally worth it in this city the other one that's actually worse
than this is New Orleans I wouldn't even drive my car New Orleans
Grand Rapids isn't that bad but yeah while we're on the subject of roads but
it will bring up the fact that apparently the parking enforcement and
Grand Rapids is insane they don't cut anyone any slack and some people think
that the city is trying to make up budget differences on parking tickets
alone yeah that's a big complaint for the locals apparently number nine it's a
college town this is a college town in some cases a bit too much of a college
town most people not from this part of the country might not know that this
city has any colleges much less the 15 they have that's right there are at
least 15 institution of higher education in the Grand Rapids
metro area some public some private and some private religious universities this
city is like a one-stop-shop for higher education you can learn just about
anything here Grand Rapids has around fifty thousand college students if you
add up all the campuses so why is this a problem if you ever lived in the college
town you know there's a lot of things that suck about it but as far as college
towns go they don't have major problems like
other ones do they have some minor annoyances that can add up they have
jobs but sometimes they're either seasonal because the school schedule or
because recent grads want to stay in Grand Rapids there's some competition
for good jobs that the locals complain about not killer problems not horrible
problems just annoyances traffic can pick up during the school year not bad
but it is noticeable it's not a party school but a large majority of the
weekend arrests have to do with college kids nothing horrible it's just a
headache one good thing about Grand Rapids it's considered one of the safest
college towns in the u.s. so that's a positive number eight the rent increase
rent is getting crazy in Grand Rapids buying a home becomes a smarter option
every single month with every single increase last year rent in Grand Rapids
increased eight point zero seven percent on average in the last few months before
kovat 19 the average rent increased three point four percent according to
the national Low Income Housing Coalition an individual must make twenty
dollars and ninety eight cents per hour working a full-time job to afford a
3-bedroom apartment far more than Michigan's eight dollars and $0.70
in Grand Rapids 33% of the renters spend at least half their income on rent
nationally that average is 15 percent as the number of college students grow in
Grand Rapids landlords would rather rent to them because they are more likely to
be able to afford higher rents as opposed to families trying to survive on
one or one-and-a-half incomes and where it really gets bad is the state of
Michigan has laws in place where local governments aren't allowed to pass
ordinances or legislation that imposes rent control on housing units at all
there's none of that yeah I get the free market and all that stuff but that sucks
for the locals number seven growing too fast growing
fast is a good thing in a lot of ways your stocks growing fast is good your
bank account is good the distance between you your drinking Bill Cosby at
a party that's great but sometimes when things are growing too fast it can be a
problem like your lawn your tumor or your medium city the people Grand Rapids
lost during the recession are coming back in the 2010 census the city itself
lost 5% of its population which equated to about 10,000 people not the metro
area just the city they had one hundred and ninety eight thousand people and
this took them down to one hundred and eighty eight thousand during this year's
census 2020 they estimate the city gained another twenty four thousand
residents bringing them up over two hundred thousand for a medium city this
can cause some problems like rent increases which we just talked about the
cost living is going up and the jobs get harder to come by now the cost of living
is still low but its projected to increase at a good clip in the coming
years Grand Rapids is expected to continue its steady growth that
surpasses the state average now here's some quick facts as of 2019 Grand Rapids
is the hundred and twenty second most populated city in the United States and
it's the second largest city in Michigan there are four thousand five hundred and
eighty seven people per square mile and the average age in Grand Rapids is only
thirty one years old so it's a relatively you know young city that has
a lot to do with the college students and for every 100 females there are
ninety seven males so they got a little advantage there
number six bad drivers Grand Rapids has some of the worst drivers in the state
they have two factors that we've already talked about that play into this bad
roads and college students bad roads present a bunch of problems and the
college kids just tend to not be familiar with the area and spend a lot
of time running into stuff in 2019 there were over 22,000 crashes in Grand Rapids
the age range for over half those accidents was 23 to 30 for over 30
percent of the fatal car accidents occurred at intersections the most
dangerous intersection in the city is state highway 131 and wealthy Street in
Grand Rapids get good car insurance not cheap car insurance I mean get a quote
but get good car insurance number five the snow they get too much snow in Grand
Rapids if you've ever had to shovel snow you know it sucks the first time you do
it it's not that bad but when you have to do it like three or five days
in a row it gets old quick I have a friend who grew up in Saginaw Michigan
with his grandmother he said she'd ask him to shovel the snow and he hated it
he'd tell her later later and if he put it off too long she would start playing
Church music really loud to try them out the house and into the cold to do some
shoveling the record for Grand Rapids as far as snowfall is a hundred and
thirty-two inches back in 1951 and fifty-two Grand Rapids is one of the
snowiest places in the u.s. getting on average 65 inches per year the US
average is only 28 inches a year you'll see the most snow in January and the
record for January's 27.7 inches now in February it ranges anywhere from 20
inches for heavy snowfall to 7.6 inches in light years Grand Rapids typically
sees its first snow around November but every three or four years they might see
it in October the last snowfall is typically the beginning of April make
sure you invest in a lot of winter gear and a good shovel or one of those snow
blowers snow blowers are pretty fun number four urban sprawl the beer city
the river city it's got a few nicknames Grand Rapids is definitely spread out
the center of the city which includes downtown is fairly dense but much of the
city is sprawled out across more than 40 square miles you will need a car if you
move to Grand Rapids you can get around using public transportation but you're
really gonna want a car it doesn't have a good walkability score actually it's
in the bottom 20 or 25 depending on which study you're looking at out of 300
cities I imagine it gets pretty rough walk around this city in the winter
anyway I go downtown Portland Oregon during the winter and see people falling
all over the place all the time and we don't get half the snow and ice they get
yeah my advice is definitely buy a car or have a car if you're moving to Grand
Rapids Michigan number three crime this one is weird
like all cities Grand Rapids has some crime their crime isn't one of the worst
it's definitely not one of the best when you look at other cities in the state
they're doing really well they have this estate that has Detroit and Flint
Michigan in it so as long as Grand Rapids this is in the same state with
those two they'll always look good but here's a couple strange stats the
overall crime rate in Grand Rapids is 1% lower than the national average now I
know I just said they have some crime so how are they 1% lower than national
average and I'm bringing crime up here this is why the violent crime rate in
Grand Rapids is 72% higher than the national average
they aren't robbing each other here they're not stealing each other stuff
they go straight to hurting each other it's kind of a weird stat so don't buy
insurance for all your stuff just get health insurance because you may need it
living here number 2 no Rapids now here we have one of those things I said is
more of something you should know and not really a reason to cancel your
mortgage application Grand Rapids doesn't have Rapids anymore people that
visit and go look at the Grand River will wonder where all the rapids are and
they may even ask a local where the rapids are I will spare you some eye
rolling that would be directed towards you if you ask this Grand Rapids gets
its name from the Grand River and the rapids that used to help the local
furniture industry with transporting logs and stuff down the river they used
to have a serious furniture making industry here that's actually another
one of its nicknames the Furniture City in the early 1900's flood walls were
installed in the river to help manage flooding this removed the rapids the
city was founded in 1826 and incorporated in 1850 they had Rapids for
at least 75 years and the name sort of stuck so yeah there's no rapids in Grand
Rapids Michigan keep that in mind there are some really nice flood walls
so go down to the river and enjoy those everyone loves a good flood wall I
actually that was gonna be my son's middle name flood wall Briggs my wife
put the kibosh on that and number one the homeless problem Grand Rapids has a
homeless problem some people like to believe that the only person with the
problem is the actual homeless person that is a problem for them but I see it
as the city or state has dropped the ball at some point too for a lot of
these people now I know all the stats homelessness is normally a result of
mental illness or some form of addiction or substance abuse or whatever I get
that but that's not always the case most Americans are a couple missed
paychecks away from landing on the streets themselves I'm sure we are going
to see a serious increase in this in the near future because the whole Cove at
nineteen pandemic thing there's over 800 homeless people in the greater Grand
Rapids area right now more than half of those people are families with children
winter can be the most difficult time of the year for
people living without a home and as we've already discussed it gets cold in
Grand Rapids the rising home prices and rental prices
are putting a lot of the people on the streets more and more as the rent prices
climb Michigan was actually reported to have one of the largest population of
homeless students in the u.s. ranking number six in the whole country number
six it's not good that's something they really need to work on all right so
that's today's list I hope you guys enjoyed it hope you got some information
out of it like I said this one was kind of a weird one did a couple things that
were bad but most don't really weren't that bad Grand Rapids you know the crime
and a few other things those are bad but it's really not that terrible of a city
at all it's actually a nice city once you get past some of the problems anyway
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everybody have a great day be nice to each other