What is going on everyone? How about today we talk about probably the best
city in the Blue Ridge Mountains Asheville North Carolina I was just in a
little town not too far from there a couple months back it's called Little
Switzerland it was just like Switzerland just
smaller mountains less chocolate and more chewing tobacco Asheville was the
largest city in the western part of North Carolina and the 12th most
populous city in the state the city itself only has about 84 thousand
residents with the metro area only holding about 425 thousand residents so
it's not terribly big just the way the locals like it Asheville was
incorporated in 1797 so it's been around a while the land of the sky does have
some history that is their nickname the land of the sky for a time during the
Civil War an Enfield rifle manufacturing facility was located in town now the war
really didn't come to Asheville but it kind of did when the Battle of Asheville
was fought in early 1865 basically the Union soldiers showed up with orders to
take Asheville unless there was a risk of a high casualty rate when the Union
soldiers got there they found Confederate and reserve troops dug in
pretty good and decided to go take a look at Tennessee instead these days
Asheville has one of the best music scenes in the country and has slowly
become a great place for the 20 and 30 year olds to move to but like all places
it's not for everyone and that's what today's list is all about things you
should know before you decide to call u-haul and start heading to Asheville so
why don't you sit on back and watch my top ten reasons not to move to Asheville
North Carolina number ten political clash be prepared for some political
drama in Asheville it'll feel like walking on eggshells whenever you're
talking to your neighbor that has a trump sticker on his lifted truck or the
other neighbor that has a field of burn sticker on his Nissan Leaf Asheville has
recently been described as a tiny liberal island in a very conservative
see I talked about this in my last video about Louisville Kentucky a lot of very
red states have blue cities the same thing here in Portland and Seattle with
the political atmosphere in this country the way it is now this is something
people are paying attention to the thing is this you should move to wherever the
hell you want who cares how your neighbor votes just be concerned with
how you vote but people do put this down as a reason to or not to move here just
keep that in mind you're living in a liberal city that's in a very
conservative state it's just one of those things number 9 a housing crisis
Asheville is crazy expensive to live in and that's odd considering they really
don't have much going on here in the employment department the median home
price is about $275,000 and is expected to rise over the next five years this is
about 45% higher than the US average currently now this wouldn't be much of a
surprise if the city was pumping out a bunch of high paying jobs it's not
there's average paying jobs with average residents here that can't afford these
high housing costs in a not so great city there's a lot of five people to a
two-bedroom apartment going on Nashville it's like prison with video games and
beer at least that's how it was when I had far too many roommates number eight
poverty to piggyback on the housing crisis you have a solid amount of people
living at or below the poverty line in Asheville the city is torn apart by
poverty and this isn't like the college kids living out of their car for a year
because they're trying to catch up on their student loans
this is generations of poverty with no real path out while the unemployment
rate is very low at three point one percent the households with incomes less
than $10,000 a year is higher than the US average means they got jobs there's
not getting paid well combine that with the high housing market it makes the
poverty rate sit at about 15 percent fewer and fewer Asheville natives can
afford a mortgage in the city they grew up in the good news is they're only
seven hours away from Tupelo Mississippi where you can get a home loan on a
fast-food salary number seven a lack of diversity if Asheville excels at
anything it's having a lack of diversity and making minorities feel excluded the
city is made up of 78% white residents there's a clear distinction between the
typical white neighborhood and the typical African American or black
neighborhood nice calm listed the top 50 most diverse places in North Carolina
you had neighborhoods and towns from the Charlotte area the raleigh-durham area
winston-salem Greensboro area but nothing within 50 miles of Asheville it
seems Paul Benton headon I think it's heeding Hayden whatever a local blogger
in the area says that segregation is a loaded term that doesn't really apply to
Asheville orts let's say hipster scene or hippie
scene menhaden may be in denial he is the only person
I've come across that sees it this way and that's from a mountain express post
from almost 10 years ago and that is also the last time I found anyone
attempting to make this point or defend the lack of diversity in Asheville
without diversity you miss out on a lot of cool cultural things like food and
music things like that number six weather reactions Asheville has some
weird weather patterns occasionally and most people don't know how to react even
the locals despite almost everyone here driving Subarus when it snows or when
there's heavy rain no one leaves their homes and the school's threatened to
cancel it's a lot like Portland Oregon when it comes to weather and the whole
Subaru thing we had a good snow a couple years back in Portland it got so bad
that the school buses couldn't take the kids home some of the kids had to stay
in their cafeteria until about 10:00 p.m. that night when the parents got
there or actually some of the police departments who had chains on their cars
started driving kids home instead it was it was pretty bad but we're not set up
for snow a lot like Asheville so we do the same thing as Asheville now we shut
down the schools at the first sign of a snowflake number five floods and
sinkholes Asheville has a habit of getting flooded out this is one of the
only natural disasters that I've never encountered flooding well flooding and
volcanoes never been in a volcano I don't think anyone really goes into a
volcano but you know what I mean if the rain isn't causing flooding the river
sometimes doesn't stay put it kind of likes to venture into the city a little
bit that's occasionally the city is literally sinking into itself on Merriam
Avenue there's a giant sinkhole about 27 feet in diameter and about 20 feet deep
it first opened up on July 5th of 2019 they filled it just to have it open
again six days later on the 11th since it's on private property there's nothing
the city can really do although it's suspected that it may be due to a faulty
pipe someplace let's hope that's it if you watch my Orlando video you know
sinkholes are pretty scary people sometimes disappear into sinkholes
number four traffic traffic isn't the worse but locals claim it is getting
worse technically commute times are down not
by that much but they're down as of the most recent data between 2017-2018
commute times decreased by 24 seconds that's not a lot of time but it is
progress it takes you longer self out of your car once you've gotten
your destination and fire off a comment on this video telling me how I should go
have intercourse with myself those who deal with interstate 26 everyday might
disagree that traffic is getting better but it is so this one really isn't about
the traffic as much as its warning to people moving there from places that
have real traffic like New York San Francisco and Los Angeles when someone
in Nashville complains about traffic don't spit your drink out and start
laughing it's rude number three road work when it comes to
road work it seems that Asheville likes to do as much work at one time as
possible currently the city is planning on doing some pipe work which will not
only close down an entire intersection but it'll also affect the city's tap
water thankfully as of right now this is planned to only affect people for about
three days in the middle of this month but we'll see how that works out the
city is also planning another project that involves widening interstate 26
this will slow down the already alleged massive traffic in the area and this one
could start as early as this September let's hope everything goes smooth and
there's no delays getting people's water back on all the city needs is a bunch of
unshowered people stuck on interstate 26 and angry number to the locals when you
first move to Asheville give your neighbors some space for the first few
weeks well you might be very friendly and eager to make new friends locals
here are usually very cautious when it comes to new people since typically
they're not very big fans of transplants they really aren't into transplants they
don't like him at all tell you the truth they blame the high cost of housing on
people moving in from out of state maybe ease yourself into the neighborhood if
you're coming from someplace like New York you might want to keep that to
yourself they really won't like you maybe tell them you just got out of
prison they'll probably accept that better than
New York City and number one crime when you compare every city in America that
is relatively the same size as Asheville the land of sky always takes first for
the worst in crime the crime rate is 53 crimes reported for every 1000 residents
between gang related crimes robberies and even car jackings there are far
safer places that offer more than Asheville the overall crime rate
Nashville is 94 percent higher than the national average and Asheville is only
safer than 9 percent of the cities in the United States according to area
vibes calm crime is the only stat Nashville that really sucks though all
the other thing like cost-of-living employment and
weather get graded cease schools actually get a b-plus which is strange
because almost always when you have a high crime rate you see that it has bad
schools and horrible unemployment kind of strange the good news is when you get
carjacked you know that they'll be able to read the owner's manual and reprogram
your radio to their to their likings side note to that one some idiot car
thief stole a car and Charlotte couple months back and programmed his personal
pandora account and all his information into the car needless to say when the
car was recovered they just called Pandora and found out who he was
fabulous loved idiots all right so that's my top
ten reasons not to move to Asheville North Carolina like I was saying
Asheville is not a terrible place to live it's actually pretty nice crime
yeah it's out of control and they've got some other issues but you know when you
got a really nice place I sort of have to reach it to kind of find really bad
things for tonight that's kind of what went on in this video but Asheville is a
decent place once you get around the crime and some of the other things don't
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each other