Avoid Houston
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11/9/2017
I've lived in Houston for 30 yrs. 87-present. I'm now 62, retired, and about to sell my house. I would avoid Houston for several reasons--huge crime increase, violent crime I might add. Heavy traffic that never gets better despite massive road construction, pollution, and severe weather disasters. I've been through 2 hurricanes here, a tornado, and tropical storm. Luckily I didn't lose my home. Most of the flooding from Harvey was due to poor drainage. Many great areas were destroyed. Developers have made Houston very unsafe by not providing the drainage to carry away rain. For every plus you get here, you get a minus. Collectively this is the worst group of people I've ever met or dealt with. Too many violent, corrupt, and criminal folks here. Drug and sex traffic are major problems here. Prop. insurance is high, and you better carry flood ins. also. To insure my home plus pay the HOA is almost 2400/yr. plus another 2500/yr. for prop. taxes. I'm single, never married, no kids, and so schools
don't matter to me at all. I hate paying for HISD since it cannot do a decent job of getting kids even to HS graduation. I had a career here as a librarian, badly paid, and it ended at 56 due to colon cancer. I'm lucky to be alive. Houston also has the highest cancer rate of any city in TX. Water quality here is not great either. You can have a great career here in medicine, law, corp. bus. world, real estate, banking, maybe retail or energy field. Outside of that--forget it. I would never raise a family here, and 60% of the city is now minority population. White flight is very obvious and not a surprise. The best areas are too costly for most singles, so be married if you want to live in Memorial, West. U, and other subdivisions. Dating here is really bad unless you're a female. For guys it is a nightmare. M to F ratio favors women, not guys. Unless you grow up here, know local girls from childhood, you won't do well. Women from Houston are the most hostile and nasty I've met in TX. I think they're mean because they come from broken families, get molested or raped, or get hit on too much. Whatever the reason, you must be very careful if you date them. Houston has great cultural items, but parking or going to them will tax your patience. Driving ten miles cross town now can take 40 min outside rush hour. I learned to manage Houston, but I never loved it. I'm grateful I survived my job, co-workers, traffic, weather disasters, and horrible dating experiences. Long ago Houston was okay, today it's a mess and it is expected to grow more in the future due to its job mkt. Sadly if a job is all that brings you here, you will be very disappointed in the overall quality of life outside of that. I learned a lot here, but I'd never encourage anyone to come here. It's not worth the trauma or danger you will face every day. The stress is forcing me to leave.
Michael | Houston, TX