Reviews & Comments
Baltimore, MD
From a Midwesterner's Perspective -
1/15/2011I moved to Baltimore four years ago for a job and now I'm trying to get out. There are a lot of things I do like about living in Baltimore but the negatives outweigh everything.
Pros
There are many friendly people here. I've lived a lot of places honestly believe the people are among the friendliest I've ever seen.
Lots of great, inexpensive restaurants.
Easy access to other east coast cities.
Lots of diversity.
Cons
Housing is expensive if you want to live in a nice neighborhood. The property taxes are high which makes it even worse.
Crime is bad. If you live in a nice neighborhood you won't notice it too much at home. But if you work downtown, like a lot of people do, odds are you will get mugged, especially if you're a woman.
Public transportation is really unreliable. The town I moved here from - which had about 200,000 people, had much better public transportation. If you work a job which requires you to be on time every day this makes it very difficult to rely on the public transportation.
That leads me to another point: Car insurance. I moved to Baltimore without a car but soon realized I needed to buy one. If you live within city limits expect to pay A LOT for car insurance.
Not much to do other than drink at bars and go out to eat but even this is spoiled. The "fun" neighborhoods like Fells Point and Federal Hill are overrun by drunks every weekend and they inflict a lot of property damage on people's cars and homes. The police do little about it because they have better things to do. There are few places to go out and have a nice quiet drink on the weekends.
Taxes are high but you get little in return. I'm not one of these people who complains about taxes all the time - I really don't mind paying them. But the roads and schools are terrible in the city, which makes it even more expensive. I've already had one significant issue with my car because of the roads and if I had kids, I'd be forced to send them to private schools (which will run you 12-20K a year here).
Bottom line is that Baltimore is not very livable unless you have enough money to buy your way out of all of the problems - and forget starting a family here. This is why many people live here for a few years and move away.