No Longer a Nice Little Town
-
2/1/2024
I spend considerable time in and around Tucson, and I've see it rapidly going "downhill" since 2020. It's definitely not the nice town I remember from when I was a Univ. of Arizona student in the very early '70's. The big negatives: an increasing crime rate and how "the city" is doing a poor job handling the homeless population. I persuaded my girlfriend who lives on the east side to sell her home and move with me to Sierra Vista. Property crime is now through the roof, and together with violent crime, is rapidly going eastward; east of Kolb Rd. and now Pantano. The city wants to keep "free" bus transportation in place, but all that does is give some of the homeless the freedom to shoplift around town, and to scare the low- income elderly away from using the buses. And Tucson drivers have to be the worst in the nation; there are way too many car crashes for a town of half a million people. Red-light running is epidemic, and those intersections with double left-turn lanes cause many accidents. Sometimes I think that they drive "better" in Sonora, Mexico than in Tucson. The "mayor" talks about cultural heritage and diversity, but she should be making the case up in the State capital for more funds to get the mentally-ill homeless off the streets. I know a wealthy couple which had lived up in the Catalina foothills, but several years ago they decided that Tucson was too .... deteriorated... for them to continue living here. So they sold their home and moved to Colorado. Drive around Tucson and you will see that any building with a "for lease" sign is behind temporary chainlink fencing; the homeless move in around ( and sometimes inside ) those buildings if they only have plywood covering the windows. My girlfriend had a part-time job driving office records around town, and after a year and a half she was too unnerved to continue with that job; she complained about all speeding and reckless driving she encountered. It's really sad for me to think of what a nice little town Tucson was back in the early '70's. But I guess this is a common story. It is worse now in many formerly-nice cities. If looking to relocate, you'd do better in Marana or Vail. Just sayin....
Stephen | Green Valley, AZ