Knoxville is a horrible place to live in 2018
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9/22/2018
I made the grave mistake of moving back to Knoxville ten months ago, and will finally be leaving this godforsaken town next month. If Knoxville was a human being who paid a visit to a doctor, the physician would inform Knoxville that they are extremely unhealthy and only have a short time to live.
Are there good people in Knoxville? Sure, any city has their share of good and bad people. But the vast majority of Knoxville's lifelong residents are uneducated, overweight idiots who are automatically distrustful of anyone "not from around here". Most of the decent people I've met over the past 10 months were only here temporarily (for school or work) and had a plan to escape as soon as they could. The people who are left in this town have no ambition, imagination or knowledge of how crappy this town is compared to most cities. Many Knoxville residents think a "road trip" involves driving to Pigeon Forge or Gatlinburg.
Watch the local news any night and you'll see 22 minutes of depressing coverage directly related to the opioid epidemic, followed by sports and the weather. I'd estimate that 40% of the population is addicted to opioids, meth or alcohol, and that's a very conservative estimate. The opioid and meth addicts cause all sorts of issues for local businesses, including retail theft and robbery. Property theft is rampant. For a mid-sized city like Knoxville, the amount of serious crime that occurs on a daily basis is shocking. The city and county jails are literally overflowing with prisoners, so even people who commit serious crimes often receive just probation instead of prison, since there's simply nowhere to house all the bad people that populate this horrible place.
Each year, you will find Knoxville ranked among the Top Ten unhealthiest cities in terms of the obesity rate and horrible air quality. But if you read the Knoxville News Sentinel and watch the local news, you'll see this city has much bigger problems than breathing dirty air and being obese. The problems caused by the opioid and meth addicts show no signs of abating anytime soon. Since most people in Knoxville either can't read or can't afford a television or electricity (since they need that money for drugs), they are ignorant to how bad the situation is, or they simply don't care.
I have lived in several states and a number of medium to large sized cities, and I can honestly say that the culture in Knoxville is broken. People don't trust other people in Knoxville, because they realize deep down that they themselves shouldn't be trusted. Don't take my word for it. Just read the paper and watch the local news for a few days, and you will see that Knoxville is a city in crisis. Back in the 1990's, Knoxville was a terrific place to live. This formerly bucolic place is totally unrecognizable in 2018.
You can bury your head in the sand and pretend things will get better, but all the drug and crime trends point to a bleak future for Knoxville. I used to love this place, but as a once-proud graduate of the University of Tennessee, I'm heartbroken to say that I will probably never return to the home of my alma mater after I leave. It's that bad and things have changed that dramatically for the worse over the past two decades.
Jim | ,