Reviews & Comments
Merced, CA
Seriously? -
9/16/2019It's one of those places where you feel uncomfortable at first, then a few years later you grow into it. The town has a strange feel to it. It's small enough that you lose the sense of anonymity, yet you'll get the bad traffic of a big city. That's because Merced is run by a bunch of incompetent bureaucrats who do not listen to any smart suggestions, but insist on the old way of doing things. This result in rather uncomfortable place to live. The quality of education, including at UC Merced, is rather low when compared to a refugee camp in Syria.
Merced, CA
Do you really want to know? -
9/16/2019For the most part, Merced isn't as bad as some have claimed to be. The good of Merced is that the air quality is relatively better than anywhere else in the Central Valley. Its cost of living is relatively low. There bike paths and parks around the city. Its location is ideal for out door activities, including day trip to Yosemite national park. Two hours to the coast of California. It's relatively a quiet town that is constantly evolving. There's a campus of university of California on the north side, where things seem to be better, safer, compared to the south side of the city. And the real estate value reflects that.
Now, the bad side of Merced. First, crime rates are relative high because of high unemployment in the city and drug usage. Police aren't really effective there. Court system is corrupt as it's always been. City management consists of incompetent, self-serving locals that are stuck in the 20th century mentality. There's a culture clash between the new comers, largely from the university, and the entrenched old timers. Politically, it's traditionally Republicans/conservatives. There's a large population of Mormons in the high income group. And they tend to be on the far end of conservatism. Then there's a small but growing group that identify themselves a "liberals", coming from the dynamic population of college students and faculty. But most of the staff at the university are locals and they tend to cling on their backward mindset. students at K-12 schools in town are mostly Hispanic, so are those at UC Merced, which has been officially declared "Hispanic-serving institution" (HSI).
When it comes to health care, Merced has a hospital that's relatively new, only in location and physical building, not in terms of staffing and management. It's universally known among the locals that staying away from that hospital could save your life.
Most visitors and residents of Merced would agree on is a serious lack of good restaurants in town. Many have to travel to other nearby cities to get a decent meal. The best restaurant in town is In-n-Out Burger. And that's pretty pathetic!
So, in summary, Merced is better than Detroit and worse than Beverly Hills, far worse.