One of America’s Deadliest Cities is in Michigan

Michigan is a great area to live, in my opinion. It's never good news to hear that one of your favorite places has a high homicide rate, but it's good to be aware of the statistics. As it turns out, one of America's deadliest cities is in Michigan.

The new study comes from Wallethub.com. First, the good news. According to their report, homicide rates have gone down by an average of roughly 5% in 40 of the most populated U.S. cities between Q2 2021 and Q2 2023. That's compared to Q1 2023, where the homicide rate in those cities was 10% higher than Q1 2021. So, things are getting better. For this study, WalletHub.com looked at 40 of the largest U.S. cities based on per capita homicides in Q2 2023, as well as per capita homicides in Q2 2023 vs. Q2 2022 and Q2 2021.

Before we get to our state, let's find the city in America with the highest murder rate. According to the study, the city with the highest homicide problem is Memphis, Tennessee. Also, the city with the highest number of homicides per capita is St. Louis, Missouri. So, at least Michigan isn't on this tally for being No. 1 in either of those statistics.

One Michigan city is not ranking well for murders. When it comes to the number of homicides per capita, Detroit, Michigan, is No. 3 in the nation. Also, when it comes to the cities with the biggest homicide problems, Detroit ranks No. 5. That's too bad, because I obviously love and work in Detroit. I feel very safe when I go to concerts and other events in the city. But, those are the statistics. Find the full list of the cities with the biggest homicide problems here.

U.S News & World Report has released their list of the 150 Best Places to Live in the United States, and for 2023 - 2024. Four Michigan cities; Lansing (81), Kalamazoo (90), Detroit (114) and Flint (130).

In order to come up with the list, data is collected from the United States Census Bureau, the FBI, the United States Department of Labor and U.S. News' internal resources. The data they collected was then weighted based on response to a public survey, where people voted on the most important factors when choosing a place to live. Those factors and their weight were:

Quality of Life (36%), ranks how happy residents are with their day to day lives in each metro area, and includes the following factors:

Value Index (23%), this measures how comfortably residents can afford to live within their means in a metro area and includes the following factors; the Housing Affordability Index and the Price Parity Index.

Desirability Index (22%), whether people want to live in a certain metro area.

Job Index Market (19%) is the final factor and takes into consideration the Unemployment Rate and Average Salary.

To calculate the final overall score, and balance the results, they gave all factors a Z-Score for standard deviation. (You can read more on that at the link below).

Based on this list, the worst place to live in the state of Michigan is Flint followed by Detroit, Kalamazoo and Lansing. Two Michigan cities (Ann Arbor and Grand Rapids) ranked in the top 20, see where here.

If you want to see the full list and methodology you can, at RealEstate.USNews.com

The "worst place" to live in Michigan, Flint had an overall score of 5.7 here how Flint scored: Desirability (4.7), Value (7.6), Job Market (4.4), Quality of Life (5.9), and Net Migration (5.3). See more on their overall score here.

Detroit had an overall score of 6.0, here is the breakdown: Desirability (4.9), Value (6.9), Job Market (5.8), Quality of Life (6.1) and Net Migration (5). See how that score came to be here.

Kalamazoo also scored an overall score of 6.2, here is how that was broken down: Desirability (5.1), Value (7.3), Job Market (7.3), Quality of Life (6.5) and Net Migration (5.1). You can read more on their score here.

Lansing scored an overall score of 6.2, here is how they scored in each individual category: Desirability (5), Value (7.2), Job Market (5.6), Quality of Life (6.6) and Net Migration (5.4). You can read more on their score here.