THIS is the 5th biggest city in California? I’ve been to a lot of places, and for a major US city, Fresno California might have the most depressing downtown I’ve ever visited. You’ll see what I’m talking about soon, but trust me on this, it’s rundown, unappealing, uninspiring and just blah. And it’s not like the place is falling down because people are leaving. No way. There’s a lot of people who have been forced out of the Bay Area because it’s so expensive. Fresno is only two hours away, so a lot of people are coming here these days. I visited Fresno as part of a tour of struggling California cities in October of 2021, and I left wondering if Fresno will get better or if this is a sign of the times in this state. Right now, we’re on the south side of downtown right before dark. Soon, we’ll drive around the actual downtown area and you can see what the rest of the place looks like. As you can see there’s a lot of homeless people here. Like many other cities in California, the really high cost of living means if you can’t afford to get the hell out of this state, you’re forced onto the streets. Of course drugs are a problem here like they are all over the west coast. Apparently, the city of Fresno has talked about moving its homeless population into former drug and prostitute infested motels that it bought and remodeled. We’ll see if that actually happens or not. There are many bad parts of Fresno, which we won’t focus on for this video - it’s strictly a look at downtown. I did cover bad areas of Fresno in another video. The west side of Fresno has been home to substandard housing for decades now. A lot of the black residents in west Fresno have been complaining about lower life expectancy and bad air quality for years. But a lot of the black population in Fresno boned out, and have been replaced by hispanic families. Today, 51% of Fresno is hispanic, making it the third-largest majority hispanic city in the country. East Fresno is also older and more rundown. The north and south ends of Fresno are a little better. In those parts of town, there’s new housing being put up all over and a lot of restaurants and retail. Fresno has some culture - there’s a lot of theaters and museums in town, and it’s home to several colleges, but Fresno is a large city with a lot of poor people. 1 in 4 residents here lives below the poverty line, including about 4 in 10 kids that’s just terrible. Fresno has about 550,000 people, making it the 5th biggest city in California. The unemployment rate in Fresno is super high for California. Outside of health care or government jobs, there aren’t many job opportunities in Fresno. But there’s lots of crime. Gangs, drive by shootings, drugs, kidnappings and sex trafficking are real problems here. The sheriff had put together a Multi-Agency Gang Enforcement unit to battle them. But once gang problems settle in, they are often hard to eradicate. Overall, Fresno has one of the highest crime rates in the nation - where people have a 1 in 25 chance of being victimized. Car breakins are up a whopping 40% lately. There were 6,000 violent crimes here last year. Stabbings and shootings happen here all the time. Like ALL the time. And drugs continue to plague the central valley. Now, I know I harp on democrat cities a lot, but Fresno hasn’t had a liberal mayor in office since 1993. Fresno County leans liberal, but it’s pretty close. There’s a lot of farms all over this county, and smaller communities with older white voters. Imagine how bad Fresno would be if it were controlled by democrats. It’s possible that might happen soon. You can snag a home here for about $340,000. For California, that’s like dirt cheap. But I do have to say, if you wanted to move to an affordable, conservative leaning city, Fresno is pretty much one of the few options you have in this state, outside of the far northern counties near Oregon. Because Orange County and San Diego are certainly NOT affordable anymore. So now that I think about it, Fresno might be the last big city where you could afford a home and not be brow beaten by liberal policies in California. Yet. Driving around Fresno at night can be really scary. It’s dark and seedy and there really aren’t a lot of places open past 8 pm. And driving around at night I didn’t see a single police officer. The rule of thumb is if you’re gonna move to the Fresno region, pick Clovis. It’s way better there. Kevin Federline: CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2492510 #california #moving Email me: Robikmarketing1@gmail.com You can buy my music here: iTunes: https://music.apple.com/us/album/state-songs-an-album/1523790725 More places to get my music: -Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/music/album/Nick_Johnson_State_Songs_An_Album?id=Byfshzyrbjldelqferxc6vijljm&hl;=en_US -Amazon Music: https://music.amazon.com/albums/B08D3G43VR This channel is about America! The best video on this topic!

• published: 20 Feb 2022
• views: 347697