Crime in expensive cities. Some cities with high rents have a problem with crime
Recently, the growing contrast between the residences of Silicon Valley millionaires and the escalating problems of homelessness, drugs, and crime in one of the centers of the wealthiest state of the USA, San Francisco, California, has attracted attention. According to statistical data, several European cities, best known for their expensive rental housing, are also facing security problems.
California is the richest state of the USA. If it were to become independent, it would be the fifth largest economy in the world. It would be surpassed only by the rest of the USA, China, Germany and Japan (ordered by the size of the GDP of each country). For further comparison, the GDP of Russia is about half of the richest of the "fifty" American states.
One aspect of this extraordinary wealth is the famous headquarters of tech giants, so-called Silicon Valley in San Francisco. Here, we can find companies like Apple, Facebook, Adobe, or Hewlett-Packard. Employees of these companies here enjoy high earnings, but the place where many people have found their American dream also has its downside.
The American dream is surrounded by homeless people and drug addicts
The land in Silicon Valley is the most expensive in the country and its price surpasses even luxury addresses in Manhattan, New York. Average living costs in San Francisco consistently exceed the standard of the rest of the USA by half. For example, the rent of a three-bedroom apartment in downtown San Francisco would cost a local family approximately 150,000 CZK.
The ubiquitous high cost of living has had an effect on the negative phenomena that are increasingly characterizing the city. The local wide sidewalks, by American standards, are increasingly becoming a place for the tents of the homeless and drug addicts. The issue of high costs in San Francisco is exacerbated by the opiate crisis in recent years, when drugs are spreading more and more among people, currently led by the painkiller fentanyl.
We can find a number of cities in Europe with high living costs. The cost of rental housing is very well documented. It is the monthly housing costs that largely determine how much we have left in our wallet. In other words, they are often the biggest item among the monthly household expenses.
If we look at the latest survey of real estate prices from firm Deloitte, which focuses not only on real estate prices in European cities, but also on rental housing prices, we can get a picture of which cities in Europe are the most expensive.
Dear London has an unflattering position in crime rankings, Madrid does not
The first place belongs to the largest city in Western Europe. The capital of Great Britain, London, is also the city with the most expensive rents among European metropolises for 2024. On average, tenants here will pay 33.8 euros per square meter of an apartment. A typical seventy-square-meter apartment in London thus comes out from the perspective of monthly rent at approximately 60,000 crowns. For comparison, prices in Prague are, according to the index, less than half (15.8 euros per square meter).
What is the crime situation in London? According to the London web presentation on the website lodgeservice.com, it is a city with average crime from a global perspective. The most frequent illegal activities are violent and sexual assaults. The vast area of the London metropolitan agglomeration, which is home to 15 million people, causes large differences. For example, the vicinity of Westminster is one of the most crime-ridden areas in the country, while on the other hand for instance the Kingston district is one of the calmest.
In other comparisons, however, London does not come off so flatteringly. The website cestomila.cz compared the crime index of Numbeo in significant European cities regarding crime committed during the day, and here London came in at an unflattering fifth place.
The comparison of European cities in terms of the highest amount of crime was won by the South French Marseille. However, unlike London, it does not reign far and wide in the heights of European rents. With a price of 15 euros per square meter of rental housing, it is only behind Prague in the second half of the Deloitte ladder. Interestingly, Prague, with similar rental prices as Marseille, is in the second place in the mentioned safety statistic right after Zagreb,
Expensive cities also have a good position in the safety index. In this regard, we can mention the Spanish metropolis Madrid. It has the 7th most expensive rents in Europe and similarly, it holds a nice 12th place among the safest countries according to the crime index.
Sources: gov.ca, deloitte.cz, traveltables.com, czechrunch.cz, cestomila.cz, lodgeservice.com, author's article
