Sure it's cold, but it's cheap and apparently still has decent facilities. I'm not sure on the crime -- how much is that story a media beat-up? Are there other parts of the US where you can be near a large urban centre and pay virtually nothing? (It's an honest question! And yes, I could probably look this up somewhere.)
"Anecdote isn't the plural of datum", and all of that, but here's a point for the scatterplot. I was in Detroit visiting family a year or so ago, and we spent a day driving around the downtown area sightseeing (featuring commentary by elderly relatives about theaters, stores, restaurants, etc.). At one point, while leaving the Indian Village neighborhood, we came across a police roadblock; a series of U-turns and detours revealed that, in fact, the police had closed off an area several blocks on a side including a good-sized stretch of Jefferson (a major road in Detroit). There were several police helicopters buzzing around, lots of armed cops, etc. etc. This was during rush hour. After talking to some of the officers and some bystanders, we discovered what was happening: somebody had, upon being evicted from some sort of residential treatment facility, begun threatening people with a gun. When the police arrived, he shot at them, and then ran away. The police were currently trying to figure out which of several buildings he was in, and had closed off most of a neighborhood as well as a major street to try and contain the situation.[1]
In most cities, this sort of thing (major police operation, shots exchanged between police and armed member of public, street closures, etc.) would have been big news; that night, none of the local news broadcasts even mentioned it (one traffic report that afternoon did mention the closure of Jefferson, but didn't go into details). No headlines in the paper the next day, either.[2] My point here is that this sort of thing was apparently commonplace enough that it wasn't considered to be a newsworthy event, and none of my Detroit relatives seemed particularly surprised or concerned.
1. Notably, the particular chunk of neighborhood in question was at least half-abandoned (judging from the amount of ivy covering every second house).
2. Technically, by "the paper the next day," I mean the Detroit Free Press's website. At that point in time the DFP wasn't printing week-day paper editions.
