The 10 Worst Neighborhoods In Charlotte For 2022

The 10 Worst Neighborhoods In Charlotte For 2022

The two main landmarks in Pinecrest: the New Shiloh Baptist Church near the southern edge of the neighborhood and the Carolina Golf Club just off to the northeast. You can put together a pretty good weekend with those two spots. It's the rest of the week when things get sticky.

Jobs are extremely hard to find in Pinecrest. The unemployment rate stands at 16.4%. Meanwhile, most of the local employers hand out extremely low wages. The median income hovers at $22,500. Also, aside from the church and the golf course, you won't find much else in the community. The scarcity of retail space leads to a short supply of amenities.

Located just northeast of the city center, Tryon Hills has its benefits. You have a string of stores and restaurants along both Tryon Street to the south and N. Graham to the north. You'll even find the small Tryon Hills Neighborhood Park and the Little Sugar Creek for a bit of nature.

What won't you find? Well, exciting employment prospects for one thing. In fact, residents are lucky to find a job at all, with an unemployment rate of 12.9%. The available gigs don't do much to push away financial worries. After all, the median income tracks at just $22,481.

Smallwood has character and community spirit. You've got Martin Luther King Jr. Park. You've also got the Savona Mill, a textile mill that's more than 100 years old and being converted from a local landmark to a suite of office and retail space.

The area needs this kind of revitalization effort. As it stands, the residents face a difficult economic situation. The area's unemployment rate runs at 12.5% and its median income only reaches $30,106. At the same time, the largely residential character of the neighborhood leads to a lack of amenities.

A lot of neighborhoods get names like "Arbor Glen" with no hint of a tree in sight. Not this time. Along the eastern edge of the neighborhood, you'll find Clanton Park. To the north, you've got the Carolina Golf Club. As many trees as you could want.

But let's talk about a different kind of green. Money. In that department, Arbor Glen definitely falls short. In fact, the financial situation in the neighborhood is downright depressing. Just look at the median income, which equals a paltry $22,500. Or consider the unemployment rate, which leaves 16.4% of the locals without jobs.

If you like living on a highway, tell your real estate agent to check out listings in Westover Hills. It's bounded on the east by I-77, on the south by Highway 160, and on the north by Highway 74. In between, you won't find much.

The neighborhood sports only spotty retail areas, leaving residents without nearby access to many amenities. At the same time, Westover Hills doesn't provide much economic opportunity. The unemployment rate sits at 14.0% and the median income only tracks at $19,104.

As an added challenge, the median home price hovers at $84,667 - not a lot by absolute standards, but a reach for such a low-income area.

So, there is a park in the neighborhood called Reid Park. It's relatively nondescript. However, the neighborhood has more than its fair share of green spaces, with the Carolina Golf Club taking up a huge chunk of the northern part of the neighborhood.

Otherwise, the story here is the same as most of the other worst places in Charlotte. You've got a frighteningly high unemployment rate of 13.5%. At the same time, you'll find a skimpy median income of only $25,592.

One side of Clanton Park-Roseland is bounded by the I-77. Another gets its boundary from Billy Graham Parkway, named after the famous evangelist. That association makes sense. The people of Clanton Park-Roseland could use some prayers met.

Keeping to the trend so far, Clanton Park-Roseland ranks as the number 8 worst spot in Charlotte for 2022 because of its economy. Its unemployment rate stands at 9.4% and its median income hovers at $30,774. Good news, though: houses are cheap. The median home value tracks at just $42,775.

As the name implies, Westerly Hills is located on the western side of the city. It sits up against I-85, a short drive away from the airport.

Many of the neighborhoods on this list got their unpleasant distinction from a terrible economy. Westerly Hills is no different. In fact, in some areas, it might be a bit worse than some of its unfortunate competitors.

For instance, take the unemployment rate. The figure clocks in at an eye-popping 18.9%. To put that into perspective: talk to five residents of Westerly Hills at random and chances are at least one of them is out of work. The other four will have their complaints too. According to the statistics, they are pulling in a median income of just $30,417.

On one side of this neighborhood, you'll find Firestone Park. The other end is dominated by the Martin Marietta Charlotte Quarry.

Perhaps boosted by the presence of the local quarry, the median income in Firestone-Garden Park is higher than most of the other neighborhoods on this list. The figure comes in at $39,709. However, the unemployment rate remains a poisonous 15.2%. Firestone-Garden Park also has little in the way of retail or commercial space. As such, the locals lack nearby amenities.

Methodology: How we determined the worst Charlotte neighborhoods in 2022

To figure out how bad a place is to live in, we only needed to know what kinds of things people like and then decide what places have the least amount of those things. We threw the following criteria into this analysis in order to get the best, most complete results possible. We used this set of criteria for each neighborhood in Charlotte:

• High unemployment (Less jobs)
• Low median income (Less pay)
• Low population density (No things to do)
• Low home values (No one's willing to pay to live here)
• High crime (Estimated)

Then, we ranked each neighborhood in Charlotte, North Carolina for each of these criteria from worst to best.

Next, we averaged the individual rankings for each criteria into a "Worst Score".

The neighborhood with the lowest "Worst Score" ranks as the worst neighborhood of Charlotte.

Read on below to learn more about these terrible places around Charlotte to live. Or skip to the end to see the list of all 150 neighborhoods ranked from worst to best.

This list is a scientific analysis based on real data and is completely unbiased. Hold on to your pants.