The 10 Most Dangerous And Worst Neighborhoods In Charlotte, NC

The 10 Most Dangerous Neighborhoods In Charlotte For 2025

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 8.7%. Meanwhile, most of the local employers hand out extremely low wages. The median income hovers at $37,206. 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.

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 8.7%. 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 $47,094.

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 8.8% and its median income only reaches $36,891. At the same time, the largely residential character of the neighborhood leads to a lack of amenities.

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 10 worst spot in Charlotte for 2025 because of its economy. Its unemployment rate stands at 6.0% and its median income hovers at $26,713. Good news, though: houses are cheap. The median home value tracks at just $105,850.

Methodology: How we determined the most dangerous Charlotte neighborhoods in 2025

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 plugged the following criteria into Saturday Night Science to get the worst neighborhoods in Charlotte:

• High crime (Estimated)
• 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)

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 criterion into a “Worst Score.”

The neighborhood with the lowest “Worst Score” ranks as the most dangerous neighborhood of Charlotte.

The article is an opinion based on facts and is meant as infotainment. We updated this article for 2025. This report is our time ranking the worst neighborhoods to live in Charlotte.

Skip to the end to see the list of all 141 neighborhoods ranked from worst to best.