These Are The 10 Worst Modesto Suburbs For 2018


We used science and data to determine which Modesto suburbs are the real pits.

Chris Kolmar, RoadSnacks
June 20, 2018 - 851 views
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Not everyone is cut out for city life. Some people would prefer to live in the cities and towns that surround Modesto.

So the question arises, do the suburbs maintain a semblance of the larger-than-life appeal of their more famous neighbor?

Today, we’ll use science and data to determine which Modesto ‘burbs need a little tender loving care – the sore thumbs of the Modesto area if you will. Realistically, you can’t expect all the suburbs to live up to Modesto proper, although Ripon certainly tries.

Of course, not all suburbs of Modesto are created equally, which is precisely why we set out to find the best ones. So without further ado…

We examined the 17 biggest suburbs of Modesto to find out the worst places to live. And while you won’t necessarily find them on the worst places to live in California lists, these ten places are a little too far downwind of Modesto in terms of quality of life.

Here are the 10 worst suburbs around Modesto for 2018:

  1. Waterford
  2. Gustine
  3. Atwater (Photos)
  4. Newman (Photos)
  5. Patterson (Photos)
  6. Livingston (Photos)
  7. Stockton (Photos)
  8. Ceres (Photos)
  9. Lathrop
  10. Turlock (Photos)

Read on to see how we determined the places around Modesto that need a pick-me-up. And remember, don’t blame the messenger.

Or, if you’re thinking of moving to elsewhere in California check out the best places in California overall or the worst.

And remember, there are some good places to live around Modesto too.

Editor’s Note: If you see a slight difference between the worst in state rankings and this suburb ranking, it’s because of the methodology. We needed a way to include more places, so we eliminated crime and commute times as criteria for this analysis.

For more California reading, check out:

Determining The Worst Suburbs Around Modesto for 2018

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 cities have the least amount of those things.

We threw a lot of criteria at this one in order to get the best, most complete results possible. Using the most recent American Community Survey data, this is the criteria we used:

  • High unemployment rate
  • Low median household incomes
  • Low population density (no things to do)
  • Low home values
  • A lot of high school drop outs
  • High poverty
  • High rate of uninsured families

FYI: We defined a suburb as being within 30 miles of Modesto.

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Additionally, we limited the analysis to places that have over 5,000 people. This left us with a grand total of 17 suburbs to evaluate around Modesto.

We ranked each place with scores from 1 to 17 in each category, where 1 was the “worst”.

Next, we averaged the rankings for each place to create a quality of life index.

And finally, we crowned the city with the worst quality of life index the “Worst Suburb near Modesto.” We’re lookin’ at you, Waterford.

Read on below to learn more about what it’s like to live in the worst of the worst. Or skip to the end to see the list of all the suburbs ranked from worst to best.

1. Waterford