> your city is unlivable and your block is terrorized by drug addicts
This is hyperbole, I live in one of the rougher neighborhoods. The city gov especially the mayor and his cronies have done nothing to actually fix problems, they just do expensive sweeps and cleanup without addressing root causes.
I'm not sure about in the United States, but here in Canada, we barely even have "good" and "bad" neighbourhoods. My city is quite well-mixed together economically. Somehow, despite that, the recent dysfunction of society -- the sharp increase in the number of homeless and the number of publicly intoxicated people -- seems to fall entirely on the poor as a consequence. They're the ones suffering it day to day. A relative's apartment building is a 10 minute walk away. He is dealing with people passed out in vomit in the stairwells, smashing the first and second floor windows regularly, pulling the fire alarms and setting small fires regularly. All of this is quite new. And it's so absent from my upper-middle-class community half a kilometre away -- we're so insulated -- that a lot of my peers seem to be unaware there's even anything going on. None of that is happening on my street.