People don’t like being around higher crime areas even if their individual chances of being a victim aren’t very high. I lived in the CWE for several years and was never a victim of any crime at all myself. But I had several neighbors who’s cars were broken into, packages stolen from our building regularly, and there were occasional shootings and car jackings within a block or two over the years. Even though nothing bad happened to me directly, it kind of made living there suck just a little more than it would’ve otherwise. And while there’s a lot of cool things in the CWE that I don’t get to experience regularly anymore, the sense of living in a low crime community brings me a lot of peace of mind that outweighs the missed cool factor.

Given population trends for the past 80 years or so, I’d say a lot of people share my views.