Top 5 Health and Safety Places for Families to Live in America

This is episode number 206 of The Homeowner Show. Whether you're DIY or looking to hire, we're here to help you find the best information and options for you and your home. My name is Kevin Hackett, and here with me is Craig Williams.

Hello, hello, hello, and welcome for— whatever it is. Just thank you for being here. I don't care anymore.

Welcome, people. Welcome, welcome, welcome. Thank you for joining the show. How you doing, Craig?

Or be unwelcome. I don't care.

Whatever.

Yeah, I blew it.

I blew it.

Yep. Just gonna take a sip of my zero sugar Dr Pepper. Very refreshing. Not that they're paying me anything, right?

No, but they are pretty good.

I'm not gonna lie.

I, I, I like them. I drink them. Uh, yeah. How you doing?

Doing good, man. I came across an interesting tidbit of news. So back in the early days of The Homeowner Show, we had aspirations of having on Nick Offerman.

We made it a goal.

Yeah.

To have him on our show at some point.

At some point in time.

And we went through some lengths to actually try.

Right.

And we were told no. Yeah, Nick Offerman is not doing shows.

Yeah. And I think it was mostly my inability to grow a full set of facial hair.

There's no doubt that that had something to do with it.

That played into it.

Well, I mean, and I get it. I get it. You know, to, to be a man, it is important for you to be able to do that. But—

So here's, here's the tidbit. So one of the podcasts that I listen to is the Meat Eater Podcast.

Okay.

I enjoy hunting. I enjoy the outdoors. Yeah. I, I really liked the new book that they just put out, Raising Outdoor Kids in an Indoor World.

Right.

Steve Rinella wrote a fantastic book on parenting.

Okay.

For that. I'd really love to have him on to even talk about that. Let's do it. And then they also have a chef that works with their program, Kevin Gillespie, who was a contestant on Top Chef back in the day. He was one of our favorite contestants on that show.

Really?

He's part of their crew now. He's like doing all their wild game preparation and all this kind of stuff. Anyway, a while ago back on the Meat Eater podcast, which is a fantastic podcast if you're into hunting and somehow Thoreau came up, the poet.

Yeah.

Are you familiar with anything like Walden Pond? Yeah. I mean, he's very, very well known, right? Well, apparently cultured. Sure. Of course you are. Of course you think you are. You know, the, the whole work of Walden Pond is renowned by people because, I mean, we talk about walking in the outdoors and hiking and so he's sort of revered as an outdoorsman.

Sure.

Well, some people who did some research come to find out that he actually didn't have it all that tough. I mean, he was staying in that cabin, but then he would walk to his mama's house every day to get lunch or something like, was kind of a mama's boy.

Okay.

So in jest, Steve on the show called Throw a Candy Ass.

Okay.

And apparently, um, Nick Offerman took umbrage.

Uh-huh.

With that.

Okay.

Being a Throw fan.

Okay.

And accused Steve of bullying.

Oh. So Nick Offerman accused Steve of bullying a poet that's been gone for centuries. I don't know how long he's been gone.

And was an example of the culture of bullying in the outdoors world.

Really?

To which I say, harrumph.

I was like, really? That's what you're—

that's the thing you're going to go after? Like, yes, man, you are Jim Bowie making the line in the sand.

Why? Why?

How dare you?

Of all the things—

critique a poet who's been dead for I don't know how many years. I don't either.

But like, of all the things that he comes out and like puts his name on, that's it.

That's the thing. Like, apparently he writes an annual article for Outdoor Magazine and like, that's what he decided this one was going to be about.

Oh my goodness.

So Let me officially uninvite Nick Offerman. Here's the, here's the other thing is I was listening to this. And like, you know, like, who knows, man. But like they were saying on their podcast that like they had seen, and Nick Offerman doesn't— I read the article. He doesn't outright call out the Meat Eater podcast. He ref— he refers to it vaguely, but like, it's pretty obvious what he's talking about.

Sure.

But so they found out, like, people— like, people who— like, they have a massive following.

Sure.

And so people, like, on Reddit were like, hey, isn't Nick Offerman, like, talking about the Meat Eater Podcast right here? And, like, everyone's like, yeah, he's absolutely talking because he's quoting them, right? Like, he puts it in quotes but doesn't refer to the show that he's actually talking about.

That's funny.

And, and so, like, the people from the Meat Eater Podcast Thought it was funny, and we're like, "Hey, we should have him on and have a chuckle about this." Oh wow! So they reached out to him like we did.

Uh huh. And they got something out of him.

And they said, "Hey, would you like to come on the show?" And they said, "Nick Offerman is not available." That's well, that's exactly what we got.

Right. Thanks.

So there you go.

So that's the end.

We're operating on the same level, bud.

Well, hey, I'm glad to know that he's consistent.

We are getting the same sort of curmudgeonly.

Yeah.

From Nick Offerman as the Meat Eater Podcast.

You know, we also got the same treatment from Tim Tebow.

Did we ever actually reach out to him?

I did.

You did?

Yeah.

Oh, that's why.

I went through like— no, I went through like— I got to pretty much like the last channel.

See, you got to send me into situations like that because like I don't care about sports. I could have played hard to get.

Oh yeah, that's what they want.

Didn't you play golf?

Like, like in college? Yeah, exactly.

You throw a mean slider, right?

Right. Oh my gosh.

Wow. Yeah, I could have made it work.

Yeah, you—

I play hard to get really good.

That's—

yeah, it's how I got you on this show.

Yeah, that's exactly right. That's exactly right.

All right. Continuing the series. Yeah. Oh, yeah.

This is part 2.

Part 2. Yeah.

Here we are.

So we're talking about the, the top cities for families.

Yeah.

So, and this is data that WalletHub put together in 2022, by the way. This is current data. Um, and we'll, we'll go through, like, how they, how they did this. And they, they, they basically based it off of, uh, 4 categories: family fun, health and safety, education and childcare, and affordability.

Right.

So last week, or not last week, I don't know when this episode is going to air. But like last time, we went over what are the funnest cities according to WalletHub.

Yeah, they were wrong.

They're wrong. But they, by golly, they put a list together.

Yes, they did. So, and the health and safety ones, they also put a list together. It is together.

So, and to be fair, it's based off of 182 different cities.

That's not a small—

No. So like, they actually did some evaluation here.

Yeah.

We didn't agree with the outcome.

Right.

And there's a lot of cities in the US. So like, we're trying to be fair.

Sure.

But this one we know little to nothing about. But we wanted to make sure that you had the information.

Pretty much any of them. Yeah.

So anyway, these are the top 5 cities for health and safety.

Yeah.

And as I was going through them, I noticed a theme. I don't know if you noticed a theme.

I did.

Um, but let's, let's go through them.

Okay.

So number 5, Santa Clarita, California.

Okay. Um, that place is a place.

It is a place.

They're, they're popular. I'm gonna tell you populations. 212,000, right, in 2019, 2020. That's a decent That's a good number. That's a big place.

And they didn't make the fun, uh, cities.

No.

Um, but they do have a couple of theme parks.

Yeah.

They're not far from Los Angeles. No, they've got—

they've got a Six Flags. Well, they got Magic Mountain. That's a— that's a pretty big one. And then they've also got a Hurricane Harbor next to Magic Mountain. Magic Mountain's one of those places that, like, Californians are aware of.

Oh, sure.

I mean, that's It's like Six Flags in Dallas. Like, people, people in Texas—

People know about it that live there.

That's exactly right.

Yeah. So you also have the, the chance of having a Netflix show named after you.

Ah.

Have you seen that? The Santa Clarita Diet?

Yes.

Where, like, the woman just decides to start eating people?

Uh-huh.

So you got that to look forward to. I don't know how that falls into health and safety.

Well—

It doesn't sound healthy or safe.

Or safe. True.

So, but, um, I don't know if WalletHub took that into consideration, but they should have.

Sure. But I, I will say that like whenever I start looking at things, uh, in Santa Clarita, like I see lots of good things about their police force. It shows up really quickly.

Yeah, because those are 2 different things, health and safety, right?

Yeah. And, and I would say police force is one of the safety aspects of of a place you live. Yeah, for sure. Um, now I, now I don't know anything about their health system, what that even means. Like, did they have like great hospitals? Yeah. Um, I don't know.

Well, here's the other thing, man, is they have a relatively young, uh, age median. Like, the average age in Santa Clarita is 37.

Interesting. Yeah, that's young.

I mean, that— I mean, that's, that's right in the middle. Um, and people there don't make a whole lot of money.

I, I would think not.

The, the average median is like $55,000.

Okay.

Um, so I mean, like, you know, it's, it's not like a bustling metropolis or anything, but it's a decent size. It's a decent-sized city, but like, as far as like age and like what, you know, age, wage earning, it's not that high. And, like, this, this is something that I've actually heard quite a bit about California is, like, once you get outside the big cities, it's pretty much like the rest of America.

Yeah.

And I think Santa Clarita probably falls in that. But, like, you, you also have a, a city that falls into the, the public health support politic. You know, and I, I don't know if you noticed this, but, like, every single one of the top 5 is a state that supports that.

Yep.

So I did— I don't know if that was a metric that they used to produce this list. I would imagine that, that, that factors in.

Sure. Okay.

So, and that'll become apparent as we go through this. So number 4, Warwick, Rhode Island.

Where?

Yeah, exactly.

I mean, like, Houston's bigger than Rhode Island. So I don't know that place very well. Providence is the only place I've ever heard of.

Well, so Providence is the biggest city in Rhode Island. Warwick is the second biggest city in Rhode Island.

Yeah, it's got like 80-something, 81,000 people. 81,000 people.

Yeah. Well, that's as of 2020. Yeah, I would imagine that number has gone down, probably. Um, and it's not, it's not a knock on the city. It's just, I mean, like, that's, that's kind of how it's going these days is people are moving away from places like this.

Yeah. And also, to be fair, Warwick is a suburb of Providence.

Right.

So it's close, right? But, but again, like, I, I don't know any— I, I, I just don't know anything about this place. So I, I'm, I'm genuinely curious, like, what, what metrics are they using for health and safety? Um, again, does it come down to, like, hospitals and police force? Does it come down to, um, I don't know, like, their, their crime rate?

Mhm.

Things like that, which again could very well go back to things like the police force.

Okay. So here, here, here, I mean, here, here are their criteria.

Okay.

And it, it, it accounts for 20 points in the total score for family-friendly cities.

Okay.

Air quality.

Oh.

Water quality.

Okay.

Access to healthy foods. Pediatricians, like, per capita. Yeah. Share of uninsured children. public hospitals, like the ranking of the public hospitals, the infant mortality rate, pedestrian fatality rate, driving fatalities per capita, violent crime per capita, property crime per capita, and family homelessness. And then percentage of residents who are fully vaccinated.

Okay, sorry. I shouldn't be laughing at that.

Well, no, like, like with that, when that factors in, Which is not a whole lot of— it's— well, it's okay. So this is what irritates me, is that accounts for more points than family homelessness. I'm sorry.

Delicious.

It also— vaccination actually counts more than driving fatalities.

What?

And pedestrian fatalities and infant mortality rate and public hospital ranking. I mean, so many other things. They doubled the value of vaccinations in the rankings over almost anything else other than violent crime rate per capita. It counts double.

That's interesting.

Double.

I don't get it. Here, I do know this though. It seems to reason that the largest cities would be the places that were the most Not safe. But here we have a suburb, so people are fleeing to this place for a more safe, wonderful place to live. That's my guess. Yeah. Um, Providence is a big place. It's basically all of Rhode Island. But, um, I don't know. Great, great for Warwick.

Yep.

Congratulations.

Way to be.

Yeah. Next.

Hang on, I lost my list.

I'm— I know where it is, but you can go ahead because you found it by now.

I want to—

Magic Mouse.

My Magic Mouse. Come on. Number 3, Portland, Maine.

Portland, Maine.

Yeah.

Okay, great. This place has 66,000 people. Yeah.

So here, I mean, here's the thing that I've noticed thus far is most of the cities have a pretty low population.

Yeah.

And are close to the ocean. Yeah, so far they have been, and we're going to continue that trend, you know. And here's why I think that's important. Um, when you are bordered by the ocean, I think you are susceptible to less violent crime.

Sure.

Because you have— it's coming from less— it's landlocked, you know. Like, we don't have pirates like we used to. We still have pirates, um, but, um, I've never seen any.

But they are, they're landlocked. Yeah, I mean, you can't go east here. So I mean, when, when you are in Portland, Maine—

And I would, I would, I would go so far as to say is if you are close to the ocean, you are almost guaranteed to have better air quality.

That's what I was gonna say, your air quality is gonna be better. Um, and I don't know about the water quality, I don't really know how that factors in.

I imagine it helps.

I'm not drinking the water from the ocean, so yeah, I don't know how that works. But, but, but here's why I know there's plenty of water in the area.

Yeah.

And probably you start drilling, you're gonna find some good fresh water.

Absolutely.

So, so yeah, I mean, yeah, I can see that being a good thing.

Yeah.

Again, I know nothing about the, the safety aspect of things as far as some of that stuff goes, but okay. Yeah.

Number 2. Number 2, Irvine, California.

We're back on the West Coast.

Back on the West Coast.

And this place, we're talking big. Pretty big.

It is pretty big.

272,000.

Trying to actually zoom out. Okay.

It's in Orange County.

It's south of Los Angeles.

Yeah.

I mean, it's basically part of Los Angeles.

It's a suburb of Los Angeles. I mean, that tells you something, man. Whenever you get to a pretty far out suburb, which it is, It becomes better and better. Yeah. And 272,000, it's a big place. People are, people are moving out there. It's south, it's even south of Anaheim. Like, it's getting out there. So again, people, people flock. I mean, we live in an area that's like that, right? Like, people, people move further and further out to get to a, to a perceived safer, healthier place to live. Yeah, you know, for sure. And again, they are close to the beach. We're— that's a trend in this list, at least.

So cool.

Let's go to the last one.

Last one is Fremont, California.

Another big city.

Which this one's actually kind of in an interesting place, man. So it is southeast of San Francisco and just north of San Jose.

Yeah.

but more inland. And so it's actually in that bay.

It's a bay.

So, I mean, you can get to the ocean from it, but San Francisco kind of sits out on that peninsula.

Yeah.

And then Fremont is down in the southeast part of the bay, just on the inside of San Francisco. And apparently there's a lot of stuff happening over there. There's a lot of— it looks like there's a lot of— there's a huge state parks.

Yeah, it's massive.

On both sides of that place and just to the north. I mean, so it's like almost surrounded by state parks.

Yeah, and you're getting into like some really, really mountainous areas. You know, you're not far from some of the redwoods and that type of thing, which is pretty cool.

Yeah.

It's a neat area to live, I would think. You know, if you don't want to live in San Jose, don't want to live in San Francisco, but you really want to live in a in a city. Mm-hmm. It's probably a great place.

Yeah.

I would think that I can see why this is a popular—

it is. It is. I think population-wise, it is the biggest city in the top 5.

Yeah. It is. But by, I don't know, 30,000 or 40,000. Yeah.

So, so yeah.

So, look, we're narrowing down these things, and we're getting to, you know, some of the best places. We've got a few more episodes to go on this list. But We're narrowing down to some of the best places to live in America based on some— and honestly, look, as a, as a dad, as a parent, health and safety is huge.

Sure.

I mean, it really is.

So here's an interesting statistic about Fremont though. It says housing expenses in Fremont are 214% higher than the national average.

Well, that's not okay.

And, and so that's a lot. Like, like, what, at what point is that a value? I, you know, is it?

Well, I mean, Kevin, here, here's the thing.

Like, than the average, than the average.

No, I get it. Here's the problem though. Like, I would bet that, like, people just make a lot of money there too.

Could be.

I mean, I mean, because a lot of these places, you know, it's like, look, if you're gonna move here and live here, you're, you're gonna have to make a lot of money because everything's expensive.

I mean, like, here's some other numbers. I mean, because I mean, just, just to put it in perspective, okay, housing expenses, 214% higher than the national average.

Crazy.

Okay, utility prices, 31% higher than the national average.

Jeez.

Transportation expenses, 40% higher than the national average.

Oh my goodness.

Grocery prices, 28% higher than the national average.

Okay, that sucks because we just talked last episode about how much groceries cost.

Yeah. I mean, so it's like—

Ridiculous.

Just across the board, it's almost going to cost you 3 times as much to live here as it does anywhere else in the country.

There's a lot of rich people that live here. Probably has to be. Has to be.

I mean, like, you really have to love this city in order to want to live here.

Yeah.

Or you have to live here.

Or you have to.

I'm like, I don't— I really don't understand people who are— because people will tell me all the time, it's like, well, if you're impoverished, like, like, well, they can't get out. And I'm like, nuts to that.

Yeah.

I mean, yes, you can.

There are ways.

I mean, if you are even like slightly surviving in this city, you can get out.

Sure.

And find another city.

If you want to.

I mean, and it'll cost you half.

Sure. Yeah, absolutely. Uh, I mean, you could walk over to San Francisco. It's probably cheaper.

Maybe. I mean, I don't know.

I mean, they, they, they do have a Whole Foods, so it's an expensive place. They also have a Walmart and a Costco, so.

Yeah, it's, it's, it's a weird thing, man.

Yeah. I mean, I, I would be interested to check it out.

But like, that, that's the number one city. If, if you— if health and wellness are the number one concern for you, there it is. You can pay 3 times the amount to live there.

Yeah.

Or you can like live on a dirt farm like 10 miles outside of town and then just come in every once in a while when you need healthcare, I guess, and, and pay less. But I mean, that's ridiculous.

That's crazy. I, I look, I, I, I know that it's almost like they know it. Sure. I know people that live in California love it. Sure, I know they do. And I, and I, in many ways, I've not been there. I know why they love it. It's beautiful.

It absolutely is beautiful.

The weather is beautiful year-round. The scenery is beautiful. There's lots of stuff to do. Um, but I, I can't fathom going, I want to spend that much money to live in a place. Right. And, and it's part of— and part of that is because we live in a place that is reasonable. Yeah, it's not the cheapest, uh, but it's reasonable. And, um, so yeah, there's not a lot of people flocking to California. No, there's a lot of people flocking away from it. Um, but again, that's, that's expensive politics.

Yeah. And like, we don't wish ill on California, but like, not at all. Fix yourself. So that we will want to come back.

See, that's, that's the thing though, is like people that are from California, they are very fiercely loyal to— like, if they're still there, they're like, oh, we love California, never leave.

Well, there was people fiercely loyal to the Titanic too, and they all died.

Man, your, your point was really— the correlation you made there is really— I, I know exactly what you mean. Yeah, it's good. Well, I'm really interested to see where some of these wind up going because we got like 3 episodes left in this series. So it's going to be good.

Yeah, we're going to space them out, but we want to come back to this data.

Yeah, exactly.

Anything else?

And I think that's it. Cool. If you haven't already, please like, subscribe, do all the things. Go look, Go leave us a rating or review on iTunes. That would be really, really helpful for us.

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Get with the times.

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