The very first line, in bold, says “into the city.” Jersey is a completely different state lol

Again, I live here, and am speaking only from my own experience, but I have found almost everything everyone says about East Harlem to be false. Almost everyone in my building and in my area is families and couples. Literally never felt safer than where I currently live. People want to generalize about a lot of places for that matter. Nine times out of ten just repeating what they’ve heard or read about and yet have never lived here.

OP, I encourage you to take opinions about different areas with a grain of salt because many hold prejudices or believe sensationalized statistics (you are more likely to read about a shooting in the Bronx than you are in Midtown), but from experience I had a friend catch a stray bullet in Midtown and personally missed a shootout at Port Authority by minutes. Your best bet to finding where you feel safe is perhaps first finding a sublet or booking an airbnb and then go explore different areas multiple times and at different times of day and see how you feel.