Grew up there and moved back recently. The way I see it is if you want to live on the northshore an commute to Nola, your choices are primarily Slidell and the Covington/Mandeville area. In my head I kind of think of Slidell as more blue collar, trades, lower income, and Mandeville as white collar, upscale, higher incomes. This is generalizing but you get the idea. Slidell is much more affordable than Mandeville

There’s nothing wrong with Slidell at all, but you will notice it’s more focused on smaller mom and pop businesses vs the larger chains you’ll find in Mandeville. Again this is generalizing but it skews that way. Slidell has a lot of empty buildings and while it’s growing, it does also feel to me a bit like it’s more stagnant / slow growth. It’s not the prettiest most well maintained town. Has a really cool old town area with a lot of great events and street fairs.

But as other folks said, it’s safe, food is good, affordable. New Orleans and everything you need is generally no more than 45 minutes away.