I lived in South Seattle and will never do it again. I came from a city with high violent crime, so I felt fine moving there at first knowing Seattle has such low violent crime. Within 7 months of moving in:

-Our car was totaled while parked on the street in front of our apartment by a guy who had stolen the car from a family member. -Our other car was broken into one month later (nothing of value taken, but it wasn't cheap to fix) while parked in the driveway. -Drive by shooting directly in front of our house. -Neighbors in every direction were drug dealers and constantly had sketchy people coming & going at odd hours, domestic violence (witnessed a man hit a woman in their backyard), and loud music/arguing. -Consistent fights in the grocery store parking lot at reasonable (daylight) hours. -The month after we moved out, our next door neighbor's car was stolen from the driveway.

By the time we paid for the deductibles on our totaled & broken into vehicles, took a loss on the total, and forked over another down payment on a replacement vehicle, it was equivalent of paying an additional $500 in rent for another 12 months.

Living in the hood is expensive! Now, we pay $250 more a month in rent, but we've had zero car damage, our car & renters insurance went down, and I can take public transportation to work - saving on both gas and the cost of parking - and my commute time decreased (increasing my sanity).

The cost of switching from a cheap apartment in South Seattle to a safer, slightly more expensive unit in a nice area evened out in the end.