The 10 Most Dangerous And Worst Neighborhoods In Dallas, TX

The 10 Most Dangerous Neighborhoods In Dallas For 2024

A small neighborhood in southeast Dallas, South Boulevard-Park Row has an exclusive air. Sold as a historic district, it contains houses dating back to 1910. Many local homes represent important architectural landmarks as well, with examples of the Prairie School and Craftsman bungalows.

Problem is: most of the money to build those structures was earned more than a century ago. These days, it’s harder to find the cash for upscale places to live. Now, the median income sits at $30,213 and the unemployment rate hovers at 4.4%.

There’s plenty to do in Northwest Dallas. You’ll find lots of hotels, shops, and restaurants. The area also houses the Asian Trade District. And, if you feel like getting out of town, you can head over to the Love Field airport, just to the south of the neighborhood.

Of course, a plane ticket might be hard to afford for most locals. The median income comes in at a miniscule $45,819. Those low wages put homeownership out of reach for many, even with a median home value of just $127,100. Still, a paycheck is a paycheck. Fully 9.8% of the area can’t find a job at all.

When you live in a sprawling metropolis like Dallas, it’s nice to find ways to stay in touch with nature. In that regard, the appropriately named Cedar Crest provides some relief. Sure, for the most part, it’s just another urban neighborhood. But you can also commune with wild beasts or enjoy a pleasant walk on the grass.

Take what you can get. Because the realities of city life hit pretty hard in other parts of Cedar Crest. This is especially true on the economic front. Locals face an unemployment rate of 4.4% and a median income of just $33,363.

For such a small neighborhood, Urbandale-Parkdale comes with, well…a lot of parks. Guess the “Parkdale” part pretty much nails it. You’ve got the actual Parkdale Park on the north side of the area and Lawnview Park to the south. You’ve even got Parkdale Lake and the White Rock Creek. Country living, right here in the city.

Well, not quite. There is that “Urbandale” part to deal with. Locals face many of the issues associated with an urban landscape, including poverty and financial struggles. Those come about as a result of a $33,974 median income. On the bright side, the unemployment rate won’t make you choke at 4.6% and home prices are affordable at a median level of $78,462.

South Dallas mostly represents an urban area. In the northern end of the district, close to downtown, you’ll find a web of Interstate interchanges and a view of the high rises at the center of the city. But the area has its share of green spaces too, especially along the fringes. You can head to William Blair Jr. Park and Fair Park to escape the glass and asphalt.

You might not be able to escape the economic worry however. An elevated unemployment rate and a reliance on low-paying jobs leaves this area at number 5 on the list of Dallas’s worst neighborhoods in 2024. That comes as the unemployment rate hits 2.4% and the median income stands at $35,903.

Love Field sounds like either a hippie commune or a particularly naughty part of town. In this case, neither applies. This Love Field is actually Dallas’s airport.

Well, one of Dallas’s airports. True to a neighborhood that ranks as the number 8 worst spot in Dallas for 2024, it isn’t even the city’s main source of air transportation. For that, you’ll have to head northwest of downtown for the Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport. But Love Field still pulls its weight. It represents the operating base of Southwest Airlines.

Living near an airport isn’t always a pleasant experience. It’s not a shock, then, that the Love Field Area generally attracts people looking for a discount on real estate.

Five Mile Creek is a small, triangle-shaped neighborhood in the southwest part of town. Its borders are defined by the I-35, Highway 67, and W. Ledbetter Dr. You’ll find the actual Five Mile Creek running through the southern part of the neighborhood, right by the Big T Plaza shopping mall.

As has become common on this list, Five Mile Creek slots in as the number 9 worst location in Dallas because of its stagnant economy. If you get a job at the Big T, you’re likely not going to earn very much. The median income tracks at $40,307, while the unemployment rate equals 4.6%.

The “ford” part of Eagle Ford refers to fording the Trinity River, which forms the northern boundary of this neighborhood. In the old days, the community served as an important river crossing. It remained a thinly populated town into the 20th century. However, in the 1950s, a fast-growing city of Dallas absorbed Eagle Ford.

Maybe it would have been better off on its own. Instead, it now ranks as the number 10 worst area of Dallas in 2024.

The economy represents the main challenge to the area. Good-paying jobs are difficult to find. The unemployment rate stands at 4.2% and the median income hovers at $52,788.

Methodology: How we determined the most dangerous Dallas neighborhoods in 2024

To figure out how bad a place is to live in, we only needed to know what kinds of things people like and then decide what places have the least amount of those things. We plugged the following criteria into Saturday Night Science to get the worst neighborhoods in Dallas:

• High crime (Estimated)
• High unemployment (Less jobs)
• Low median income (Less pay)
• Low population density (No things to do)
• Low home values (No one’s willing to pay to live here)

Then, we ranked each neighborhood in Dallas, Texas for each of these criteria from worst to best.

Next, we averaged the individual rankings for each criterion into a “Worst Score.”

The neighborhood with the lowest “Worst Score” ranks as the most dangerous neighborhood of Dallas.

The article is an opinion based on facts and is meant as infotainment. We updated this article for 2024. This report is our time ranking the worst neighborhoods to live in Dallas.

Skip to the end to see the list of all 32 neighborhoods ranked from worst to best.