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Grew up right next door to San Bernardino as a kid. Back then the actual city of San Bernardino was a sleepy low-income little burgh nestled up against the nearby mountains which hosted some pretty nice communities like Arrowhead and Big Bear Lake. It had problems down in the flatlands, but overall it was OK.

Sometime after I left, Section 8 housing saw to it that zillions of Los Angeles people who raise gangbangers moved there for the cheaper living. Predictable results ensued.

It's now a slime pit. It never had a stellar reputation before, but it's much worse now. There's still bright spots, like Redlands, Yucaipa, and Cucamonga ("Train leaving on track fiiive...") but even they'll fall soon enough. The offspring of the last well-living people in those places just aren't sticking around. Fiends creeping in. Same story with formerly-neat communities all over California.

Up in the mountain communities, the former hayseeds who lived down in the flatlands have now moved up the mountain to escape the gangbangers who crowded them out. What you have in Crestline CA is the closest thing to Appalachia that the West Coast can emulate.

I'd never return to California, but that goes triple for Southern California. Not even if I had more money than Steven Spielberg would I live there.

Government seems to ruin everything it touches.

Even more interesting, is the black population of CA has dramatically shrank in the past 20+years...For what ever reasons ...Tens of thousands headed out of state, to the east, midwest and south, places like NY, SC, FL, Ohio, Texas etc...

In the past 15 years or so, the blacks in CA were mostly replaced by working class Hispanics....Crime all over CA has dropped substantially in the past 12 years or so.

This chart is slightly dated but for example, check out St. Louis Missouri....Places like that are even worse now.

Latest 2006 Crimes per 100,000 People:

	San Bernardino, CA	St. Louis, MO	National

Murder:	23	37.2	7
Forcible Rape:	24.96	97.15	32.2
Robbery:	451.2	907.2	205.8
Aggravated Assault:	507.6	1439.1	336.5
Burglary:	1065.7	2453.3	813.2
Larceny Theft:	2350	6802.4	2601.7
Vehicle Theft:	1456	2492.2	501.5