Website Says There Are Six Iowa Cities WORSE Than Waterloo

Why is it that Waterloo gets a bad rap? I think it's because people only want to look at the negative side of things, rather than the positive. A new article from a website says there are six Iowa cities that are WORSE than Waterloo.

I don't think this article give Waterloo the credit it deserves, but they do have some statistics to back it up. Very few, but some.

To their credit, RoadSnacks used some serious and legitimate criteria to make these rankings, stuff like unemployment rates, household income, population density, crime, etc.

They also did throw this out: "What’s interesting about this post is that most of the ‘worst places’ in Iowa would most likely be some of the better places in some of the crummier states we’ve analyzed in the past (Mississippi, Alabama, Florida)."

Behold, the 10 worst places to live in Iowa:

1. Keokuk
2. Ottumwa
3. Centerville
4. Cherokee
5. Fort Madison
6. Webster City
7. Waterloo
8. Maquoketa
9. Clinton
10. Mount Pleasant

This is what RoadSnacks wrote about Waterloo:

Waterloo is by far, the largest place that’s lousy to live in the state of Iowa. In fact, it’s one of the largest cities in the Hawkeye State.

There’s a lot more entertainment in Waterloo than in the cities we mentioned above, so at least folks here can take their mind off of these statistics. Waterloo has the 8th highest unemployment rate in the state, and homes are valued far below the rest of the state average.

Plus, crime is sky high here, in comparison to the rest of Iowa. There were four murders here in 2012, and residents have a 1 in 45 chance of being robbed. Since the average person has 300 Facebook friends, if everyone you were friends with lived in Waterloo, 6 of them would have had something stolen from them last year.

So what do you have to say to RoadSnacks, the website whose name sounds like a euphemism for something illegal you do on the side of the highway?

No bitterness. Here's the entire article.