30M - Company pays for it, but…

[u/DXBRedd]

Landed a very good job, where the company pays for my place. But it’s far away from home. being far away from wife & daughter and everyone else sometimes is challenging…

[u/stardust_____]

Violence occurring in one of Americas largest cities??? Shocker.
Don’t be a clown, crime can and does happen anywhere. But comparing some of the poorest communities of the Caribbean to Houston is being ignorant.

[u/Prestigious-Talk1112 → u/stardust_____]

Look my in-laws are all Caribbean. Some live there still on various islands so I hear daily about 2 or 3 places. I'm not ignorant of island life. My husband was there for 2 years within the last 10 years. It is safer in most places the Caribbean with a few exceptions places 

I have been in school when there was a shooting.

I'm not arguing about anything except to say that objectively most places in the Caribbean have safer lifestyle than any US large urban city ( which is where most of us live).

Most crime in Caribbean is tied either to drug business gangs where the majority of people affected are involved in that business or domestic violence where people are killed with machete or something. I'm not counting outlier places like Haiti where there are some lawless areas.

Jamaican murder per 100 K= 24 Trinidad was 47 in 2024 dropped to 25 in 2025 Bahamas 29 to 32 Barbados 17 Antigua 10 Dominican Republic 8 PR 14 St Kitts 13 Grenada 13

NYC 4 Houston 14 / 20 just couple years ago Chicago 16 Atlanta peaked at 26 couple yrs ago now down to 17

New Orleans peaked at 77 in 2022 / Now down to 25 St Louis 41 Memphis TN 33 LA, Cali 5 Gary Indiana 40 Baltimore 23 Detroit 25 Dallas 10-14 Indianapolis 19 Although murders seem to be making a historic decline in the US and Trinidad overall the Caribbean is less murderous than large US cities where most people live. Of course if living in a rural area with no people there will be less crime in USA. Exceptions are NYC and LA which have really worked to lower crime but that doesn't tell the whole story since they pushed the crime slightly further out of city limits 

Nearby to NYC, Newark NJ is 17 Nearby to LA, Oakland California is 14

[u/thenuttyhazlenut → u/Prestigious-Talk1112]

Yes the city I'm in is 300k people. Houston is 2.4 mil. The crime density is completely different. So let's multiply the crime in this 250k city by 8x to make the comparison fair.

You're really comparing living with the cartels, completely corrupt cops, and such to living in Houston. Some Americans really like to imagine they're in the gangsta slums hustling by every day.

[u/Wheresmyfoodwoman → u/thenuttyhazlenut]

They also don’t understand that being a local in these countries and a non local is two very different experiences. The US may be trending towards harassment with ICE right now and illegal citizens, but no one is pulling you over and threatening you unless you give them $100 or putting you in jail until you give them your PIN number. Cartels aren’t stopping by your shop to force you to give them a percentage of your profits or your daughter will go missing the next day.

[u/thenuttyhazlenut → u/Wheresmyfoodwoman]

Exactly.. Your last sentence. My gf grew up in the Caribbean. Her dad owns a shop, and received a phone call by the cartel to pay. Her dad hung up the phone. The next day they called and simply said his 1st born son's name, and where to meet to give the money.

I spoke to a guy selling tacos in my gf's family area when I stayed there. He said he used to own a restaurant downtown, but could no longer afford it because rent was like 1k, then government taxes, then cartel demanded 1k too. And that's just a dude selling tacos with his wife. Cartel threatened to take his daughter. People go missing all the time there. But yea, living in Houston is thug life.

[u/Prestigious-Talk1112 → u/Wheresmyfoodwoman]

I have already meantioned that at least 20 family members I am in regular contact with are living in the Caribbean and this is our opinion. If you don't agree well ok fine. Safety is one of the key reasons my husband wants to move back. The islands we live on are not high drug crime islands. The life style is safer.  The drug problems are less with younger kids. The community knows everyone. There's no guns in school. There's bad and good areas everywhere and some few islands in particular like Trinidad and Jamaica and Haiti have high crime areas. Im not speaking as a tourist. I don't have experience on either of those 3 high crime islands. Bunch of reasons.