150 Worst Illinois Cities to Call Home

Illinois — the Prairie State, the Land of Lincoln, home to the fabled Chicago Cubs and the storied Chicago Bears — is an amazing place to live. From the skyscrapers of Chicago that rise along a great lake to the farmland that feeds a good portion of America, and all the suburbs in between, Illinois has just about everything.

Our taxes are too high. Our economy too slow. Jobs aren’t as plentiful as they need to be.

Society’s ills affect our towns just like everyplace else, some more than others. Recently, RoadSnacks.net analyzed 342 of our most-populous cities, using FBI crime data, the government census, Labor Bureau statistics and Sperling’s Best Places to arrive at a list of the absolute worst places to live in Illinois, based on unemployment, median income, education, crime and population density.

The 10 worst places are south of Interstate 80, with Benton in southern Illinois claiming the top spot — or the bottom spot, depending on your point of view.

A small town in Franklin County, Benton is most famous for being the location of the last public hanging in Illinois, in 1926, when a local gangster was strung up for murder. George Harrison once spent a few days here visiting his sister, and for a time, her home was the Hard Day’s Nite Bed and Breakfast. Alas, no longer.

“Benton residents had a 1 in 40 chance of having something stolen from them last year,” RoadSnacks wrote. “It’s a place where you can’t let your guard down. ... (And) 17 percent of the population lives below the poverty line.”

Rounding out RoadSnack’s 5 worst are:

• Danville: “Danville has become a place of Marathon gas stations, mini strip malls and shootings. Lots and lots of shootings. In fact, Danville is the 5th most dangerous place in Illinois. Some of the punks here need to take a time out.”

• East St. Louis: “Don’t even try and argue about this one. The only thing controversial about East St. Louis being this high is that it wasn’t number one. East St. Louis needs some tough love. The unemployment rate is 12% which is the second-highest in the state of Illinois. And residents here make a paltry $19,278 a year.”

• Hoopeston: “The unemployment rate is nearly 9%, residents earn about $35,000 a year, and home prices are just over $65,000. Across the board, those are in the bottom 10% in the state. Not absolutely horrible, but not desirable, either. And there simply isn’t anything to do in Hoopeston. The city’s events calendar is…blank.”

• Kankakee: “Kankakee is pretty much the first place you get to when you leave Chicago, south on I-57. ... In the late 90s, it was rated as one of the best places to raise a family one year, and then two years later, rated as the worst place to live by Places Rated Almanac.”

The lowest rated Chicago suburbs were in the south suburbs: University Park in Will County (11th), Harvey (28th; how did that city not rank lower?), Riverdale (36th), Robbins (39th) and Chicago Heights (41st) in Cook County.

The north suburbs placed in the top 50 with Waukegan (48th) in Lake County.

Also on Patch

• 150 Best Illinois Cities to Call Home: Is Yours One?

Check the full list of Worst Towns and offer your views in the comments.

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