Ashland

Not to be confused with Ashland, Oregon—home of the Oregon Shakespeare festival—Ashland, California is a little city tucked away in the East Bay, right between Castro Valley and San Leandro.

So one of the main ways that Ashland California is different than Ashland, OR is in terms crime. Despite having only 20 thousand residents, the CA version of the city has a ton of crime. In the last 6 months, for example, there have been 4 murders here—mostly during the summer months.

Think of how bad that is. Projected over a full year, that is basically 1 out of every 2500 people per year. The odds are still with you for surviving, but still.

Assaults, as you might expect given what I said so far, are really high as well. Ashland itself has had at least 100 assaults in the last six months (again, that means that 1 in every 200 people gets assaulted here each year) and about the same number of break-ins and robberies combined.

There has even been some prostitution busts here, especially along Foothill which seems to be a hotbed for prostitution (no pun intended).

So this is not the safest of neighborhood—to put this bluntly. Does it have anything going for it?

Of course, that kind of a crime rate affects everything else here as well. Home prices, for example, barely ever break $200 K, even though this would actually make a pretty good place for commuters given its relative proximity to San Jose, the Peninsula, the Bay Fair BART station (which can have you in the City in less than an hour) and even Pleasanton and the places around there.

The schools also get pretty lousy ratings with API’s of 2 for the local elementary and middle schools and a slightly better API of 4 for San Lorenzo High School.

So, even though there is some potential to the area, so long as crime is so high, I can’t really recommend it for anyone.