I moved off the East Coast, where we were getting priced out of the game, to rural MO so we wouldn’t have to make a decision like that. We already had the hood a few blocks away and once rent rose a little further, a Floyd type might have been our next door neighbor because all we could have afforded to rent would be something in the hood. We opted to buy a hunk of rural MO forest instead where our land payments are lower than most FL property taxes.
Now the gun shots we here are aimed at targets or game animals instead of humans. I haven’t heard a siren in years but it used to be a few times a day in FL. Once every couple of weeks, a cops would come racing up to the road across the street, one would use his car to block the end of the street and jump out holding his shotgun. There was a middle school down that road that mostly kids from the nearby hood went to.
My wife and I retired ten years ago to 30 acres in the country in rural Florida.
No state income taxes. No property taxes on our land essentially because of our agricultural exemption. We don't have any close neighbors or crime. It's peaceful here on the farm.
But we were stationed in Missouri in the Air Force. Between the two tornadoes we survived, the freezing ass cold winters with deep snow and black ice and the record rains of 12" and 16" two days in a row that flooded everything in sight, the place was not exactly a paradise itself. No place is. Not even Florida. We've had two hurricanes since we moved here.
But not all of Florida is like whatever city or town you lived in. Living in the cities is the problem nowadays, no matter what state you are in.