The 10 Most Dangerous And Worst Neighborhoods In Chicago, IL

The 10 Most Dangerous Neighborhoods In Chicago For 2025

Welcome to Riverdale, the most dangerous neighborhood in Chicago. This little nook of the windy city is about halfway between downtown and Chicago heights, along I-94. If you find yourself lost, don’t get off on E. 130th Street. That’s Riverdale. That’s bad.

This is what it’s like in Riverdale after dark. About 1 in 4 residents here doesn’t work and entire families make an absurdly low $14,000 a year. Riverdale kinda resembles a third world country in some blocks.

Can we interest anyone in a $85,600 house in Riverdale? No? Okay then

One of the southern-most neighborhoods in Chicago, South Deering used to be supported by local steel refineries. Those boom times are long gone at this point, and the area now ranks among the least appealing spots in the city.

The local economy is not kind to the 5,403 residents of South Deering. The unemployment rate holds at an eye-popping 9.2%. And the available jobs often afford only the barest minimum. The median income stands at $31,584.

Despite its troubles, South Deering has a long cultural heritage. People flock from all over to visit the famed seafood restaurant Calumet Fisheries.

Where’s the worst neighborhood in the city of Chicago? That would be right next door in West Englewood. This true hood has 20,571 people who live in the worst conditions in the city.

It ranks in the bottom three in home values and income levels and in the top 3 for crime.

Some Chicago neighborhoods are hard to tell apart. But you can tell who’s from West Englewood though. They’re the ones with the 40, a pistol, a beat up car and a pit bull.

Looking for a job in Washington Park? Good luck. A dismal economy makes this section of Chicago’s South Side one of the toughest places to live in the city.

The area sports a massive unemployment rate of 10.6%. Even the available jobs don’t pay very well. The median income sits at just $24,568. Those low wages make it difficult to afford a house in the neighborhood. The median home price stands at $193,900.

Life in Washington Park has its upside. Most of all, there’s the namesake park. It also has notable cultural spots, such as the DuSable Museum of African American History.

Our next stop on our crummy tour through Chicago takes us to Grand Crossing, a hood with 11,286 people located between 67th and 79th. It’s near the lake, but you wouldn’t want to go near it.

Crime is 23rd worst, income levels are around $31,984, and homes average $146,640.

They certainly won’t be throwing any parades in Grand Crossing any time soon, that’s for sure.

Englewood is a pretty notoriously horrible area in Chicago. Home to about 36,917 people, this hood sits between Garfield and 75th Street, on the west side of I-90. About 40% of people live in poverty, and crime is off the charts. There were about 40 murders in this neighborhood alone last year.

At one point, 100,000 people lived in the Englewood neighborhood. Now, it’s more like 36,917.

You’d be a fool to walk through this neighborhood in the day, and might not want to walk through here at night.

Historically, Fuller Park is one of the most dangerous neighborhoods in Chicago. Given its sagging economy, it’s not surprising that this part of the city’s South Side suffers a high crime rate. All told, these factors make Fuller Park one of the least appealing sections of Chicago.

High-paying jobs are scarce for the 1,575 residents of the area. The unemployment rate comes in at 8.6%, while the median income hovers at $29,302. The lack of funds makes it difficult to find affordable housing, especially with median home prices at $191,980.

Fuller Park doesn’t exist as concentrated urban blight, of course. It has many charming features. For instance, the namesake park contains an environmental education project housed in the Eden Place Nature Center.

Methodology: How we determined the most dangerous Chicago neighborhoods in 2025

To figure out how bad a place is to live in, we only needed to know what kinds of things people like and then decide what places have the least amount of those things. We plugged the following criteria into Saturday Night Science to get the worst neighborhoods in Chicago:

• High crime (Estimated)
• High unemployment (Less jobs)
• Low median income (Less pay)
• Low population density (No things to do)
• Low home values (No one’s willing to pay to live here)

Then, we ranked each neighborhood in Chicago, Illinois for each of these criteria from worst to best.

Next, we averaged the individual rankings for each criterion into a “Worst Score.”

The neighborhood with the lowest “Worst Score” ranks as the most dangerous neighborhood of Chicago.

The article is an opinion based on facts and is meant as infotainment. We updated this article for 2025. This report is our time ranking the worst neighborhoods to live in Chicago.

Skip to the end to see the list of all 77 neighborhoods ranked from worst to best.