I live in Yakima, WA. Now it has a
population of 65,000. Including the
suburbs of West and East Valley, the population is about 120,000. Yakima has a horrible
crime rate, hence the nickname
Crackima.
A the previous writeup states, it has many millionares and many folks deep in poverty, with almost no middle class. The reason for this is that in Yakima, you are either a rich orchardist or you are a (sub)minimum-wage apple picker or gas station attendant. There are very few middle class jobs in Yakima. No insurance companies, no real tech industry, etc, to provide good jobs for people of the middle class.
Now there are many thousands in Yakima so deep in poverty that they live in third-world style shacks. Down by the Yakima River, there is a large slum of narrow dirt roads flanked on each side by old shacks hodge-podged of particle board, cardboard, and any other material at hand.
Unfortunately for Yakima, we have been having really tough economic times lately. Apple prices have fallen dramatically, and we had a drought last year. This caused many growers to go out of business. Many growers that did not go under left their orchards unpicked, because the cost of picking the apples was more than could be made by selling them. Yakima even made the list of one of the five poorest cities of over 100,000 last year.
Many stores are closing. Even though our population rises quite a bit every year, we are getting less and less stores. Penny's, Mervyns, Nordstroms, LaMont, and many other stores have shut down. Now, our downtown mall will be shut down shortly, when they lose their last large store, the Bon.