The website WalletHub recently released a study of the “Most Caring Cities in America,” based on how these cities care for the community, the vulnerable, and the workforce. According to the list, four North Carolina cities, including Durham and Raleigh, ranked in the top thirty of the country’s hundred most-populated metropolises. But it turns out that Wallethub thinks people in Winston-Salem really don’t give all that much of a damn about each other.
Using factors like child poverty, crime, rates of sheltered homeless people, and student-teacher ratios, the study found that Durham was the eighteenth-most caring city, Raleigh was twenty-second, Charlotte was twenty-seventh, and Greensboro was thirtieth. Winston-Salem, on the other hand, was seventy-fourth. Raleigh stood out in terms of student-teacher ratios, where it placed first.
Durham, meanwhile, shined in the “Caring in the Workforce” category, which includes teacher and counselor “care for students’ well-being,” “residents who work in community and social services per capita,” and number of people who work in emergency response—including, interestingly, “Full-Time Law Enforcement Employees per Capita.” Not sure how heavily a new $71 million police headquarters factors into that.
Winston-Salem, on the other hand, doesn’t do so hot in “Caring in the Community,” where it ranks ninety-third. For a city whose motto, Urbs condita adiuvando, means “city founded on cooperation,” it seems like it could use more “adiuvando” and a little less “adieu, rando.” (I’m so, so sorry.)
In case you were wondering, the places that care the most are pretty surprising. The top five are: Madison, Wisconsin; Lincoln, Nebraska; Virginia Beach; Boise, Idaho; and Honolulu. Meanwhile, Detroit, three cities in California, and Laredo, Texas round out the bottom five.
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