You might wonder why anyone would want to live on a road notorious for its high crime rate, but residents of Hunters Road in Lozells, Birmingham, are sticking it out despite the wide array of reasons to move elsewhere.
Around 14 crimes are committed a day on the residential stretch, totalling over 5,000 a year, and local councillor Waseem Zaffar told The Sun that he “wasn’t shocked” by a murder in his ward back in September.
Hunters Road has seen a preponderance of houses of multiple occupancy (HMOs) opening in recent years, with just one pub recently reopened on the crime-ridden street.
Landlord Howard Derdar wants to inject a “sense of community” into the area, but added that he thinks the road has been dismissed by local authorities, from whom he doesn’t feel a sense of support.
“The government talks about growth, but as a businessman I don’t feel supported, I feel targeted,” he said.
In a testament to the street’s high crime rate, its only business captured a man running from a murder scene on CCTV just months after opening.
“We have people looting the shops and pensioners fearing they’ll be attacked by some desperado,” an unnamed housewife told The Sun.
“This used to be a real residential road, but now we have the HMOs and a lot of problems with drugs,” another 46-year-old parent added. “It is not safe to go out. We’d all move if we could.”
Birmingham is ranked as the most dangerous major city in the West Midlands and has a 57% higher crime rate than the national average for England, Wales and Northern Ireland.
The city was one of many across the country targeted by protestors this summer amid weeks of riots in the wake of the horrific Southport killings.
Men in balaclavas and demonstrators holding Palestinian flag signs launched an attack on the Clumsy Swan pub on Stoney Lane and a Sky News van was attacked by a man with a knife.
The West Midlands police area also has the highest number of knife crime offences in England and Wales, with its rate of 178 per 100,000 of the population beating the London Metropolitan Police force’s rate of 169 per 10,000.
