17 Reasons Not to Move to Roseville, California (Voted by the locals!)

Thinking about moving to Roseville, but not quite sure whether it’s right for you? Since you probably already know the pros if you’re considering this city, here are the cons: 17 reasons you would not want to move to Roseville.

17. Crime Rate

Since it’s a bigger city than the average city in the US, the crime rate in Roseville is higher than the national average. Cities with higher populations tend to have a higher crime rateOpens in a new tab., but don’t let that fool you into thinking that means you’re just as likely to suffer from a crime no matter where you live. It’s not a linear relationship, but more exponential.

What that means is the crime rate per capita is higher in Roseville than in a smaller city. That means more crimes happen per person instead of more crimes happening in general. In Roseville, 22 crimes occur per thousand residents, making your chances of becoming a victim of violent or property crime 1 in 46. It’s not the highest, but it’s higher than 58% of US cities.

16. Cost of Living

Compared to the average city in the US, the cost of living in Roseville is relatively high. In fact, it’s 33.9% more expensiveOpens in a new tab. overall to live in Roseville than to live in a city with an average cost of living. The biggest contributor to this is housing, which is 200.5% as expensive as the average US city, making housing a big concern for Roseville residents.

Groceries, utilities, transportation, and some miscellaneous expenses are marginally higher as well. On the other hand, this might not seem like as much an issue to you when you consider that California’s minimum wage is $15.50 an hour. That’s the highest in the country, and likely also the reason for the higher expenses outside of the housing.

15. Traffic

Traffic is spotty at best in Roseville, and by that, I don’t mean it’s only occasionally bad. I mean that at the best time of day for traffic, there are still spots where it’s bad. On a slow Monday afternoon, when everyone is either still busy at school or work, there are still stretches of slow traffic off of the main roads. The entrance onto East 80 is especially bad.

Needless to say, it gets worse at rush hour. People commute out of the city fill up the freeway entrances and the roads are full of cars. It’s not a fun experience.

14. “Far Away”

The thing with Roseville is that it can get boring once you’ve exhausted all the things to do within the city itself. The problem isn’t so much a lack of things to do as it is the box you find yourself in when you live there. Aside from everything that’s already in the city limits, Roseville is pretty far away from anything interesting to do.

This problem usually comes into play when you want to do something with friends out of town: you might have a hard time convincing them to come to visit you. Sacramento is half an hour away, and so are a lot of the other towns in Placer County. It’s a bright spot in the middle of nothing else, so any reunions with out-of-town friends will cost some commute.

13. Crowding

Despite having a high cost of living compared to the US average, it’s nothing compared to what the people in the bay area deal with. For that reason, the population of Roseville is steadily swelling with people moving up from the coast. This has caused a significant stir in the housing market. Houses are continually being built to meet the demand, but they’re not cheap.

Housing costs are nearly double in Roseville compared to the rest of the US. At the time of writing, the median home cost in Roseville is $587,300, whereas the US median is $291,700. On top of that, the houses are built so close together that they hardly have any space for doing things in the yard or having privacy.

12. Air Quality

In the summer, the air quality gets bad. Part of that is because of the fires that often happen in the summer. The smoke travels from the site of the fire and fills the air in Roseville with its stench. When it’s not smoky, breathing usually isn’t hard at all, but that smoke can really be annoying to deal with.

11. Gas Prices

Gas is going up everywhere, but in California especially. Roseville is no different. At the time of writing, the cheapest places to get gas in Roseville are Sam’s Club and Costco, where it goes for $5.75 and $5.79, respectively. That’s more than a dollar over the national average, but that only applies if you’re a member of one of those warehouse clubs.

At other sites, gas is currently $5.85 per gallon at two of the Safeway sites, all the way up to $5.99 at ARCO. According to AAAOpens in a new tab., that’s lower than the statewide average of $6.194 (for Regular gas), but from a national standpoint, it’s incredibly high. So if you plan on doing a lot of commuting, don’t get gas in Roseville: even Sacramento has better gas prices.

10. Strict Fire Standards

Everyone knows about California’s problem with wildfires. They sprout up quickly and without warning, and the worst ones claim the homes of multiple families, leaving them with nothing. There have been two especially bad ones to strike Placer County in just the last few years, disrupting the lives of several of my family and friends.

These fires are usually either the result of irresponsible people or people with malicious intent, but it means that those of us who know how to use fire responsibly aren’t allowed to. If you want to burn some paper garbage or have a recreational fire, you can’t. You have to either get a permit, pay attention to when “burn days” are, or both.

9. Property Taxes

Housing is already expensive enough in Roseville, but California has the highest property taxes in the US, so even when you finish paying off your house, you’ll have to keep paying just to keep owning it.

This doesn’t just affect homeowners. If you rent out a space, whether to live in or for your business, that property tax will affect how much your landlord charges.

8. Income Taxes

Maybe this is another result of having the highest minimum wage in the states, but California also has the highest rates of income taxes. The lowest tax bracket is $0-$9,325Opens in a new tab., where the state requires 1%. The next bracket requires $93.25 plus 2% of everything you earned above $9,325.

An average family earning a living within the bracket of about $34 thousand to about $48 thousand pays $860.29 plus 6% of everything over the lower limit of the bracket.

7. Roads

The roads in Roseville are confusing. I am lucky enough that I’ve only had to drive through Roseville once: before and after that, someone else was always at the wheel (we moved away after that).

The road was full of cars, there were too many lanes to count, and the signs didn’t make any sense. I had someone to follow, but if I hadn’t, then I would have been desperately lost.

If you were to move into Roseville, you would end up depending a lot on navigation apps whenever you drive around, and you’d have to be proactive about paying attention to which lane to get into in case there are too many cars in the way when your turn comes up.

6. Galleria Mall

The Galleria mall is one of the main reasons people come to Roseville from out of town. It’s the biggest shopping center for miles and miles, so anyone even remotely close comes to Roseville when they want the shopping mall experience. This fills up the streets with people driving to and from shopping and makes traffic even worse, especially during the holidays.

We’ve already gone over how bad the traffic already is and how crowded the city is getting, and this puts the icing on the cake with people from out of town coming to Roseville and clogging up the roads even more.

Oh, and one more thing: kids used to love going there because of the carousel, but that was removed in 2020.

5. Golfland Sunsplash

Another thing that makes the city really crowded in the summer is Golfland Sunsplash, the water park, mini-golf, and arcade that attracts people from all around when the weather gets hot. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a lot of fun, that is when you can actually reach the attractions.

This is the only waterpark in the area, so people come here to get wet and cool off on the hottest summer days. But the hottest days for you are just as hot for everyone else, so everyone who can come will come whenever the conditions are good. So the lines for the rides are long, and the only thing keeping them manageable is the price to get in the door.

4. Plastic Bag Tax

When my family was considering moving away in 2017, the last nail in the coffin was the tax on plastic bags. This is a statewide law where you have to either bring your own bags to the store or pay for each plastic bag you get at the checkout. This applies everywhere that carries plastic bags: Walmart, Safeway, Riley’s, you name it.

I understand that it’s meant to reduce the amount of plastic bags that go to waste, and it’s a great practice to bring your own bags, but it makes it really hard for people who need to do a lot of shopping at once.

When you need to buy enough groceries to feed a big family, it can be tough to estimate how many bags you need, and then you have to carry them with you through the store.

3. General Prejudice Against Southern CA

When it comes to the population, Roseville is a pretty mixed bag. There are a lot of people with a lot of different origins and political standings. Because of that, issues that are a big deal in some places aren’t such a big deal in Roseville. Things like racism and political differences don’t present divides between residents in the way they might in other places.

While that might seem like an idyllic aspect of a place, every group of people has an “other” that they tend to ruminate against, and Roseville is no different. While the people here won’t treat you differently if you look different or think differently from them, they might if you’re from Southern California.

Southern California is the most populous part of the state, and therefore it’s the way the state is represented to the rest of the US. For this reason, among others, people in Roseville and other northern parts of California have developed a distaste for the southern end of the state, the way it’s run, the way it represents California, and even the people who are from there.

2. Southern CA’s Droughts

Another reason not to move to Roseville is because of the droughts. This isn’t to say Roseville gets bouts of dry weather where water is scarce: the rains come at a decent enough rate that water wouldn’t be a problem if the local area were the only concern. No, the droughts are a result of Southern California being a desert, and the rest of the state has to make up for it.

That’s another reason Roseville and other parts of Northern California aren’t fond of Southern California: when droughts come to the south, as they often do in the summer, the water restrictions put in place affect the whole state. Water has to be shipped from the north to the south, and Roseville residents get salty because they’re not allowed to water their lawns.

1. Humidity

If you’re originally from a coastal area, whether that’s the Pacific, Atlantic, or one of the Great Lakes, you probably won’t notice this, but if you’re from inland, you’ll notice that temperatures here don’t feel the same as they did when you were back home. When the thermometer says it’s hot, it’s scorching, and when it’s cold, it’s really cold.

Around here, 40 degrees Fahrenheit feels freezing. You want a coat and a hat and gloves and everything just to stay comfortable. In a drier, inland place, like Idaho, 40 degrees is a nice sort of sweater weather, and it snows there for nearly half of the year.

The humidity might not be as exaggerated as it is in a more coastal city, but it’s enough to amplify the temperatures and skew your idea of how the thermometer affects how hot or cold you feel.

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Nathan Aydelotte

Hello! I'm Nathan, the lead editor for Suggested by locals. I grew up in the Boise, Idaho area and have lived here most of my life. I enjoy being close to the mountains where I can go hiking, camping, and mountain biking.

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