I originally wrote this as a comment in a diary, but it's kind of long, and doesn't appear duplicative from the search, and it was added to a diary that had lingered for a while so didn't get any feedback. Also, I have seen the terms or synonyms used here on dKos, so wanted to give my perspective.
I think the way "good neighborhood" or "in a decent part of town" is defined by different people indicates a part of the problem with the way we use and sell housing. Many people say well you can't get a home in a good neighborhood for less than $200-300,000. Dig deeper and you find that a good neighborhood has good schools, low crime, good resaleability, and usually, a fairly well educated population.
When I was in the market for a home back in '97, I decided to ignore the good neighborhood requirement and instead, pick out a neighborhood that had my priorities in mind. I wanted a neighborhood that was located in an area that had good transportation options and I wanted a monthly payment that was doable on just one of our incomes, in case of layoffs.
I settled on a modest little bungalow in Berwyn, an inner ring suburb of Chicago. Within a 6 block walk are the city of Chicago, and the suburbs of Cicero and Oak Park. The el is 8 blocks away, the Pace bus stop is 3 blocks away, Metra is less than a mile away and the 290 expressway is less than a mile away. There's also a gas station and a grocers within a couple of blocks.
I paid $117,000 for my home. At the time, houses were selling out in those "good" neighborhoods for $200-300,000. I have colleagues who bought them. They thought I was crazy for wanting to live where I bought. I thought they were crazy for taking on so much debt.
I figured, a good school system was nice, but I'm fairly well educated and could do home remediation in the evenings if the local system wasn't up to snuff (or go private if it was hopeless). The Coleman Report does indicate that majority low income schools perform more poorly at educating. Even the middle class students who attend them don't achieve as well as those attending non-majority poverty schools. But many schools are willing to work with pushy parents who don't feel their children are being challenged.
Crime has never really bothered me that much as serious stranger on stranger crime is really not that common. Most murders are between folks who know each other. Your nearest and dearest are far more likely to bump you off (Bureau of Justice Statistics)
Resaleability didn't matter to me as I planned to live in this house for the foreseeable future. I knew myself and knew I was far too lazy to move for all but the most cataclysmic reasons. I'm still there. My home's main value to me is that it provides heated, dry shelter for me, my three dogs and my partner.
Some of my neighbors are college educated (a teacher lives next door) and some are high school grads (retired garbage truck driver on the other side) and some are high school dropouts (landscaper 2 houses down). We seem to be able to cross those divides quite nicely as far as neighborly behavior goes.
I guess the point of this post is to remind folks that good neighborhood is frequently a term that describes an underlying series of priorities regarding the neighborhood and that, if you are buying a home or looking to rent a place, you ought to unpack that word and see just what it's describing and see if those are your priorities.