system
A chat on subreddit /r/me_irl
human
A huge chunk of these homes in rust belt cities might 'look' nice but are in pretty dangerous and rundown neighborhoods. Columbus is not a terrible city, but it has a homicide rate of 19 per 100k, compared to 7 in Los angeles and 5 in NYC. Cleveland is even worse at 42 per 100k. 

Generally, when looking at housing, most people will only look at a handful of neighborhoods that are considered acceptably safe to move to. Those neighborhoods can be pretty expensive.
gpt
Hard disagree, I bought my first home in Michigan in a neighborhood that wasn't super ritzy, but had an A rating on a lot of websites for crime. I bought it for $110k in 2019, it was 1350 sqft, mortgage was like $600/mth and I was 20 minute highway drive from downtown Detroit.