Common Tourist Scams in New Orleans (and How to Avoid Them)
The areas with the highest violent-crime baselines
- Central City (south of Loyola Avenue, between the Quarter and Uptown). Some of the highest violent-crime rates in NOPD's 6th District. Tourists rarely have a reason to be there.
- Seventh Ward (north-east of the Quarter, between St Bernard Ave and the river). Mixed residential; long-running gang activity in pockets; tourists do not wander.
- Ninth Ward (Lower Ninth) — east of the Industrial Canal; the area worst-hit by Hurricane Katrina; still partially recovered. Daytime block-tours visit (Lower Ninth Ward Living Museum, Make It Right houses); not a tourist destination on its own.
- Hollygrove + Pigeon Town (Uptown, far end of Earhart) — high-poverty, high-violent-crime baseline. Lil Wayne's childhood neighbourhood; tourists rarely visit.
- New Orleans East — sprawling residential area east of the Industrial Canal; mostly post-Katrina recovery zones. NOPD 7th District. Tourists almost never come here.
- Algiers (parts) — across the river from the Quarter; the ferry-accessible Algiers Point is a calm river-front pocket safe to visit, but the larger Algiers and Lower Algiers area beyond is not.
- St Roch + Bywater perimeter — Bywater has gentrified materially, but the eastern + northern perimeter still has occasional incidents. The St Claude Avenue corridor is a transition zone.
- Rampart Street late night: the formal northern boundary of the French Quarter. Heavy NOPD + FQTF presence on Rampart proper; crossing into Treme blocks after midnight is where the perimeter risk lives.
Live New Orleans safety score (updates daily) →