I didn’t know that about St Louis, I went there for a conference a few years ago and mostly stayed downtown but I drove around a bit one day and it just seemed like an old Southern city. I never felt unsafe but I also lived in an old Southern city with lots of crime for a while so things outside of downtown didn’t seem much different.
There are still many places in the US where you can get a decent house in the lower 100s but they are mostly all rural.
Yep, just like autoplay video was common early on, then bad and now it’s common again starting with ads.