Really? Maine Locations Are Not on the 2022 Most Neighborly Cities List?

So much for Maine's hospitable reputation, at least according to one website.

The Neighbor Blog, a sister site to the self-storage company neighbor.com, has put out its annual list of the most neighborly cities in America. Surprisingly, Maine did not have a community make the list.

The Pine Tree State's communities failed to break the Top 25 for the third consecutive year, making me wonder if we are just a bunch of miserable New Englanders up here.

Neighbor's rankings are based "on a variety of publicly available data sets related to charitable giving, generosity, happiness and well-being of residents, and other factors we think contribute to a city’s overall neighborliness."

The website even added an extra wrinkle for 2022's list by surveying Americans about relationships with neighbors, habits, community involvement, and more. There certainly wasn't a lack of effort put into this ranking system.

Should Maine Be on the List?

Initially, my reaction was shocked. I always assumed our little neck of the woods was quite welcoming. It seems people tend to be rather neighborly, but apparently the stats tell otherwise.

Maybe Mainers are too honest? Maybe our dickering gets to become too much of a hassle? Maybe Mainers respect privacy more than other states? Perhaps we are just better than everyone else, and the Neighbor Blog can't handle Maine's greatness. Whatever the reason, it's really Neighbor's loss.

The top 5 towns on the list for most neighborly are:

1. Rochester, New York
2. Madison, Wisconsin
3. Provo, Utah
4. Oxnard, California
5. Grand Rapids, MI

Talk about just throwing some darts on a map for these bad boys. Other than Madison, I wouldn't want to be caught dead in any of those towns, neighborly or not.

New England's Most Neighborly Cities

Coming in at 17 for some reason is New Haven, Connecticut....because, when I think of neighborly, I think of a college town loaded with smug Ivy League students and faculty.

The other New England rep, aka the lovely western Mass city of Springfield, comes in at number 22.

We'll see if anything changes for 2023. However, this is clearly a list that doesn't deserve Maine.