From SuspireWiki
Appledale
The Area
The name of the area is a complete and utter misnomer. Still suffering from the general urban decay that has torn Hanover Wards and Butcher's Block to shreds, along with it's people, Appledale is where the panhandlers and low-rate thieves have set up their shop. It's a little less violent than it's neighboring areas to the north, which makes it a good starting place for small time crime.
About half of the warehouses in the area are probably being used to store stolen goods, but the police can't prove it. A good amount of the Carcosa pawn shops keep excess stock in these warehouse, so a police task force that raided warehouses would almost certainly find a wrong one and then get sued from an angry business owner. Thus, it's just not worth the trouble. Instead, cops try to fruitlessly pick up supply trucks heading in and out of the warehousing districts further inland and pull them over on minor things like illegal lane changes, or broken tail lights. They pick off about one out of ten supply trucks full of stolen goods; just enough to make themselves look good to the public, and not enough to get the local thieves too piping mad. Those thieves have worked out a system, anyway, with some of the bought off cops and generally send an "obvious" truck out on a route to get caught and people from their cliques who aren't pulling their weight and are disposable become the drivers.
Overall, the area's just something most people drive through unless they absolutely have to stop and get gas. There's an urban legend for women who stop in this area to get gas, about homeless men or axe murderers who sneak into the back seat while the woman is paying inside, then kill her later. You know the one – everyone knows it.