However, my hesitation is being able to identify and purchase several more SFRs in KC within the 180 day time window to take advantage of the 1031 exchange, and avoid paying a capital gains tax.Is there something I can do here that I may have not thought of?

You can access just about anything you need in terms of demographic data, trip counts, daytime employment, etc.

My daytime job is a Journeyman Plumber.

He became a surveyor at age 24: “Then for six weeks, daytime and often all of nighttime, he had his head deep in Gibson’s Theory and Practice of Surveying and Flint’s Treatise on Geometry, Trigonometry and Rectangular Surveying.

But when you hear that there are a bunch of people on porches and they stare at you and agent does not feel safe to get out of the car... and that's at day time!

Those are hard enough to assess during the daytime let alone at night since they are boarded up with no power.  

Careful planning can assist you through a successful 1031 Exchange transaction.First, you can delay the closing of your relinquished property by negotiating extensions with the buyer so that your 45 and 180 day time frames have not started running.Second, you can look for your replacement property first and then tie up the properties using some sort of lease/option arrangement.Third, you can consider structuring a Reverse 1031 Exchange transaction that allows you to acquire and close on your replacement property prior to selling your relinquished property.

You might need to expand your cities to find something in that 45 day time frame.

Go to look at your properties during the daytime, and if you must go at night, don't go alone.  

I wouldn't personally worry about walking up and down the street (at least in the daytime), but it does look like a bit of a rough area to me.