Good tenants usually have choices in terms of housing and, at least based on what you've described, they would choose NOT to rent from you in this location. 

I would find a team that's already doing this in the market of your choice and see if they are available to help.

I would personally avoid violent crimes, our tenant had made a bad choice but it wasn't a violent one. 

And with RE there are many choices of investment types.

In their markets that could be the wise choice  But SF  LA Seattle  etc these are different animals. 

., but as a passive investor, is it more beneficial to invest directly in real estate than investing via a syndication? 

I see buying this type of real estate beneficial; perhaps more beneficial compared to SFHs because of the multiple streams of income I can potentially gather off of the one property.

Your choice whatever works best for you, thanks!

so a PRIVATE person had better be giving me much better terms....or I'm just going with Hard Money.I usually provide a choice to my private lenders - I'll give you 6% with payments or 8% with no payments. 

I didn't have the capital to flip all three units at once, so I figured keeping solid renters was more beneficial than raising the rents to true market value and running the risk of getting potential problem renters - especially while I was working out of town.