Lancaster, CA area (Los Angeles, Palmdale, Mission Viejo: middle-class, section 8, real estate)

[lili]

Hello, I am considering moving to Lancaster, Ca and would appreciate any feedback on which is the best area to live in.
I have children, am concerned about crime rate,schools and home prices. I Would consider neighbor cities. Thank you !

[SoCalMom]

Lancaster is a sh*thole. There are tons of meth labs, parolees galore, no work, and it get very hot in the summer.

[iansmom]

Originally Posted by lili

Hello, I am considering moving to Lancaster, Ca and would appreciate any feedback on which is the best area to live in.
I have children, am concerned about crime rate,schools and home prices. I Would consider neighbor cities. Thank you !

[quote=lili]

As well you should be concerned about the schools. The school in Calfornia are the worst you can possibly send your kids to. What really makes it hard for kids that speak English are the kids that don't speak english. And trust me there are plenty of those here.

On the exit exam the kids are given 9 chances to pass the test and only need to score a 50% and they still can't pass it. That tells you something the school systems in this state absolutely s**k. And that is being nice.

home prices....you can't buy a out house for $300K. Go to yahoo.com on the home page click on Real Estate type in the city and state and min and max you want to pay for a home and you'll see what I mean, it's not pretty. If your looking to only pay $150K you'll be buying a mobile home or a piece of land with no house.

If you don't live in California already and are looking to move to CA and buy property your are to late. Everything is so overpriced and the only people that are "okay" are the ones that purchased their homes 10 years ago.

To give you an idea 10 years ago I purchased my home for $87K 923 square feet, 2 bedrooms 1 bath the house now appraises for $340K. I couldn't afford the payments on this house now. There are much better places to live with MUCH better schools save yourself the grief and don't come here. By the way the English language is a thing of the past in this state you'll be living in Northern Mexifornia. I'm not kidding either. Sorry if I sound bitter but this state has really gone in the shi**er.

[Brandon]

Originally Posted by lili

Hello, I am considering moving to Lancaster, Ca and would appreciate any feedback on which is the best area to live in.
I have children, am concerned about crime rate,schools and home prices. I Would consider neighbor cities. Thank you !

Lacaster is a big S**T Hole. Please don't move there especially if you have kids. As for housing prices, the average housing price in SO Cal is around $400 to $500 in the nice areas. I would suggest moving somewhere like Mission Viejo or Rancho Santa Margarita. The school's are great and the communities are awesome but the housing prices suck. But if you have kids you should sacrifice for a nicer area.

[littlelizard]

Those posting earlier have said it all. Lancaster/Palmdale are the catchall desert towns for the poor, minorities and redneck and overrun with crime. I'm being very politically incorrect, but it's the truth. I cannot say one nice thing about the Antelope Valley except that it's cheap by CA standards.

You will have an hour and a half commute to work one way, it's blazing hot in summer, freezing in winter and the schools are the worst. Unless you live in CA already, you will faint at home prices and although they are already the cheapest (see foregoing for the reason) they are twice what you pay in other states. I don't know what you saw about Lancaster that appealed to you. Did you get off the freeway? Good luck!

[fastfilm]

Lili, I know some folks must consider less than desirable locales because of job relocation and financial concerns, but if this your choice solely for the proverbial change of scenery, there are many other sunny locales from which to choose. Try the city-data stats at their non-forum site. As for your kids' sakes, here's a recent headline confirming Los Angeles' status as the 6th worst education system in the entire nation, with a 44% rate of high school graduation.

[junkman18]

Originally Posted by SoCalMom

Lancaster is a sh*thole. There are tons of meth labs, parolees galore, no work, and it get very hot in the summer.

True

http://www.libertypost.org/cgi-bin/r...?ArtNum=172853

[Ajjjax]

Hi Lili,
I lived in the Antelope Valley (Palmdale/Lancaster) for 7 years, and I worked in the school system. A student brought a gun to school (front page news then) during my first week on the job.

Parents, grandmothers and "Aunties" will remove their kids from "bad" environments in L.A. and transplant them to the AV. Invariably, they ask "Where are the best schools?" When they find out where they are, they enroll their kids there, whether they have to lie about their address, use a friend's address and put the utilities in their name in order to use the bill as proof of residence, or utilize Section 8 Rental assistance to move in to the "good" neighborhoods in order to have access to the schools.

The west side of Palmdale was the best place to be, but there are a lot of Section 8 recipients there now, illegal immigrants (they were playing soccer in the street when I left) and in Quartz Hill (further west) too.

Also, the real estate prices are peaking there now, too. When I moved there in 1998, I met some people who were "upside down" on their house, becuase they paid too much 5 years before. If you buy now, that could be you in a few years. Talk about a nightmare; wanting to leave the AV but not being able to.

In my experience, the whole area has gone down hill dramatically. The AV is no place to raise a kid, that's for sure. I highly recommend you re-consider moving to the AV.

[Cattknap]

It is hot in the summer and cold in the winter - the winds in the afternoon are hurrendous - terrible for allergies there...not an attractive or safe place...do find some place else to relocate.

[Outta LA]

Lived in Lancaster for 15 years as back when we first moved there housing was affordable. Things were okay. We lived in a good, middle-class neighborhood with friendly, law-abiding people.

Of course everyone, as a lot of people are saying, had to contend with the dust and dirt blowing at 70 mph on almost a daily basis, long commutes, (I drove 85 miles one way), and the heat in the summer running into triple digits.

We could have lived with that believe it or not, but what we couldn't stand were all the gangs and gang member's families that were moving into subsidized housing so they could be next to their homies in the wonderful State Prison that the city officials said wouldn't change a thing.

The last year and a half we were there the wheels fell off. Gang graffiti everywhere. The sounds of constant AK-47 and handgun fire, the "Ghetto Bird" a.k.a. Police helicopter, orbiting our neighborhood nightly, and the sound of Police on their PA's telling everyone to stay in their houses while they conducted a search on the street at 3:00 in the morning.

I picked up my kids from school one day and as I was driving home some gang member out of the blue picked up a fist-sized rock and thew it at the driver's side of my car for no reason. If it had been another 18 inches higher it would have hit my son in the side of the head and killed him.

A week and a half later my wife was knocked to the ground by 3 thugs attempting to steal her purse in the parking lot of a grocery store. That was it. We both quit our jobs, sold our house within 3 weeks, and moved the entire family out of state. The only thing we regret now that its been 3 years, is that we didn't move out of state much sooner.

To sum it up, lets just say if God was going to give the world an enema, he'd stick the needle in Lancaster; or to simplify, it's a total sh_t hole.