Please help!! Moving to Dallas this Fall and wondering about areas just East or North of Uptown (Plano: apartment complex, high crime)

[jasonk]

I've been reading the posts on this forum the last few days and I must say that it has been, without a doubt, the most helpful resource for people new to Dallas.

I'm a California resident currently, but will be moving to Dallas this Fall for a graduate position in the Southwestern Medical District. Initially, I considered the Oak Lawn neighborhood, but then I started finding comments that the area west of Oak Lawn Avenue is particularly prone to crime.

So, then I looked into Uptown, however, finding a small sized efficiency under my budget of $600 seems to be near impossible. (According to www.uptowndallas.net, Uptown is bordered by Cedar Springs Road to the West, Lemmon to the North, Woodall Rodgers to the South, and Central Expressway to the East.)

Now I'm starting to think that I'm going to be limited to looking into the areas immediately East (or North) of Uptown. Thing is I can't seem to find the names of these neighborhoods anywhere so I'm having a rough time looking them up in Craigslist or other apartment sites.

If anyone is familiar with the areas just east or north of Uptown could you please let me know how they are in terms of safety/crime and if they have a official neighborhood name?

Also, I don't mind that Oak Lawn is predominantly gay but is it really THAT unsafe of a neighborhood?

[cdelena]

Oak Lawn is certainly a bit more risk than most settled suburban communities but it is not so unsafe that I would avoid it. The Oak Lawn and Uptown areas have a younger and more outgoing demographic but is probably the ideal location and with a diverse housing inventory you should be able to find something, although your budget is tight for the area.

[DallasLady]

Hi--

I lived in Oak Lawn for years and loved it. I was single at the time, worked late and often came home at 3:00 am. Oak Lawn is big. It used to be a separate city. In fact "Uptown" is a developers' term for a section of Oak Lawn, so "Uptown" IS in Oak Lawn. The northern part of Oak Lawn is near the Park Cities--the wealthiest part of town. So it's a cheap-and-chic area to live.

People often rave about how safe the suburbs are. However, that might not be the case. The suburbs often have to compete with Dallas in hiring police. Dallas can offer better benefits, so Dallas wins.

Go to: http://www.dallaspolice.net/ and look under "Crime Info" The police know best where there is and isn't crime. Check out: analyzedallas.org

This is a good website for seaching for a place to live: elliscountymoves.com Although it is for the county just south of Dallas, it covers all of North Texas. The search engine is the best I've seen. You can find out which area codes are the safest on Analysedallas.org, then enter those zip codes in elliscountymoves.com.

Congratulations on your new job and WELCOME!!!

[GoPadge]

I completely disagree. The suburbs are safer. Even if the 'burb are half wrong in their reporting, the only statistic where they would be worst than Dallas would be in thefts. Also, I'd argue that Dallas has to offer better benefits. Plano pays better for protective services, and even Garland pays better for auxillary personnel. And if the benefits in Dallas were so good, you wouldn't have the city offering $10,000 hiring bonuses because they're hurting for officers.

I'm not trying to say that all of Dallas is a criminal sespool, although it appears there are areas that are pretty bad.

Here's data from City-data.com, I'm comparing by / 100K for a relavent measure. I bolded the city with the highest / 100K in each category.

Crime in......Plano...Dallas.Richardson.Garland

Type...........2003.....2003.....2003......2003
Murders...........5......226........1.........7
.per 100K.......2.3.....19.0......1.1.......3.2
Rapes............48......601.......16........44
.per 100K......21.6.....50.6.....17.4......20.4
Robberies.......134....7,963......101.......362
.per 100K......60.4....670.0......110.....167.8
Assaults........522....8,075......123.......322
.per 100K.....235.1....679.4......134.....149.2
Burglaries....1,527...21,927......698.....2,197
.per 100K.....687.7...1844.8....760.3....1018.2
Thefts........7,254...58,554....2,593.....6,848
.per 100K....3267.1...4926.4...2824.6....3173.8
Auto thefts.....672...17,419......328.....1,057
.per 100K.....302.7...1465.5....357.3.....489.9
Arson............21....1,301........7.......N/A
.per 100K.......9.5....109.5......7.6.......N/A
crime index...279.1....819.5....262.7.......329
City-data.com crime index (higher means more crime, U.S. average = 325.2)

Local government employment and payroll (March 2004)
....................Plano............Dallas....... ...Richardson........Garland
Function......FT EMP....Salary.....FT....Salary.....FT....Salary... ..FT....Salary
Police Protection
- Officers.......325...$64,178...2921...$63,225..... ...N/A..........209...$54,824
Police
- Other..........200...$42,697....593...$38,188........N/A..........184...$50,073
Firefighters.....273...$71,634...1680...$66,822... .....N/A..........220...$54,780
Fire
- Other...........21...$49,949....253...$40,272........N/A...........36...$51,128

[DallasLady]

GoPadge--
Sheesh! No need to get mad. I said it MiGHT not be the case. Each neighborhood is different. There are safe & unsafe neighborhoods in every community. There are going to be more crimes in Dallas because there are more people in Dallas. Yes, wealthy suburbs like Plano & Richardson can afford to pay more to officers, but not all suburbs are that wealthy. Why don't we all agree that each town has it's good points and bad points, but all in all, North Texas is a pretty great place to live? Let's work together--not tear each other apart.

[mgd323]

A developer is building a big mixed-use apartment complex at Harry Hines and Motor St; just down the street from UTSW. It might be worth looking into if it's completed by then. I'm sure it will have a lot of fellow students and other medical staff.

[GoPadge]

I'm not mad. And I certainly didn't mean to come across that way. If I did, I apologize. I consider myself fairly level headed, I try to avoid confrontations where possible, and I try to give others the benefit of the doubt. I will say, I'm one of the ones inclined to obsess on the details, and that was the motivation in my earlier post. It wasn't meant as an attack against you.

I do disagree with your original statement "People often rave about how safe the suburbs are. However, that might not be the case. The suburbs often have to compete with Dallas in hiring police. Dallas can offer better benefits, so Dallas wins."

I do agree that there are going to be more crimes in Dallas over the 'burbs from a simple population standpoint. The point I was trying to make, that when comparing the "per 100K" figures, Dallas has more crimes per person than the 'burbs I reviewed. To be fair I didn't look at every city surrounding Dallas, I did go back and look at Cedar Hill, DeSoto, Mesquite, and Grand Prairie, and the only city with a per 100K statistic higher than Dallas was Cedar Hill where there are 3 more (53 vs 50) rapes per 100K.

But you are right, in that, every neighborhood is different and every city has it's own unique situations that effect pay and crime. Plano, Dallas, Grand Prairie, and Mesquite all pay about the same (between $57,000 (GP) to $67,000 (M)) for their police, yet Dallas is the one that stands out for crime. My guess is that income and education play a part in the crime statistics that we see. Reporting is another area where discrepancies occur.

[jasonk]

THANK YOU to everyone who responded so far. You guys are all awesome. The Analyze Dallas website was particularly useful and I gathered the crime stats for the neighborhoods I was interested in and entered them into a Excel spreadsheet so it would be easier to read. The results were a bit surprising to me; then again everything I knew about Dallas crime was from reading user reviews from Yahoo Travel. Don't laugh! It was the only thing I could find that critiqued specific neighborhoods.



The stats are for just the number of cases 'reported', not 'arrests'. The site did list the number of actual arrests per category, but to me, the figures provided were a bit insignificant compared to the number of reported incidents.

So from the 4 neighborhoods (actually 3, since one was missing data) I looked at, it seems as though the zip code that Uptown resides in has the highest crime. However, that zip code also includes the area immediately east of Uptown, just over the Central Expressway. Could anyone confirm safety of that area for me?

Meanwhile, the zip code including the Oak Lawn area residing west of Dallas North Tollway had the best stats thus contradicting everything I read from the user reviews on Yahoo Travel.

Not sure why but the area north of Uptown and south of Highland Park didn't have any data.

So to anyone who may be able to help me, do these figures appear to be in line with your own personal experience with the areas?

[kaykay]

I am sure there may be parts of Dallas that are safe, but my experience after having lived 10 years in southeast Dallas and 11 years in Plano (northern suburb of Dallas) is that the northern suburbs are much safer in general. Difference between night and day actually. We had continuing crime problems when we lived in Dallas. We lived in a fairly nice new development. You would have never thought from the appearance of things how it actually was. It finally culminated with me being held up at gunpoint in the nearby grocery store parking lot. We sold our house and moved to Plano about 4 months later (on the advice of the Dallas police who responded that night to the crime-I might add.) We do have crime in Plano but in 11 years I have personally never experienced any (other than my car got "egged" one time!) This is much, much different than what we put up with in Dallas. (Continuing theft, vandalism, etc even before the "hold-up" incident.) I don't have stats to back up my opinion. This is just my experience for what it's worth.

[pwright1]

Every big city has crime. Some parts are safer than others. Stay out of the high crime areas.