Moving to Dallas from Chicago... (McKinney, Greenville: apartment, townhomes, luxury)

[Lakewooder]

I would not characterize Dallas as high crime - the Dallas I know, love and grew up in has very little crime - strong neighborhoods where folks know each other can stamp out any crime very quickly.

[aceplace]

Originally Posted by crislevin

Dallas has high crime rate.

It's impossible to say that Dallas has a high crime rate.

The crime rate is the number of crimes divided by the number of possible victims, that is, people who are physically present. But no one knows how many people are physically present inside the Dallas city limits at, say 2PM on Tuesday.

I'm not nitpicking about 50 or 100 people. The city of Dallas would have several hundred thousand commuters, visitors, transients, etc., on a given day. The question is... how many hundreds of thousands.

Depending on the answer, Dallas would have a higher or lower rate than other major metro center cities.

[crislevin]

ahh, no, I just heard the news about Dallas crime rate all the time. I personally can not compare it to other cities since I have limited experiences outside Dallas.

I guess they counted crime activities per thousands people, something like that.

Its getting better for sure, with new police chief.

[xuxu]

Hello

We do understand that crime is everywhere, we just need to avoid such high crime areas, wich for what we understand, south of dallas has some areas that we should avoid, not just south of dallas but I believe some other areas as well.. Here in Chicago we hear all the time that is dangerous and stuff, it is in some areas but fortunately we don't have to go near those areas. :-)

We've been looking at the Villages apartments and apartments in Uptown/Westvillage and we loved the location, as we need to be close to the DART because we'll only have one car when we move and my wife will need to use the car to go to her job (which she'll have to find one first), I work at home, so commute won't be a problem but I'll be going to school in Downtown Dallas, so I need to be close to the DART.

Also, one thing that we are already excited about Dallas is the Farmers Market, here in Chicago we love going saturday morning to get fresh bread, cheese, etc but this coming weekend will be the last day and in Dallas is open year round Yeah!!

Once again, thank you for all the Help!!

[aceplace]

Originally Posted by xuxu

Hello

We do understand that crime is everywhere, we just need to avoid such high crime areas, wich for what we understand, south of dallas has some areas that we should avoid, not just south of dallas but I believe some other areas as well.. Here in Chicago we hear all the time that is dangerous and stuff, it is in some areas but fortunately we don't have to go near those areas. :-)

We've been looking at the Villages apartments and apartments in Uptown/Westvillage and we loved the location, as we need to be close to the DART because we'll only have one car when we move and my wife will need to use the car to go to her job (which she'll have to find one first), I work at home, so commute won't be a problem but I'll be going to school in Downtown Dallas, so I need to be close to the DART.

Also, one thing that we are already excited about Dallas is the Farmers Market, here in Chicago we love going saturday morning to get fresh bread, cheese, etc but this coming weekend will be the last day and in Dallas is open year round Yeah!!

Once again, thank you for all the Help!!

There are also relatively new apartment clusters farther north on the DART Red line.

The Eastside complex is pretty good looking, with a huge apartment block embedded in a pedestrian-oriented shopping and restaurant district. It is halfway between two DART stations, the Galatyn Park station and the Arapaho station. It would be about a half-mile walk to either station, though.

The Galatyn Park station also has a large apartment community, and you would be very close to the Eisemann Theatre, which has a good selection of roadshows.

Closer in, there is a brand-new town center across from the Park Lane station, with what appear to be low-rise, high-rise and loft type apartments. Its shopping district definitely looks urban.

Mockingbird station has many available apartments within a 1 block radius, and you would be walking distance to the university and the shows and museum exhibits it offers. The Meadows Museum is said to have the most extensive collection of Spanish art outside of Spain.

Downtown Plano also has several apartment communities within walking distance of its DART rail station. Downtown Plano is a quaint cluster of small shops, quite cute.

The Baylor station on the Green line has a large apartment complex at the station. You would be walking distance to the Deep Ellum entertainment district. Deep Ellum has been a bit down the last few years, but people expect it to come roaring back now that it has two DART stations. The closer in Deep Ellum station also has an adjacent apartment community adjcent to it... i.e., across the street.

If access to rail within walking distance is your requirement, you have many options in Dallas. You have many more urban amenities near the DART rail stations than you have in other Light Rail cities such as San Diego, Portland or Denver.

[aceplace]

Originally Posted by crislevin

ahh, no, I just heard the news about Dallas crime rate all the time. I personally can not compare it to other cities since I have limited experiences outside Dallas.

I guess they counted crime activities per thousands people, something like that.

Its getting better for sure, with new police chief.

One problem with the crime rate is that the police self-report their numbers. If a police chief is trying to get more money in his budget, a good way to do it is to exaggerate the crime numbers. If he's trying to prove he's doing a good job, he manipulates the numbers to make it look like crimes are down. The current police chief has a vested interest in proving that he's better than his incompetent predecessor. Do you believe his numbers?

How do they manipulate the numbers? By redefining crimes, or by discouraging reports.

For example, the Dallas police would just take the word of a citizen that his car had been stolen. When they started to require a sworn statement under oath, the number of stolen cars dropped significantly. Many of the "stolen" cars were actually insurance fraud. Or, if somebody was robbed on the street, the police would classify that as 5 separate crimes, assault, battery, theft, evading arrest, etc. When they reclassified it as just one crime - robbery - the total number of crimes dropped.

Another way to lower the official crime rate is to make it more cumbersome and annoying to report a crime. For example, I couldn't report a stolen credit card over the phone; I had to go downtown, stand in line, and wait until somebody was ready to take my report.

As I mentioned before, the number of crimes per thousand is meaningless because we don't know how many thousands of people are in the city. We know how many people were legal residents of Dallas 9 years ago, but that doesn't include the hundreds of thousands of commuters into the city, or the thousands of visitors, or the increase in population since the year 2000.

Since the crime numbers in other cities are equally skewed, trying to compare one city to another is equally pointless.

An overall crime rate for a city is meaningless anyway, since it assumes that each person, or each neighborhood, is exactly at the same degree of risk. That's why there's only one number for the entire city. In reality, crime is not evenly spread over all parts of the city... it is concentrated in a few high crime pockets, places that you don't really have to enter.

So there's no reason to be interested in a crime rate, even if it was accurate, or had some practical value.

[crislevin]

Originally Posted by xuxu

We've been looking at the Villages apartments and apartments in Uptown/Westvillage and we loved the location, as we need to be close to the DART

For Village apartments, DART rail station is a bit far to walk (quarter to 1 mile depends which complex you choose), but you can take DART buses to the rail station, or just take bus all the way to downtown. Bus is not as clean as rail tho.

Across street (lover's Lane) from Village, there are some apartments (signature points, I have no idea about the residents there, but the apartments looks fine from outside) as well, which is good and closer to lover's lane redline rail station.

Uptown/Westvillage is probably not closer to rail station, but does have bus stations you can walk to. The apartments are also more pricey.

Around Mockingbird rail station, the so called "west elm" area, there is an apartment complex for rent, but probably above $1000. Its just next to rail station, has kroger (grocery store) right next to it, close to some shopping store, angelika artsy theatre, and not far from lower greenville bar strip.

There are more apartments if you don't mind going further north. But would have less entertainments around.

[Dallas native]

Originally Posted by crislevin

Uptown/Westvillage is probably not closer to rail station, but does have bus stations you can walk to. The apartments are also more pricey.

Actually, the West Village is very close to the CityPlace subway station. There is an elevator on the street level that takes you down there and it's located just 3 blocks east of McKinney (near the Bryson apartments). Uptown also offers the McKinney Ave. Trolley (free) that goes through much of Uptown and into Downtown.

[crislevin]

Originally Posted by Dallas native

Actually, the West Village is very close to the CityPlace subway station. There is an elevator on the street level that takes you down there and it's located just 3 blocks east of McKinney (near the Bryson apartments). Uptown also offers the McKinney Ave. Trolley (free) that goes through much of Uptown and into Downtown.

yes indeed, I forgot cityplace, its a nice big underground station and is the first joint station for both red and blue light rails.

Trolley is quite slow, and i dont think it goes very close to downtown tho.

[Dallas native]

Yea, it seems pretty slow especially when I'm stuck behind one of them driving up McKinney Ave. Oh well, you get what you pay for. It did go into downtown on St. Paul near the DMA. However, I believe the St. Paul and Harwood bridges were both torn down over the past couple of weeks in preparation for the Woodall Rodgers deck park. I think that the city of Dallas is trying to formulate an affordable plan to expand trolley service throughout downtown within the next few years. We'll see if that happens.