Relocating to Dayton area--need lots of helpful info. (Columbus, Cleveland: safe area, colleges)
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That's a nice area. Even surrounding communities are decent: Miamisurg, West Carrolton, Moraine, etc. I am not sure technically if Cox is in Washington Township, one of the already mentioned communities, or elsewhere. But can say for sure that it's surrounded by really nice areas.
There appears to be a condominium complex on the south side of the arboretum. It is pretty much surrounded by the outskirts of Centerville and the extreme periphery of the Dayton Mall (which is in Centerville/Washington TWP, but called that anyway). Because of the mall area and the condominium being right near state route 741, there are RTA bus routes nearby that could take you into Dayton. I think that that is a low-crime area except for the generic typical amount of shoplifting that happens at any mall.
I have lived in Dayton since my father retired here in 1962 to go into business with his brother-in-law.
They located their small shop on Kammer Avenue in West Dayton in a mostly black but low-crime neighborhood. That has since changed for the worse. I won't even visit there in daylight.
Our family rented a small wood-frame house at 4868 Goodyear Drive, which is one block off of Free Pike near Salem Avenue in Northwest Dayton, just a few miles east of Trotwood. It was a comfortable three-bedroom with semi-finished basement and a large back yard built in 1955. Most, but not all, of the neighbors were white.
I drove by the place this week and it is still there, pretty much as I remember it, except there are more trees. The house originally bordered on a large Jewish community and was a stone's throw from the Salem Mall, which is now closed. I graduated in 1963 from Meadowdale HS, which was on the other side of Salem Avenue, and I had mostly white classmates with three or four blacks and Asians. The school was razed a few years ago. This is still a fairly well-kept neighborhood that is definitely multi-cultural, but now it struggles. The house was recently part of a foreclosure action and its value has gone up and down (mostly down, lately) over the past fifty years. I would not want to live here again.
After a four-year tour with the U.S. Air Force, I returned to Dayton in 1967 and rented a two-bedroom townhouse apartment at the Colony at Forest Park on Riverside Drive. I drove by this place, too, a few days ago and the apartments appear to be mostly vacant and rundown with unmaintained parking lots, trash on the lawn, and a lot of vacant apartments. Bear in mind that this place is at the other (East) end of Free Pike, which becomes Siebenthaler, where it crosses the Stillwater River. Back in the day this was THE place for young singles to live. Forest Park shopping center, anchored by a large grocery store, was nearby and downtown Dayton was just a five minute drive down Riverside Drive. I would not want to live here today.
When my wife became pregnant with our first child, the Colony became a strain on our budget. So we moved a few miles further east to a less expensive apartment on Northcutt Place, just off of North Dixie in Harrison Township. I didn't know it at the time, but this was a huge step down in fine living accommodations. We stayed there for almost two years before purchasing an inexpensive three-bedroom Cape Cod style home in Walnut Hills, one block off a Wayne Avenue and Stewart Street.
This is where I am today, although most of my neighbors have moved on and the character of the neighborhood has changed. It is a combination of transient apartment dwellers mixed with University of Dayton students, older home owners such as myself, and small businesses. It appears that housing for UD students is expanding in this direction, which may be a "good thing" in terms of real estate value later on down the road if I have to sell.
If I had kids, I would seriously consider living here because of the inexpensive housing. The City of Dayton just recently re-built Belmont High School, the neighborhood high school, but I don't think the Dayton School System ranks anywhere near the top of the list of quality schools in the Dayton area. If I knew then what I know now, I would have sent my four children to a private school, even if I had to work a second job to pay for it.
The area where I live that I consider "my neighborhood" is roughly bounded by Stewart Street/Wayne Avenue on the south, Brown Street on the West, Wyoming Street on the North, and Smithville Road on the East. It is about a five minute drive from downtown Dayton and is located on at least three RTA bus lines. It is a lower to lower-middle income neighborhood ($20K to $40K median income per family) that has a mixture of races, cultures, and professions: black, white, Hispanic, Asian, and mixed who have jobs as laborers, skilled and un-skilled, doctors, lawyers and other young professionals just starting out in their careers, and older people like me who can't afford to live anywhere else.
The crime rate is much higher in my neighborhood than, say, Oakwood or Centerville, but it is mostly non-violent crimes of opportunity such as break-ins and garage thefts. These could easily escalate into violence if the perpetrators were confronted in the act. There has been only one murder on my street, two houses down from where I live, since I have lived here. There may have been other, drug related murders, in nearby apartments that I don't know about. Although even one is one too many, there are worse neighborhoods. We have personally experienced two daytime burglaries, one of whom was almost surprised by my wife returning home. We have since installed keyed inside and outside dead-bolt locks to prevent their escape and the carting of our "stuff" out through the front and back doors. They would have to break and use a window now. There have also been random acts of vandalism from time to time, not targeted at anyone in particular.
The commute to Wright-Patterson AFB from my neighborhood is a straight shot down US-35 east (from ramps at Wayne and Keowee or Steve Whalen Boulevard) to north on I-675. There are exits for both Area B (mostly scientific and laboratory work there) and Areas A and C as well as the Fairfield Mall. It usually takes about ten or fifteen minutes to reach Area B or the Fairfield Mall from the UD campus.
If you can find an affordable house in Riverside or Huber Heights it would shorten your commute considerably. The area bounded by US-35, Spinning Road, Airway Road (Col. Glenn Highway), and Woodman Drive in Riverside is stable and relatively free of crime. Part of this used to be base housing that has since been placed in the public domain. There is a high-quality Catholic high school nearby on Linden Avenue at Spinning Road and the Riverside public school system is reputed to be adequate. As you spiral outward from this area into Beavercreek the costs of housing skyrockets. Find a good realtor. There are bargains available!
Last edited by hevans1944; 06-28-2012 at 06:19 PM..
Reason: Remove unintentional "formatting" imported from Word
I have lived in Dayton since my father retired here in 1962 to go into business with his brother-in-law.
They located their small shop on Kammer Avenue in West Dayton in a mostly black but low-crime neighborhood. That has since changed for the worse. I won't even visit there in daylight.
Our family rented a small wood-frame house at 4868 Goodyear Drive, which is one block off of Free Pike near Salem Avenue in Northwest Dayton, just a few miles east of Trotwood. It was a comfortable three-bedroom with semi-finished basement and a large back yard built in 1955. Most, but not all, of the neighbors were white.
I drove by the place this week and it is still there, pretty much as I remember it, except there are more trees. The house originally bordered on a large Jewish community and was a stone's throw from the Salem Mall, which is now closed. I graduated in 1963 from Meadowdale HS, which was on the other side of Salem Avenue, and I had mostly white classmates with three or four blacks and Asians. The school was razed a few years ago. This is still a fairly well-kept neighborhood that is definitely multi-cultural, but now it struggles. The house was recently part of a foreclosure action and its value has gone up and down (mostly down, lately) over the past fifty years. I would not want to live here again.
After a four-year tour with the U.S. Air Force, I returned to Dayton in 1967 and rented a two-bedroom townhouse apartment at the Colony at Forest Park on Riverside Drive. I drove by this place, too, a few days ago and the apartments appear to be mostly vacant and rundown with unmaintained parking lots, trash on the lawn, and a lot of vacant apartments. Bear in mind that this place is at the other (East) end of Free Pike, which becomes Siebenthaler, where it crosses the Stillwater River. Back in the day this was THE place for young singles to live. Forest Park shopping center, anchored by a large grocery store, was nearby and downtown Dayton was just a five minute drive down Riverside Drive. I would not want to live here today.
When my wife became pregnant with our first child, the Colony became a strain on our budget. So we moved a few miles further east to a less expensive apartment on Northcutt Place, just off of North Dixie in Harrison Township. I didn't know it at the time, but this was a huge step down in fine living accommodations. We stayed there for almost two years before purchasing an inexpensive three-bedroom Cape Cod style home in Walnut Hills, one block off a Wayne Avenue and Stewart Street.
This is where I am today, although most of my neighbors have moved on and the character of the neighborhood has changed. It is a combination of transient apartment dwellers mixed with University of Dayton students, older home owners such as myself, and small businesses. It appears that housing for UD students is expanding in this direction, which may be a "good thing" in terms of real estate value later on down the road if I have to sell.
If I had kids, I would seriously consider living here because of the inexpensive housing. The City of Dayton just recently re-built Belmont High School, the neighborhood high school, but I don't think the Dayton School System ranks anywhere near the top of the list of quality schools in the Dayton area. If I knew then what I know now, I would have sent my four children to a private school, even if I had to work a second job to pay for it.
The area where I live that I consider "my neighborhood" is roughly bounded by Stewart Street/Wayne Avenue on the south, Brown Street on the West, Wyoming Street on the North, and Smithville Road on the East. It is about a five minute drive from downtown Dayton and is located on at least three RTA bus lines. It is a lower to lower-middle income neighborhood ($20K to $40K median income per family) that has a mixture of races, cultures, and professions: black, white, Hispanic, Asian, and mixed who have jobs as laborers, skilled and un-skilled, doctors, lawyers and other young professionals just starting out in their careers, and older people like me who can't afford to live anywhere else.
The crime rate is much higher in my neighborhood than, say, Oakwood or Centerville, but it is mostly non-violent crimes of opportunity such as break-ins and garage thefts. These could easily escalate into violence if the perpetrators were confronted in the act. There has been only one murder on my street, two houses down from where I live, since I have lived here. There may have been other, drug related murders, in nearby apartments that I don't know about. Although even one is one too many, there are worse neighborhoods. We have personally experienced two daytime burglaries, one of whom was almost surprised by my wife returning home. We have since installed keyed inside and outside dead-bolt locks to prevent their escape and the carting of our "stuff" out through the front and back doors. They would have to break and use a window now. There have also been random acts of vandalism from time to time, not targeted at anyone in particular.
The commute to Wright-Patterson AFB from my neighborhood is a straight shot down US-35 east (from ramps at Wayne and Keowee or Steve Whalen Boulevard) to north on I-675. There are exits for both Area B (mostly scientific and laboratory work there) and Areas A and C as well as the Fairfield Mall. It usually takes about ten or fifteen minutes to reach Area B or the Fairfield Mall from the UD campus.
If you can find an affordable house in Riverside or Huber Heights it would shorten your commute considerably. The area bounded by US-35, Spinning Road, Airway Road (Col. Glenn Highway), and Woodman Drive in Riverside is stable and relatively free of crime. Part of this used to be base housing that has since been placed in the public domain. There is a high-quality Catholic high school nearby on Linden Avenue at Spinning Road and the Riverside public school system is reputed to be adequate. As you spiral outward from this area into Beavercreek the costs of housing skyrockets. Find a good realtor. There are bargains available!
Thank you for sharing your story, rather sad though it is. I hope your future is brighter, and if it helps any, presume you are not particularly the only person with such experiences. You probably aren't,
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Originally Posted by dxdtdemon
There appears to be a condominium complex on the south side of the arboretum. It is pretty much surrounded by the outskirts of Centerville and the extreme periphery of the Dayton Mall (which is in Centerville/Washington TWP, but called that anyway). Because of the mall area and the condominium being right near state route 741, there are RTA bus routes nearby that could take you into Dayton. I think that that is a low-crime area except for the generic typical amount of shoplifting that happens at any mall.
Those are the Habitat condos, which were all the rage in the 70s and 80s when they were new, fell on some hard times as the bulk of the units were rentals instead of owner-occupied, and after several management changes the complex has improved greatly. There are trails that link the complex with the arboretum.
Thanks for the information. We're exploring retirement options, and the area sounds as if it would work. We'll see what the next couple of years bring.
Thank you to all who have responded. My wife was informed that someone else was on a stopper list as they had been RIF'd and, since they were without a job and my wife was employed and only transferring, they got the job at WPAFB. It makes sense since it is better than someone have employment rather than not, although we would have loved to come back home to Ohio. Thank you again for the very helpful posts.
My wife is expecting a transfer to WPAFB within the next two months. We are originally from just East of Columbus, but have been living in Central Florida since 2001. Are there areas to avoid living in the Dayton area, except for downtown and Xenia? (I am tornado-phobic and been through the onslaught that Xenia and Ohio faced in the 70s as well as having been through the hurricanes of 2004 here in FL.
We have two daughters and two dogs. We are a multi-cultural family (Caucasian-Asian). We are looking for diversity since where we live here in FL has practically none. (So white that if it snowed, you would lose practically the entire town).
We have a number of school districts that look good since their grading scale is a normal one, not some new standard like the ones in nearby Clark County (Springfield), OH.
Any information would be of great assistance as realtors can only tell us so much without breaking the law.
Thank you.
Huber Heights has been a great place to live, especially north of I70. There's tons of shopping, restaurants, playgrounds, plus they just built an aquatic center that is pretty cool. We bought a house here when we were stationed at WPAFB four years ago. The commuting distance is decent, only about 25 minutes to Area A, C OR B, which isn't usual--a lot of times you have to go further to get to one or the other. I70, 4 and SOUTHBOUND I675 is usually pretty good as far as congestion goes. There just isn't much! There are also far, far fewer accidents than on I675N, I75 or SR35. You can get trapped for up to an hour on those if you hit the wrong time for weather.
The ONLY thing I would say about Huber is be careful of the schools. There are some great elementaries, and the middle and high schools are good from what I hear, but some of the elementaries are only so-so. They just built a bunch of new ones, and I really like the one for those of us north of I70, Charles Huber. It's got a great security system, good teachers, friendly staff and they have events every couple of months for the kids that are free. Our old elementary, Rushmore, wasn't nearly as good for that, although they also have a new building.
Oh, and it's very diverse! It's one of my favorite things about the area. There is a great mix here, which we were used to at our other bases. Places like Beavercreek, Kettering and Centerville seem to have a much lower rate of diversity. Try Huber, Vandalia and Englewood for that, although with Englewood and Vandalia you'll add ten minutes (E) or five minutes (V) to your normal commute to WPAFB, plus you have to pass I75 where there's only two lanes and if there's an accident right at the off ramp...good luck.
Thank you to all who have responded. My wife was informed that someone else was on a stopper list as they had been RIF'd and, since they were without a job and my wife was employed and only transferring, they got the job at WPAFB. It makes sense since it is better than someone have employment rather than not, although we would have loved to come back home to Ohio. Thank you again for the very helpful posts.
I'm sorry about the job. Where are you in Florida?
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