Living near Sharpstown Center (Houston, Mission: apartments, crime, roughest)

[beattyk15]

Hey everyone,
I'm moving from Arizona to Houston and looking at homes near Sharpstown Center. I have a young family and was curious if the area is safe? (i.e. would you feel comfortable as a single mom walking around in the area at night etc.)

Also, I think there are a few customer service centers in the area? Does anyone know what their pay ranges are and if they're ok to work for? (Vertrue, LTD Financial, Chase?)

Thanks so much!

[jfre81]

Originally Posted by beattyk15

Hey everyone,
I'm moving from Arizona to Houston and looking at homes near Sharpstown Center. I have a young family and was curious if the area is safe? (i.e. would you feel comfortable as a single mom walking around in the area at night etc.)

Also, I think there are a few customer service centers in the area? Does anyone know what their pay ranges are and if they're ok to work for? (Vertrue, LTD Financial, Chase?)

Thanks so much!

Can I be perfectly honest with you here?

Go somewhere else.

Not as in go somewhere that is not Houston, but somewhere that is not Sharpstown.

Now, if you happen to have a time machine that can take you 35 years back or maybe 10 years into the future, you might reconsider Sharpstown. At one time it was the place to be. But today, in 2007....forget it. The Highway 59 corridor through much of Houston outside Loop 610 and Beltway 8 contains some of the roughest patches of the city.

[Premont]

If you think about it, some of those older neighborhoods near HBU aren't bad, but the surrounding area is dangerous. It also depends on what side of the freeway. I'd say you'd be better off north of 59.

[ayannaaaliyah]

I'd suggest finding another neighborhood

[jfre81]

If it was me, middle-aged guy, no kids, I might buy in, deck out the place in wrought iron and be careful when I go out. The area has a lot of potential. If I'm a single mom I may not look at it that way and consider more the state of things there right now.

The area immediately around HBU is not that bad, but you are virtually surrounded by cut-rate apartments full of cut-rate people. (And this is coming from a Houstonian apartment renter.)

You might consider Westbury. It's bordering on some rough areas to the south and west, but Westbury itself (around Bellfort) is a lot better than Sharpstown as it's been for the last 20 years or so. Westbury offers as good a mix of safety, affordability, diversity and character as you could find in Houston outside the Loop. Anything accessible from Sharpstown is accessible from Westbury, and not as expensive as Meyerland. I live off South Main near Bellfort just a couple miles from Westbury Square.

Keep in mind that it's a big city and acts of crime happen everywhere, mostly property crime. Burglaries, auto thefts and the like aren't unheard of no matter where you go, yet the city is more safe than it's made out to be in the media.

Fight Crime! | Breaking Houston News, Weather, Sports, Traffic, Video from KHOU.com | 11 News

Houston Crime Maps and Statistics

^^some resources you might find helpful...

[texas7]

Don't move to Sharpstown. Any particular reason you are considering that area?

[Wysiwyg]

i'm curious which neighborhood 'near sharpstown'. i want to check it out myself because i pass by this area. definitely bellaire/harwin/beechnut from corporate drive to 59 is bad. walking around at night in houston is pretty much limited to a community/private property/PARK and rides - thats basically walking around in a small circle in Alief

[lukeache]

I moved out of Houston 10 years ago, but I recall some bad experiences in Sharpstown. Sharpstown is kind of a tricky area because it does not look too ghetto, but there was massive gang presence in that area, mostly Hispanics I remember going to a club in that area on a Saturday night, and I remember the cops closing entire blocks of that area around 59/Beechnut area on Saturday night to go after gang members. It took me a bad experience to convince myself that Sharpstown is a bad area, although it might not look like it, it is not the area itself, but the people who live there..there are SO many better-safer areas in Houston, this area happens to be a BAD one.

[Redrover]

Those crime statistic maps posted by jfre81 are spot-on reasons to stay the heck away from Sharpstown. I just posted a big reason for the decline in the Alief school district in another thread and much of that applies to Sharpstown as well. As someone who has lived in Houston for most of my life, it makes me so sad to see what has happened to the areas I used to live in and feel safe in. Back when we first moved to Houston (the second time, after I was married), we lived in an apartment off Bissonet and Hillcroft. It was really nice, the area was safe and I really enjoyed my neighbors. Now it is crime central! We then bought our first house off Boone Rd. and our daughter started going to the Alief schools. A couple of years later, we moved to a bigger, nicer house off Cook Rd. and it was a great neighborhood. Then all the apartments began to pop up everywhere and the schools began to over-crowd. We then moved further west out to Mission Bend and were there for 18 years until we realized that all our good friends and neighbors were leaving and there was an obvious lack of house pride in many who were moving in. We are in our last house (Westheimer area) now before retiring and leaving Houston in about two years and feel very sad when looking back over what has happened. I used to shop at Sharpstown Mall all the time in the early days as well as at what used to be Westwood Mall but now it is just too dangerous. Look elsewhere.

[beattyk15]

Wow, thank you all for your quick and candid responses - was originally looking due to a company located near there, but think I'll re-evaluate!
THANKS!