Madison areas to avoid (apartments, crime, homes)

[djdoggydog]

I am considering moving to Madison. What areas of the city should I avoid? How dangerous are they? Thank you.

[Megan1967]

If you do a search on the forum you will see tons of threads related to this topic.

[gmdm]

I'd say there's not any really "dangerous" areas in Madison. Like any city, some neighborhoods are a little rougher than others. But many of the traditionally higher-crime areas in Madison have been cleaned up drastically over the past couple years. These days, it almost seems to go house-by-house or apartment-by-apartment. For example, Allied Dr is often cited as Madison's "worst" neighborhood, but if you drive down that area today, you'll see a mix of newer, well-maintained apartments, single family homes, along side some lingering "slummier" buildings. (I've lived a block off Allied Dr for almost 4 years now, have a nice 2BR apartment, pay less than $800/mo rent, and have NEVER had a problem with crime, noise, never felt the least unsafe, etc.) That said, there's building across the street from me that are much lower quality.

Basically I'd say you need to go look at the specific apartments/homes in your price range, and see how each one compares. If money's tight and you know you will need to be looking in some of the "rougher" neighborhoods, you can absolutely find a decent place with cheap rent. But yes, you do need to filter out some of the slums. Only way to do that is to go look at the places in person, IMHO.