need info about HYATSSVILLE (Silver Spring, College Park: apartments, renters, crime)

[4bid]

Can somebody describe this town. What is good/bad/interesting and other tips.
Thanks

[Washingtonian]

It's dangerous! Don't let anyone convince you otherwise. You may want to look for other places to live.

[4bid]

What do you mean dangerous?

[pkoons]

There are 5 different zip codes in Hyattsville if you are looking at a Realtor website or on a map. Only 2 of them are "truly Hyattsville" as opposed to just postal designations. Here's the breakdown. For the most part I agree with Washingtonian about the safety of this area.

20781 - "Old" Hyattsville, some nice single family communities. Considered an "arts" community. Location of the county courthouse as well as a cool restaurant, Franklin's. Some parts are dangerous.

20782 - University Park is in this zip, which is a VERY nice place to live. Large brick colonials and filled with families and professionals, great elementary school also. BUT that is just one community which has no shopping so you will have to venture out into worse areas. I would live in University Park but nowhere else!

20783 - Adelphi. Large Hispanic population. The part that borders College Park has a lot of student renters and is somewhat safe, but the rest is not. Again, when you go out shopping you will see this.

20784 - New Carrollton. Not very safe or particularly attractive.

20785 - Landover. I used to go to Landover Mall and Langway's restaurant with my dad. I also used to go to elementary school around here. Also not very safe.

[Ex-Ithacan]

I use to work in Hyattsville (near PG Plaza Mall). While there are some pretty decent homes in certain pockets, the area has more sketchy areas than nice. The little strip of downtown (along rt. 1) has a couple eclectic shops, but for the most part it's (or at least was) dead. If you are thinking of moving to an inner ring suburb, I might suggest Takoma Park. It's in the same general area, and it too has some rough spots, but overall a much better vibe there.

[pkoons]

Takoma Park is a good idea. Try the Montgomery County side as opposed to the PG County or DC side as the city borders are a little iffy. The actual downtown Takoma Park area at the intersection of Carroll and Flower Aves. is very nice. However, I would only recommend Takoma Park if you are buying or renting a house because the apartments are concentrated away from the downtown area. If you are looking for an apartment try going a little further west to Silver Spring, or east to some of the nicer communities in College Park.

[Madelaine]

I went to school in Hyattsville for over 6 years. I also attend College down the street from it. My advice is don't move there. It is quickly falling apart, and the only thing it has going for it is the Restaurant/ Store Franklins. There are many homeless, and it is rednecky yet ghetto. You need to worry about protecting your family, and your house. It's right outside of the bad parts of DC, so I really dont need to explain that part. If you want to live in Maryland, go to the coast around Salisbury and Ocean City. it is beautiful and relaxing.

[vita4all]

Nothing is wrong with Hyattsville or those so-called "bad" parts of DC near it unless you're white, racist and terrified of blacks and Hispanics and have an underlying hostility toward them. This is what happened to Hyattsville. It was traditionally a blue-collar post World War II neighborhood outside of DC. In the 1980s, minorities bought up most of theses houses which had become run-down from whites who became too elderly and/or on fixed incomes to maintain them. The apartments in the area, all within 10 minutes of the University of Maryland-College Park, throughout the 1970s almost never rented to blacks, and I know this first-hand. They were so racist that they prefered to rent to Hispanics when they migrated to the area due to our military interventions and civil wars in Central America. This is why the neighboring Langley Park and Hyattsville are heavily populated with Hispanics. My old neighborhood, where I bought a house in 1987 and lived for 7 years, looks better now than then because the new neighbors (black and Hispanic) have fine carpentry and renovating skills. Many of these old houses now are just beautiful, and populated by people of color. PG Plaza is nice, unless of course you're prone to having panic-attacks when shopping around predominantly Hispanics and blacks, who behave no differently than white shoppers in Madelaine's preferred localities of Salisbury and Ocean City, which are nearly a 4 hour drive away from Hyattsville/CollegePark/DC/Silver Spring areas. White gays haven't seemed to have a problem in Hyattsville (my neighbor in the early 90s was one), no doubt because they generally don't act like offensive idiots when they're around people of color; respect is a two-way street. The impression I get of some of the people (in this forum) who steer others away from non-white neighborhoods is that they're the kind of whites who clutch their purses and run to their cars where they quickly lock their door and stare with hostility at ordinary young black and brown males dressed in casual attire, which is insulting and offensive to them. People like them have been inventing excuses to avoid social intergration and interaction with Native Americans, Africans, Asians, Mexicans, etc. for centuries, except to exploit them.

[Ex-Ithacan]

^ I'm not trying to get into an arguement, but I think you may be painting the replies with a rather broad brush. I lived for many years in District Heights and worked in Hyattsville. District Heights had a much larger percentage minority population than Hyattsville, but a significantly lower crime rate. I felt safe in DH, but not always in Hyattsville. These feelings may have been due to my greater familiarity with DH, but not because of any thoughts about minorities. I think the crime stats in Hyattsville may be linked to the greater numbers of transient folks in the area.
Sweeping gneralizations and assumptions about people's motivations can be an unwise thing to do sometimes.

[Washingtonian]

I'm sorry that you are offended by the comments people have made about Hyattsville. Why do you assume people posting here are White? I lived in DC and I lived in MD. I do not like Hyattsville overall. If someone is moving into the area, that is not where I would direct them. There may be some nice areas in Hyattsville but overall there are much better places they can find. I would tell them to live in some parts of DC before I would tell them to move to Hyattsville. I'm not White and I wouldn't move to Hyattsville.