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Old 03-07-2010, 08:15 AM
 
Location: Colorado
1,524 posts, read 2,848,408 times
Reputation: 2220

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Quote:
Originally Posted by bonnielisabeth View Post
All places have their "bad areas" -- in comparison with other areas of the city or county. This may mean there are just a few more property crimes in some areas, in other areas someone could get shot every night.

Let me get this straight--is this person asking if there are less safe areas of *Howard County* or if the neighborhoods could be featured on "The Wire"?

And these are some of the replies they get to their question?
The answer to the original post is that there are no places to avoid in Howard County. Anyone would rather live in a Mansion in Fulton than a condo in Harpers Choice, yes, but to say avoid the place? No, there are no places to avoid.
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Old 07-22-2010, 03:40 PM
 
6 posts, read 132,735 times
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In comparison to "nicer" places in Howard County, there are some places you want to avoid. Those places are Harpers Choice, Long Reach, Running Brook, and Oakland Mills. Even though there are nice homes in all of these areas, they also have the highest number of rental properties. Many of these properties are rented from people who were relocated from the City using section 8 and trust me they bring the City with them.

Should you be scared? Nope. But it will drive you crazy thinking about premium you pay to live in this County and have to deal with that crap. So yes, I would avoid some areas because it's simply not worth the price.
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Old 07-22-2010, 05:09 PM
 
Location: the future
2,559 posts, read 4,604,713 times
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Default boredatwork

Quote:
Originally Posted by krustooo View Post
In comparison to "nicer" places in Howard County, there are some places you want to avoid. Those places are Harpers Choice, Long Reach, Running Brook, and Oakland Mills. Even though there are nice homes in all of these areas, they also have the highest number of rental properties. Many of these properties are rented from people who were relocated from the City using section 8 and trust me they bring the City with them.

Should you be scared? Nope. But it will drive you crazy thinking about premium you pay to live in this County and have to deal with that crap. So yes, I would avoid some areas because it's simply not worth the price.


They're talking about safety and the answer is still no there are no places to avoid unless you're a certified coward and the average person is not that...the only thing to avoid in Columbia is the Howard Co. police ....they are overly aggressive and react to anything usual or unusual going on
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Old 07-22-2010, 11:57 PM
 
332 posts, read 1,274,921 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by krustooo View Post
In comparison to "nicer" places in Howard County, there are some places you want to avoid. Those places are Harpers Choice, Long Reach, Running Brook, and Oakland Mills. Even though there are nice homes in all of these areas, they also have the highest number of rental properties. Many of these properties are rented from people who were relocated from the City using section 8 and trust me they bring the City with them.

Should you be scared? Nope. But it will drive you crazy thinking about premium you pay to live in this County and have to deal with that crap. So yes, I would avoid some areas because it's simply not worth the price.
I'm curious about where you are getting your data that Harper's Choice, Long Reach, Running Brook - a neighborhood within Wilde Lake, and Oakland Mills as having the most amount of rental properties. In 2000, 19% of renter occupied properties was in Hickory Ridge, 16% in Long Reach, 13% King's Contrivance, 11% Oakland Mills and Dorsey Search, 10% Harper's Choice. Long Reach has ~19% of the housing so it actually has fewer rental units compared to its overall units. Hickory Ridge has 16% of the housing and 19% or the renter occupied properties. So it actually has more renters than owner occupied. As a proportion of renters to total housing Hickory Ridge has the highest percentage followed by Oakland Mills, Dorsey Search, Harper's Choice, Town Center and so on.

I do not have any information on source for low income housing by village.
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Old 07-23-2010, 12:02 AM
 
5 posts, read 37,658 times
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ok honestly for all the people that tell you about the bad parts in columbia. its really only because Columbia was designed to be a culturally and economically diverse place. i have fiends form every economic status. from section 8 and within a mile,million dollar homes. I mean it is true many of the people do try to bring the city with them, but no one takes them seriously. because every type of person is in columbia. and going through the hoco school system helps you accept that. plus the places to avoid are really just bad because of maybe 1 or 2 incidents that have ever happened there.
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Old 07-23-2010, 08:52 AM
 
6 posts, read 132,735 times
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You're right King's Contrivance can be thrown into the places to avoid but I don't believe there to be a large section 8 community there. Hickory Ridge did have a large single family rental community across from Atholton High School but from my understanding those units have been for sale so those numbers are definitely down. There is another community that's considered to be part of the Hickory Ridge subdivision called Clary's Forest, but that's right next to Harpers Choice and they are part of the Wilde Lake School District. Most of the places I've mentioned are part of a school system I would avoid which is Oakland Mills, Long reach and Wilde Lake. As I have said there are nice and very expensive homes in each of these areas but to have to share the community with trash is maddening.

I used to own a Clary's Forest Condo and when all of the investors jumped in at the top of the market and couldn't sell them or rent them, the section 8's would move in. If you weren't pissed off when they blast their music in the middle of night, bring their drama out in the courtyard, and knock on your door to borrow EVERYTHING, then you're either ignorant or one of them.
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Old 07-23-2010, 12:04 PM
 
332 posts, read 1,274,921 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by krustooo View Post
You're right King's Contrivance can be thrown into the places to avoid but I don't believe there to be a large section 8 community there. Hickory Ridge did have a large single family rental community across from Atholton High School but from my understanding those units have been for sale so those numbers are definitely down. There is another community that's considered to be part of the Hickory Ridge subdivision called Clary's Forest, but that's right next to Harpers Choice and they are part of the Wilde Lake School District. Most of the places I've mentioned are part of a school system I would avoid which is Oakland Mills, Long reach and Wilde Lake. As I have said there are nice and very expensive homes in each of these areas but to have to share the community with trash is maddening.

I used to own a Clary's Forest Condo and when all of the investors jumped in at the top of the market and couldn't sell them or rent them, the section 8's would move in. If you weren't pissed off when they blast their music in the middle of night, bring their drama out in the courtyard, and knock on your door to borrow EVERYTHING, then you're either ignorant or one of them.
Since this post was about Howard County then you should mention sections of Elkridge, Ellicott City, Laurel, Jessup, in the post as well. People seem to only concentrate on Columbia, I will give everyone the benefit of the doubt, that they mention Columbia because of its size.

If you have apartments then you have section 8 housing. Basically you can not discriminate against someone with a voucher. Essentially you have section 8 spread throughout the majority of the more populated areas of Howard County. In Columbia because of the Village Center concept, places closer to the village center usually have the majority of the apts, hence certain schools will have higher concentration of section 8 residents. This can translate into higher number of FARM students especially since boundary lines are artificially drawn - not permanent or linked to a village. Some village centers are close together so you could have a school with drawn from 2 areas with higher concentrations of apt. dwellers.

As far as the facts, the highest number of FARM students attend Veterans - they make up 19% of the population, which is lower than some of the Columbia schools (such as Running Brook & Bryant Woods with 39% FARMs school size is 434, and 353 respectively) but because of the size of Veterans they have the largest amount of FARMs (177 or so students) at this level of education. Boundaries lines change periodically, and no doubt this one will change in the future. A lot of these students came from St. John's Lane school which is much smaller than Veterans and the FARM % was ~ 25% if my memory is correct. I believe that once the FARM % gets over a certain size (25 or 30%) the school gets extra money for the Feds to provide additional programs for these kids and once it gets over 40%, I believe you get extra funds to be used school wide. So in some ways, these schools may be less stretched than other schools. Of course, they may or may not have more discipline issues, to my knowledge school discipline really isn't published - except for expulsion rates. Personally, I more interested in real crime and not the kid skipping class and playing practical jokes. I would love to know real incidents, they would give you a glimpse into safety and drugs within schools, now we all guess but sometimes are hunches are wrong.

At the High School Level,

SAT
-Wilde Lake (19.8% FARMS) 1621 with 72% students taking and (60.5 + 18.1) 78.6 going to college.
-Howard (5.7% FARMS) 1579 with 77% taking and (60.3 & 19.9) 79.2 going to college
-Reservior (14% FARMS) 1553 with 76% students taking (60.3&19.9) 80.2 % going to college

Education is the same thoroughout Howard County, I would not avoid Veterans, St. John's lanes or any particular school in Columbia based off of FARM data, especially at the elementary school level. At the high school level most of these schools are ranked fairly highly by multiple sources, send the majority of the students to 4 year colleges. There are bad students everywhere and all though the schools are integrated by race, farms, bad and good students, etc. our class rooms often are not, which is one of the reason we wind up with different results and experiences for children. And trust me, I'm not suggesting putting disruptive students into every class so that they can disruptive the kids trying to learn. I do think that we can connect with most students and have them want and demand a better education.
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Old 07-23-2010, 03:07 PM
 
Location: Baltimore
107 posts, read 582,486 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by harper1116 View Post
x3...the so called "bad areas" in Columbia are NOTHING like the areas in other counties like PG or Baltimore County. Maybe a little violence once n a blue moon, but I surely would not consider areas "bad". Its Columbia!..maybe try going down towards laure/beltsville or glen burnie/severn and then see if you would consider Columbia's "bad areas".
I have to disagree with that statement. I looked into apartments in Columbia and while I was driving around I ended up in some really bad places in town. I was really looking forward to moving into a really nice aparment there but the neighborhood stopped me cold turkey....especially after reading crime reports.com for that neighborhood. And I'm originally from Baltimore but you still wouldn't catch me there at night. Now granted, the areas around the mall look really nice and safe but some other parts of Columbia aren't that nice at all. I like Columbia but I really like Ellicott City a lot more...just because it's a little more quieter and quaint but still close to great shopping and restaurants.
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Old 07-23-2010, 11:40 PM
 
332 posts, read 1,274,921 times
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Which areas did you look at? I follow the crime reports on a routine basis (mainly because people complained about Columbia and I really wanted to see if it was true or not) and I have yet to see any neighborhood in Columbia or Howard County compare to Baltimore. Spotcrime will give you crime around a certain address.

The apts., condos and townhomes near town center are nice but when you look up the stats, more crime happens near the mall and village centers than any place else. I think this is true for shopping on route 40, 175 corridor as well. Criminals figure out where the people are, where they are most vulnerable and they find them. It seems like a lot of areas and especially route 40 gets people coming in from other areas and committing crime, do not get me wrong I see criminals in Howard County as well, mainly from EC, Columbia, Elkridge and Laurel. My point is there is section 8 every where there are apartments, you get break-ins and vehicle thefts everywhere. The scarest crimes are the home evasions which are very very rare and the only one I remember this year was in Laurel and the gun robberies (usually on paths or shopping areas). To me these are unacceptable anywhere - in Baltimore or Howard County. Most of the other crime is mainly annoying - steal cars, etc. Last year, they caught a car theft ring that must have been targeting this area, they were from out of state.

I have no problem with EC or any other place in Howard County, I'm pretty close to EC and Clarksville but the idea that if I cross the street (not even a highway) that I'm so much better off from a safety perspective is somewhat absurd. Sometimes it is really hard to know when you have walked or driven in and out of EC, Elkridge and Columbia. These towns lead into each other, share the same schools, police and etc.

It is also very difficult to know which village, town, community is the safest because data is not broken out the same. Do you use the town/village population to calculate the crime rate. If you do then I would guess that Town Center would when because of the smaller populations that live there although a ton of people go there for events and the mall. So the chances of something happening to you while you are there is very remote. Plus the crime data is not broken out by neighborhood/village or town although it is much closer now than it was last year. I believe parts of Columbia and EC data is rolled up together. Also areas like Savage, etc may get rolled into the numbers. To me, it does not seem to be as clean and easy to calculate crimes for the area.

Personally, only the main street area in EC is quaint, after that I think it looks similiar to the rest of the towns. Actually, I'm not a big fan of the route 40 area either but there are some nice neighborhoods in that area and some affordable neighborhoods as well. I really have not seen too many noisy and heavy traffic single family neighborhoods, I think it is because of the circles and cul de sacs, so people can not cut thru neighborhoods to get to there destinations.
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Old 07-26-2010, 07:07 PM
 
Location: the future
2,559 posts, read 4,604,713 times
Reputation: 1572
Default boredatworl

Quote:
Originally Posted by MDbound2 View Post
I have to disagree with that statement. I looked into apartments in Columbia and while I was driving around I ended up in some really bad places in town. I was really looking forward to moving into a really nice aparment there but the neighborhood stopped me cold turkey....especially after reading crime reports.com for that neighborhood. And I'm originally from Baltimore but you still wouldn't catch me there at night. Now granted, the areas around the mall look really nice and safe but some other parts of Columbia aren't that nice at all. I like Columbia but I really like Ellicott City a lot more...just because it's a little more quieter and quaint but still close to great shopping and restaurants.


Very unusual personal experience "bad part of town" LMAO...really and your from BMore?
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