moving from Virginia to Columbia (section 8, real estate, apartment complex)

[urbanqueen]

I'm trying to find a good community for my two daughters. Frankly I'm shallow of saying I have a section 8 voucher. So many bad comments. I'm a nursing student and author. As i said I have a voucher, and trying to find good and safe community. Are the villiages really big, with a lot of town houses and apartments? I live in a wonderful community in Virginia. I dont know if I will find a good place. Can you list the nice places. Do they have single homes to rent for section 8, or are they all complexes? I will be finish school in a year, and want to be safe. I'm glad I do have the voucher. All people on section 8 arent on drugs and starting violence. I'm thankful for the help and I'm not taking advantage of the system

[HelenMarie]

I do not have any information about Section 8 (now called Housing Choice Voucher) in Columbia, but you may find information at Howard County Housing Commissions site http://www.howardcountymd.us/DH/dh_housingchoicevoucher.htm or contact them at hcvhousing@howardcountymd.gov or call at 410.313.6320.

I also want to commend you on raising two children and finishing school. I know that not all people receiving Section 8 are bad seeds. I am tired of reading the negative remarks made towards people with vouchers. At some point and time we will be on our feet and not need the program. I recently completed school and I have one child, so I understand perfectly the necessity of the voucher. I do not believe people understand it is difficult to take advantage of the program, with having to provide so much information an annual basis. I fully understand.

Also try GreatSchools - Public and Private School Ratings, Reviews and Parent Community for great information and ratings on schools.

Best of luck with everything! You mentioned that you’re an author, just curious to know what style of writing. I would be interested in reading your work.

Blessings to you and your girls.

[ceejamon]

Columbia is a nice town if you like suburbia, and Howard County has great schools. It's a bit spread out and you'll have to drive everywhere (public transit stinks in Howard County) but if that's not an issue for you it's a good move. I haven't explored the city completely, but I will say that I've yet to drive through an area that was in the least bit seedy. It all seems perfectly safe to me.

There are lots of apartment complexes and townhouses in Columbia. The mall is totally decent, although parking there on the weekend stinks. Here are some resources that I've posted on the DC forum that may help, edited down so it's more applicable to Columbia:

1) Craigslist is a great resource for apartments, but it's overwhelming if you don't know where you want to live. Start the process by determining the AREAS you like, then look for apartments in those areas. The search function and price limitations on the site are your friends, but only once you have your bearings. (In Columbia, Craigslist will be a resource for townhouses and apartments that are not part of a complex)

2) SpotCrime.com allows you to plot different types of crime on a map so you can see what areas are safe and which are shady. Compare to where you live now if available to get a good idea of it. I doubt crime will be an issue in Columbia, from what I've seen.

3) Once you've got some areas in mind, HotPads.com plots out apartments from various sources on a map. The Google Real Estate Search tool on Google Maps (click My Maps) is decent, too.

5) Use Google Street View to check out the neighborhood around a building to make sure it's a well-kept area. I'd pass on a nice building across the street from a boarded up one. Also, look at the parked cars. Clean, newer model cars tend to speak well for an area. You don't have to look for Lexus logos, but a trend of run-down beat-up cars may belong to residents that don't take care of their stuff and probably won't respect YOUR stuff. (Nothing to do with race or class-warfare. Just a fact of life. I'm lower-middle class, of a darker persuasion, and drive a Ford.)

6) ApartmentRatings.com helps you find buildings that LOOK nice and may have nice "model/demo apartments" but have serious management, pest, or other problems. See what former/current residents have said. It's not a site to find your apartment on, but rather it's a site to check on a building/complex that you might be interested in.

7) Look into what's near an address using Google Maps. It's nice to have a grocery store, dry cleaners, pharmacy, etc nearby.

Hope this helps, and good luck!

[oneofthethree]

www.apartmentratings.com

If you are interested in a complex go to that website to see what people say about it first. They have almost all complexes on the site. I lived in one in oakland mills and it wasn't safe. Wasn't much better than the one i lived in in the city. May look ok just driving through, but plenty of robberies, break-ins, assaults, and murder here or there (very low about like 1-2 per year). Think about it it makes perfect sense, if the same people from the hood of a city all live in an apartment complex obviously there aint much difference. Crime happens a lot in some columbia complexes, but there are a lot of nice ones.

But I agree section 8 doesn't mean a person is bad. But out of all of the good people who move to an apartment complex with section 8 a few of them are likely to have a drug addict or criminal relative living with them. But the key word is 'few'. Just like not 'everybody' in baltimore city is 'bad'. The majority (meaning well more than half, not 5% :-P) of the people i've associated and associate with from baltimore city are good people, actually probably nicer than most of the middle class people i know who are usually a lot more cold and snotty lol.