stop denegrating PG county! (Baltimore, Fort Washington: car insurance, zip codes, statistics)

[liliblu]

There are places to live in Temple Hills and Oxon Hill that are quiet and friendly.

[fishfister]

Originally Posted by SectumSempra

As someone who grew up in PG County, I am pretty surprised by a lot of what I see here. People here are just crapping on the county like it's the worst place in the world. Granted, I grew up in Fort Washington (where according to a good amount of people I know in the area, is where all the stuck up black people live), I've have been around any and all kinds of people in PG County. There is good and bad. It is also what you make of it.

1. Generally the "bad areas" of PG County are the areas inside 495 and closer to the DC line.... which has already been mentioned. My friend likes to keep the rule of thumb that anything with the word "Hills" or "Heights" in it should be deemed as the hood. And all that is mainly in the southern portion of PG that border SE DC... Oxon Hill, Temple Hills, District Heights, Capitol Heights, etc. I actually haven't been in those areas in awhile, so I'm not sure if they are improving or not. The areas bordering NE DC are not as bad... Cheverly is actually a very decent and quiet area. Hyattsville is defintely on the come-up. I live in New Carrollton and it is VERY quiet where i live. I was like when people told me it was a rough area. I think they were just goign by the fact that Riverdale (the next town over) is known but being the hood.

Of course most areas outside the Beltway are far more suburban, spread out, and quiet. Not much to ay about that. But whoever said things get cheaper as you get further from DC was terribly wrong. lol... Rent in Bowie, Upper Marlboro, Lanham, Glen Dale, Largo, etc is much higher than the areas closer to DC.

2. The public school system... I graduated from a PG high school in the late 90s. I was #4 in the class and got a full scholarship to one of the top engineering schools in the country. I got a 1300 SAT score. basically, its all in what you make it. The school system might stink (in your opinion) but it's up to you (as a parent) to make the difference and complete the circle of proper education for your child. Teachers and the school board can't do EVERYTHING. The teachers I had were all about giving their all to the students, but when the students don't make the effort to learn, who's fault is it? Why aren't the parents insitling in their child the value of education? Granted, I found it pretty bad that my high school gave out awards to students who scored over 1000 on their SATs, but definitely do NOT blame that on the school system.


On the other hand, we Blacks are our own worst enemy, but that's kind of a different topic. I'll expound on it if anyoen wants me to. lol

You hit on several relevant points. The fact that people are "crapping" on the county comes back around to your points concerning the schools. Most people send their kids to school and don't really think about it. The kids in my neighborhood are running around doing other than the homework the school systems pile on kids these days.
I heard from the mouth of my neighbor's kid that it wasn't COOL to get good grades and she was teased as "being white" when she did so. She left home at 16 and moved in with her older friend because she didn't like the discipline her uncle(guardian) imposed on her concerning school and house chores. She moved here from San Diego and entered Crossland HS as a freshman two and a half years ago and fell to the curb as a statistic of the county. I asked her not to when I first met her and she remembers it to this day.

Those with no post HS education are less likely to guide their offspring to that pursuit. Race plays no part in that as I have seen many white parents tell their brats to get a job and forget college - even when attending classes. Some drop out of HS to get jobs and go unskilled for life as that suits mom and dad.

Please expound...

[doubbltunman]

Originally Posted by DC's Finest

Ebo,

Your post is stupid! Everything you described happens in Montgomery, Fairfax and Howard Counties. Do you think motorcyclist slow down once they leave the PG County side of the beltway? Do you think teens turn their music down or pull their pants up in VA. This happens in every major metro area of the country.

Absolutely I have seen those "pocket rockets" (fast motorcycles)take the last exit in P.G. county off of RT.50 to bowie before they were to cross into A.A. county. One night going back to A.A. co. from a friends home who still lives in P.G., a pack of about 20 of those bikes going 100+ MPH in the H.O.V. lane passed us like we were standing still. I told my wife watch and they'll never cross into A.A., sure enough they took the last bowie exit off of 50. My wife asked "how did you know"-I said "A.A. county police aint playing that, one way or another they'd be stopped and they know it".

[fishfister]

Originally Posted by doubbltunman

Absolutely I have seen those "pocket rockets" (fast motorcycles)

Crotch Rockets

[doubbltunman]

Well anyways I'm new here-and I'll give my 2 cents worth. I grew up in p.g. from '71 until '91. Up until 1984-85 the county was a good place to live. The county has since declined horribly. When I graduated in 1986 the SAT scores were over 1100 avg. and today they are at a sorry 830. Crime in all areas has jumped nearly 60% across the board from 1984-2004, with murders over 250% increase over the same time. And lets not even talk about the crack epidemic that was in full swing around '85 to the present. And I now hear getting heroin is as easy to get as in Baltimore. Before I left my family was the victim of 2 crimes and enough was enough-I packed up and got out. I have been living now in beautiful Anne Arundel Co. for the past 17 years, and have not once experienced a crime towards me or my family. But for a few of my friends who have remained, they call me numerous times with the "you wouldn't believe whats going on now"! If you turn the local news on basically it's the P.G. county hour! For those of you who say P.G. is a good place, you are in denial. I always tell anyone who doesn't know about Md. to stay away from P.G. county. Period This is not a good place to raise your kids at all, unless you want them to turn into thugs.


Don't take my word for it-Go to P.G. county police.com crime statistics and see for yourself.

[JJupi91897]

Originally Posted by RoadTripGurl

To howsitgoingdude3

What does being lower or middle class have to do with anything? PG is just a bad County, no matter what's going on in the other counties I'd prefer them over PG anyday. I can deal with minor annoyances, not life threatening. And your comment about "assuming you actually care about their education" Private school is expensive, and unless you live with 3 or 4 roommates it's hard to afford. I care baout my son's education but he goes to a public school. The quality of education you seem to refer to can only be found in China.

howsitgoingdude3: I hear your frustrations, but how would you suggest solving the problems you have with PGC? You sound as if you have given up and that is not the answer. Suppose Dr. MLK had just given up during the Civil Rights era, AA would not have the opportunities that they have today. It is my understanding Dr. King could have easily moved on and live well during his days. Never give up on potential.

[LoveMiiorHateMii]

Originally Posted by doubbltunman

Well anyways I'm new here-and I'll give my 2 cents worth. I grew up in p.g. from '71 until '91. Up until 1984-85 the county was a good place to live. The county has since declined horribly. When I graduated in 1986 the SAT scores were over 1100 avg. and today they are at a sorry 830. Crime in all areas has jumped nearly 60% across the board from 1984-2004, with murders over 250% increase over the same time. And lets not even talk about the crack epidemic that was in full swing around '85 to the present. And I now hear getting heroin is as easy to get as in Baltimore. Before I left my family was the victim of 2 crimes and enough was enough-I packed up and got out. I have been living now in beautiful Anne Arundel Co. for the past 17 years, and have not once experienced a crime towards me or my family. But for a few of my friends who have remained, they call me numerous times with the "you wouldn't believe whats going on now"! If you turn the local news on basically it's the P.G. county hour! For those of you who say P.G. is a good place, you are in denial. I always tell anyone who doesn't know about Md. to stay away from P.G. county. Period This is not a good place to raise your kids at all, unless you want them to turn into thugs.


Don't take my word for it-Go to P.G. county police.com crime statistics and see for yourself.

I feel bad for what happened to your family and all but what happened to you does not happen to everyone else in the county.

I have lived here all my life and no crime against me or my family has ever taken place and I am not in denial. I know the truth about were I live and i am proud to live here.

[burnt]

Originally Posted by truthhurts

Hey Burnt I tend to echo your ending conclusion about raising a family in PGC, but like Iscalder, Bob, and a few others you are not being forthright or remotely close to honest with yourself about the county. I think it is perfectly fair to speak of the problems in PGC as long as their accurate and factual. You have done remotely little of that in your trashing of the county. I'm just trying to be fair, so since i took offense to Iscalders over emphasis this false belief of "wealth" i'll kindly take offense to your over emphasis on poverty. You cannot be on distinctly far ends and expect to have a decent and fair debate about this county.

1. If you moved from California i'm not totally why you were looking at the Slums in PGC as a place to live. Those slums boarder the projects in South Easter DC, which at one point was America's crime capital. I could go to the Slums in Alexandria, VA or the Slums in Gaithersburg, MD and find equally deplorable places. My question is who the hell goes looking for a house in the projects?

2.College Park in my opinion is not semi ok nor is Adelphi. The only good thing to come out of Adelphi was Surgy Brin (Founder of Google and Eleanor Roosevelt High Graduate). Frankly they're both highly immigrant blue collar areas, which are lower middle class areas with some scattering of poor individuals here and there. There is nothing impressive about any of those areas near PGC side of the Moco side. Are those areas significantly dangerous based on police reports and crime statistics no. Str they great areas for a blue collar family of 4 or a young white collar family starting out yes. However, you have the means those would not remotely be choices i would make.

3. Well, depending on what you're looking at in terms of schools. Elementary schools in PGC more "affluent" areas are on par with their Moco and Fairfax counterparts and in some cases better. However, if you're looking for schools in predomintely blue collar areas in PGC you're probably not going to get the same level of excellence. Hyattsville, Beltsville, parts of Laurel, Adelphi, College Park, and some small parts of Bowie are extremely blue collar areas. While the elementary schools in these areas are still on par with blue collar areas in Moco and other counties they are not on par with the more "affluent" elementary schools in the county.

Your only valid argumet in terms of schooling in PGC is once kids enter middle and high school the school system seems to go straight to the hell hole very fast. Not sure why that is, but i have my suspicions on the reason why.

4. Look again there are more than 3077 counties in this country County (United States - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia). Can you do basic elementary math 250/3077 places PGC in the top 8% of all counties in this country, so by all measures it is a solidly middle class county and way more affluent than 2,827 other counties. Another way you could say this is that PGC is in the 92% percentile of wealthy counties in the US. Which in laymans terms means that PGC is wealtheir than 92% of the counties in America. Again if you do not like blacks just say it do not try to hide behind falsified statistics. The county is perfectly right statistically if it wants to call its self the "wealthiest majority black county." It simple means that blacks are 62% of the pop whites are 26% and others are % of the pop. In fact more honesty in these forms behind intentions would be welcomed. Anyway i digress.

Moco for a long time has been a majority middle and upper middle class county hence why it is in the top 1% of all counties in the US. Another way to say this would be Moco is in the top 99% percentile of all wealthy counties in the US. In other words Moco is wealthier than 99% of all counties in the US. Howard is now emerging as the in "county" for wealthy outside of baltimore. Ann Arundel up until probably 3 or 4 years ago was behind PGC in terms of wealth. PGC up until a few years ago was in the top 100 counties. The county has gone down rapidly and Ann Arundel success is partly attributed to the "upper class" black/white flight families moving out of PGC and into Ann Arundel over the past 4-5 years.

5. Look not even debatable. Incomes that are paid are reflected in the cost of living. You are right a $40,000 dollar salary in bum **** no where Kansas is probably well to do. Whereas a $40,000 dollars salary in DC Metro with a family will have you living in a not so nice area. While you have an argument it is really meaningless across the board in terms of buying power. $40,000 dollars in bum**** Kansas does not increase your buying power, but $100,000 dollar salary in DC Metro does. I'm not going to go into the economics behind what i said. What the hell I will. The only people making that sort of income in bum**** no where areas are working in small/mid size cities. Bum**** no where area people make less than 12,000 a year, because there's only bum**** jobs available. In other rewards the cost of living in the DC metro is reflective of the high skilled jobs that are available etc....I agree the whole area especially where people are willing to pay a prem to live for better schools etc is over priced etc and you do not get much for what you're spending etc

6. Ask you friend where 90-95% of all homicides take place in the county. Ask her if it is all done within a half square mile of the DC boarder line. Then ask here if the neighborhoods outside the beltway have a homicide problem. When you do report back to the board.

All i'm asking is that if do not like black people come flat out and say it. I would be prefectly fine with someone coming on the board and saying "I'm a racist and I hate black people therefore i'm not going to fairly debate you on this forum. I'd prefer to trash the forum to help make me feel comfortable being a racist. Helps me to sleep at night etc." Let's not hide behind our own bs stats to prove a point that does not exist. Hell, i do not like people with one foot, but i'm not going to go out my way to screw up statistics to make me feel better about not liking them.

To the extent that we can discuss this county fairly let's try not to be all on "militant" sides of the isle. You are just no different than Iscalder or Bob. Come on dude add to the conversation factually. As opposed to going out and trying to defend the whole county you all would serve yourselves better by starting a forum on how we reduce crime inside of the beltway. That would be much more inshightfull to outsiders trying to figure out this county. Racist want to gross generalize the entire county and not play fair etc. I said i personally would not live in the county because of the "militant" blacks. Does not mean all blacks in the county are "militant" but there's a very strong fraction and whether they're the majority opinion they seem to be the "vocal" majority. Vocal refers to the one's that speak out the loudest in the county. I just do not like one sided debates and a one party system etc.

Gosh, I make a post, and I get handed the big racist card! It seems someone likes to play the victim.

I'm not sure if you've ever taken an economics course or studied social economic policy, but I'm guessing you haven't. Clearly you need to brush up on cost of living adjustment, because in "bum****" Kansas, or at least the areas where I lived growing up, $40,000 has a lot more buying power than twice that in this area. Where in PGC can one buy a 3000sqft home in a safe neighborhood on an $80K/yr. salary? It's possible on half that in Kansas, as such a house can be had for $150,000 or even less, depending on the city. As it turns out, even in less-safe areas of PGC, such a thing costs well over twice that.

I find it amazing that you've made your outrageous claims about income without actually studying any demographics or even simple median income statistics. It'd be great if you did, because then we could have that factual discussion you've been wanting. What gives you the impression that there are all these people in the flyover states making $12,000/year? That's simply not realistic. Jobs are plentiful in those states, so I don't understand your statement about how these mythical people take those low-paying jobs because they are the only ones that are available. Perhaps we should get into the statistics, though. Housing is only one facet of the cost of living, so I suppose we should just go with the cost of living adjustment, although I hope you don't mind if we step the math level up to middle school. In Sedgwick County, KS, the COL adjustment is 74.61. In PGC, it's 118. That means a person would have to earn 158% the salary in PGC as in SC to afford the same living. If looking at median household income, PGC was at $55,256 in the most recent census. SC was at $42,485. In case you need me to do the math for you, PGC's MHI is therefore only 130% over that of SC's MHI, meaning that the income-to-COL ratio is much lower in PGC than in SC. That makes PGC poorer in terms of affluence than a bum**** county in bum**** Kansas--to be exact, it is 82.27% as affluent, rounded to the second decimal.

And as for why I was searching in the so-called projects, I was a first-time buyer, and believe it or not, even though the cost of housing is a lot higher in Monterey than it is the DC area, the military is still not a well-paid field, so it's not like I was in the market for a nice spread in Ellicott City. Sure, I lived in a Monterey home that would have gone for well over a million dollars, but that home was about 1100sqft and was demolished for new construction shortly after I left, and I definitely didn't own it or even have to pay a high rent for it.

And yes, I can do elementary math, but once again, being in the top 8% of counties in "affluence" is meaningless when that buyin power is largely eroded by cost of living, and even so, the nebulous term of a "black" or "African-American" county has still not been provided. Would anyone care to offer a link or anything to a list that actually states that PGC is the wealthiest of such counties? Surely that list would provide a definition with distinct criteria against which we could weigh the demographics and economics. Until then, it sounds once again like an unfounded claim people in the area like to parrot, yet have no documentation to support said statement. Since you've suggested that we argue factually, and I'm the one out of the two of us who has actually posted links to governmentally produced demographic information, I do believe it is your turn. I sure hope you're going to link to something other than the Ebony article that first reported how affluent PGC is. It's apparent the author didn't bother with actual numbers, since he not only does not reference his sources to support his claim that PGC is the wealthiest AA county, but also makes the false claim that PGC is in the top 2% of counties in income. Clearly he started a domino effect of hearsay.

While we're at it, since I have indeed shown that I can do elementary math (which I learned in bum**** Kansas), you might at some point try to show off some of your stellar spelling skills. Surely you have them, having ostensibly experienced the solid public schools of PGC. Color me unimpressed. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to get back to work here in College Park, which is right on the DC "boarder."

[burnt]

Originally Posted by emsgoof

Well, yes, your posts are horrible. They're hard to understand, and they try to argue non-relevant facts. What does a suicide rate have to do with committing crimes against other people? Why do you keep going on about suicides? What is the obsession with it?
Please, before hitting "Post Reply", look over your message, and look for the red underlined words... They're normally spelled wrong.

I agree. I have no idea how I was lumped in with Iscalder. (S)he really doesn't even seem to bother with reason or even cohesion of thought.

[burnt]

Originally Posted by DC's Finest

I hate to beat a dead horse but I blame the PG County government for some of the counties current issues. PG needs to decide if it wants to be an urban county, suburban county or rural enclave. Some of the county's main highways and roads don't even have lighting. And these are areas that are in close proximity to DC. They are too quick to jump into bed with these home builders. PG needs a moratorium on new housing developments until they can come up with a plan that includes more retail, condos, transportation options to go with it.

Look at Montgomery County and Arlington as an example. Bethesda and Silver Spring have grown up because of the smart planning around the metro. These are walkable areas that offer dining, shopping and nightlife. Same thing goes for Arlington. National Harbor is a step in the right direction.

Agreed on the Nat'l Harbor. I really hope that project is a boon to PGC. This county has a lot of room to improve, and I think projects like that could go a long way toward capitalizing on the county's potential. Why is PGC any worse than NVA or the better parts of Montgomery County? It appears to be largely mismanagement by the county government over the past decades. Here's hoping for the best. I'll bash where it's due, but that doesn't mean I'm not hoping for a reversal of course.