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My boyfriend and I will be relocating to MPLS in 2 weeks for a job opportunity. We visited this weekend to look at places and I have a few questions that will maybe help us decide on a housing situation, because we can't seem to agree!
We are late twenties to mid-thirties professionals. I will be working accounts in the greater Minneapolis area (Woodbury, Eagan, Apple Valley, Richfield, Coon Rapids and Maple Grove), working from home when I need to do office work, flying out of MSP a few times a month.
We are looking for single family homes with basements for cat boxes. Prefer a quiet area where our outdoor cat will be safe when he is out. Close enough to walk to fun things to do, a coffee shop, restaurants, etc., but quiet enough that we can sleep without interruption; we are not partiers.
Boyfriend seems to be more concerned about the house itself, where I tend to be more focused on location. He has fallen in love with a property on Vincent Ave N & 40th Ave N., but I'm being told that all of North MPLS is to be avoided. Due to this, I'm on the fence about living there, but I need to know more in order to make a decision.
In visiting the area, neither of us felt unsafe or uncomfortable. It didn't look run down or scary to either of us. Looking at the crime map, it looks OK. Can anyone tell me more about the area and why it has such a bad reputation?
Thanks in advance, I'm super pumped to be moving to the area, I've loved it ever since I first visited a few years ago!
The area of North Minneapolis you're looking at is the Victory neighborhood, I do believe. If that's the case, it's considered a fairly nice place and you're only a couple of blocks of Victory Memorial Drive, which has a lot of nice home surrounding it. I doubt you'd have too many issues in that area. I know a few people on this board are more intimately familiar with North Minneapolis, so maybe they'll chime in, but my initial guess is it's not a bad location, especially if you like the house.
My boyfriend and I will be relocating to MPLS in 2 weeks for a job opportunity. We visited this weekend to look at places and I have a few questions that will maybe help us decide on a housing situation, because we can't seem to agree!
We are late twenties to mid-thirties professionals. I will be working accounts in the greater Minneapolis area (Woodbury, Eagan, Apple Valley, Richfield, Coon Rapids and Maple Grove), working from home when I need to do office work, flying out of MSP a few times a month.
We are looking for single family homes with basements for cat boxes. Prefer a quiet area where our outdoor cat will be safe when he is out. Close enough to walk to fun things to do, a coffee shop, restaurants, etc., but quiet enough that we can sleep without interruption; we are not partiers.
Boyfriend seems to be more concerned about the house itself, where I tend to be more focused on location. He has fallen in love with a property on Vincent Ave N & 40th Ave N., but I'm being told that all of North MPLS is to be avoided. Due to this, I'm on the fence about living there, but I need to know more in order to make a decision.
In visiting the area, neither of us felt unsafe or uncomfortable. It didn't look run down or scary to either of us. Looking at the crime map, it looks OK. Can anyone tell me more about the area and why it has such a bad reputation?
Thanks in advance, I'm super pumped to be moving to the area, I've loved it ever since I first visited a few years ago!
I used to live in that part of North Minneapolis for several decades. It is called the Victory neighborhood, close to the Camden neighborhood. I haven't spent a lot of time in that part of time in almost two decades. The part of north Minneapolis that has a bad reputation is about two miles south of that area and also to the south and east a couple miles. The Victory area really isn't that dangerous compared to the areas of North Minneapolis to the south. However, over the past ten years there is are occasional crimes that make the TV news as far north as 30th or 40th Avenue. The northwest corner of North Minneapolis is much more like Robbinsdale (which is a pretty quite area), than what people think of when you mention North Minneapolis.
The bad areas are mainly about 2 - 4 miles away, mainly to the south. A distance of 2 - 4 miles in the City of Minneapolis makes a huge difference. In the suburban areas, the same 2 - 4 miles doesn't make much of a difference.
I don't know if that helps. I've lived in the Twin Cities for more than 50 years, both in the Victory area and in the suburbs east of St Paul.
There are a few N Mpls residents here that will likely chime in, but I echo Xandrex in saying the Victory neighborhood of N Mpls is considered by most to be the "good neighborhood" in N Mpls. I've got friends who live there & I looked at the area myself at one time. I decide if I lived there I would never use Penn Ave (main thoroughfare that is very run down) to get in & out of the neighborhood & instead would use Victory Memorial Pkwy (like my friends in the area do) & If I wanted to go shopping/dine out/drinks. etc I'd probably head West to the suburbs of Golden Valley, Plymouth & maybe Robbinsdale. The 44th & Penn intersection is starting to show some life with Victory 44, the coffee shop, the diner & you're close to Downtown. If you like the house, go for it, but you will constantly be explaining to people that YES you live in N Mpls, but that you live in the Victory neighborhood since most will gasp when they hear N Mpls.
Agree with the others. Victory does not have a bad reputation, but there are those who have never set foot (or even car!) into ANY part of North Minneapolis, so they see the crime stories on the news and assume that anything that is geographically in the northern part of the city must be "bad."
If you do a search for Victory on this forum you'll find a lot of very detailed, useful posts.
If you make the move, consider getting involved in the neighborhood organization -- I don't have experience with their organization specifically, but Minneapolis is REALLY into neighborhood organizing (every neighborhood has a formal organization), and it's an excellent way to meet your neighbors while getting to know your new community.
I would love to live in Victory personally, but I don't love its prospects moving forward into the future. Crime seems to be spreading well outside that "hot pocket" on the Northside and moving well into the suburbs....so I see little reason to think that Victory will somehow go unscathed. I see news reports all of the time about homicides and such along 38th, 39th, 40th, and 42nd Aves, so even though this is a good mile or so West of those localles it's still "close enough" to be a bit alarmed.
However, that being said I live within a stone's throw of the East Side of Cleveland (not THE East Cleveland, but the East Side nonetheless). I am probably within a mile of some pretty rough areas myself and I KNOW I was within a mile of some very rough areas before we moved to our new apartment, and we never had crime issues whatsoever. So maybe it doesn't matter about the proximity as long as where YOU live is safe and well-kept?
I lived in the Victory neighborhood from the mid 1950s to the 1990s. I used to be a police scanner hobbyist back then. You'd get a good idea of what parts of North Minneapolis had a lot of crime and which areas didn't. The Victory area was pretty free of crime during those years. During those decades, people thought crime would move up from the south, but it didn't. Whenever you told people that you lived in North Minneapolis, they always assumed it was a dangerous part of town, which it wasn't because it was the Victory neighborhood. The crime problem was mainly 2 - 3 miles south. One day when I was listening to the police scanner there was a call about a guy with a 2x4 chasing another guy down the street, about 2 miles south of the Victory area. A few seconds later, the scanner stopped on a police channel for Minnetonka. There was a police call for a neighbor intentionally blowing their grass clippings into the street. That was the contrast between that part of North Minneapolis, and Minnetonka back then. Minnetonka is generally considered to be an affluent area.
I moved to the east St Paul area in the late 1990s not because of any crime increases. I think crime has increased some since the 1990s. Once and awhile there are stories about crimes as far north as 40th Avenue, or even the Victory parkway, those stories are pretty rare, but have increased from the 1990s.
I've lived in Homewood, an enclave within the Willard-Hay neighborhood of north Minneapolis, for nearly five years. (12xx Russell Ave N.) I was 35 when I moved into the city from the suburbs. I have friends all over the northside, all of whom I've met just since moving here. (More on that later.)
Let's be very clear here -- north Minneapolis is a big place. Nine square miles. Regardless of what earlier posters have said, today there is no specific area that is dangerous to live in. No one area is predominantly run-down, either. While Victory, Old Highland, Homewood, and other areas adjacent to the Parkway are the "name brands" of top-shelf northside neighborhoods, there are fantastic and safe areas throughout. Aside from certain parts of West Broadway, troubled areas come and go quickly enough that I won't bother to call out any of them. Problems come and go as bad renters (or troublemaking individuals who are "crashing" at someone's home) come and go.
North Minneapolis has lived out more than 45 years of a bad reputation -- a reputation that began with "white flight" in the 1960s, continued with the 1967 race riots on Plymouth Avenue and which peaked in the mid-1990s with a tremendous trade in crack cocaine and several years of incredible murder rates. The ongoing problem stems from the fact that few people except Northsiders themselves ever bother to distinguish one neighborhood from another. The media rarely ever does, and so the stereotype persists as reporters repeat "north Minneapolis" whenever something unpleasant happens up here. Elsewhere, they identify the area much more specifically. Online comment threads for articles pertaining to north Minneapolis seldom get beyond "they should bulldoze the entire thing and start over." Growing up, north Minneapolis was a punchline to a joke and an easy synonym for "ghetto" -- even though it really isn't. You'd have to live or work here to realize that, though.
I do not define my life in terms of crime statistics. I do not fear for my own safety or that of my wife. What crime there is is generally criminals preying on other criminals.
What do I see around me? Tons of young, educated professionals moving in left and right and getting crazy deals on well-built houses that need some love due to years of deferred maintenance. Every summer, we're meeting more and more new faces at backyard bonfires and cookouts and at impromptu gatherings at a slowly-increasing number of restaurants and watering holes. Attorneys. Small business owners. Educators. Professors. Corporate bankers. Artists. Photographers. Marketing professionals. These are my neighbors and my ever-increasing circle of friends here in north Minneapolis. You will meet and be greeted by more people in your first year here than you could imagine was possible.
To answer some of your other questions...
What's missing? Lots of businesses and services that most take for granted, but that's a relic of decades of this area not having the critical mass of disposable income necessary to support much beyond fast food, gas stations, one major and one minor grocery store, and prepaid cellular stores. Inexorable change is going on around all of us. Until that change fully transforms the business districts, we will continue to go to North Loop (warehouse district), NE Mpls, downtown, St. Louis Park, Fridley, Robbinsdale, Roseville, Plymouth, Minnetonka, or Maple Grove.
I have had people sitting around my fire pit comment that my back yard is quieter than their suburban retreats. The silence is occasionally punctuated by some jerk accelerating a noisy motorcycle on Highway 55 or a bass-heavy SUV thumping down a nearby street, but in general you'd never know you were so close to downtown (2 miles, in my case). A few years from now, people will be kicking themselves for not getting into NoMi when it was inexpensive to do so.
With your need to easily range out to suburbs in all directions, you will love the central location north Minneapolis provides. I have run my own business for 12 years with clients all over the metro area, and the ability to get anywhere quickly and get back just as easily due to reverse commutes is priceless.
^Well said - You nailed it. A lot of people in the Twin Cities call the entire Northside "ghetto" and in the same breath confuse it with Northeast Minneapolis. Believe me, if most of the people in the Twin Cities would ever visit East St. Louis, Detroit or even Houston they would REALLY get an eyeful of what "ghetto" truly means.
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