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Wow, thanks for the novel there... anyway I am not against anyone liking where they live and I wouldn't steal that from you. I just think that the people moving into the area should have a balanced view of what they are getting into. I don't like it in Santa Ana nor does anyone that I am personally connected to. Just my opinion..it doesn't mean I am right or wrong.
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Originally Posted by Coldjensens
I have no connection to the City of Santa Ana at all. However I lived and worked downtown for 9 plus years and I have lived downtown part time for the past 4 years (by choice, I could stay anywhere in OC when I am in California). I have mentioned several times, that I like Old town Orange somewhat better, but I like a lot about Santa Ana as well. If I were to return my primary residence to Orange County, It would not bother me to move back to Santa Ana permanently if I could not find something in Old Town, or in Sliverado Canyon. (I do nto care for milquetoast, yuppie suburban sprawl places where everything is the same, so, much of Orange County is not for me. While I understand the appeal of places like Irvine to some people, I would not care to live there or anywhere similar to Irvine. The people who like that lifestyle are welcome to it, just as they are probably more than happy to leave me to my preferences.).
I do know the City of Santa Ana very very well, and I studied the information about it in depth before we moved there. As with any place I live, I was very involved in the community when we lived there. (I do know the mayor, but I do not think that he likes me very much). I also knew our local police and code enforcement officers very well. At first we had officers assigned to our "district" and the policing was much better then when they went back to a more centralized system. I often worked with our police officers to deal with problems or concerns in our area. With the ones who were interested enough to make the effort, I occasionally walked or drove through the neighborhood and pointed out where we saw problems or potential problems occurring and/or things that we wanted them to keep an eye on (i.e. "A bunch of loud kids just moved in here and they often have loud parties on weekends and lots of cars coming and going all the time during the week. This place is likely to become a blight on the neighborhood, could you please keep an eye on it?) They were very responsive, all fo them did a great job of dealing with any problems or potential problems, but not all of them had a realistic view of what the nicer parts of Santa Ana are actually like. One of the leiutenants had a great understadning of Satna Ana, the other had a very poor understanding. I am nto sure that either one of them is still there. I do not mingle with the police officers much anymore.
I do know that many, but not all police officers, not only in Santa Ana but all over, have a jaded view of the communities that they work in. It always seems worse to them, because they see nothing but the bad side of their one community. They do not see what other communities are like from a police officer point of view.
Why do they give people an incorrect version of the condition of the city? There is no nefarious intent on their part. It is simply because they do not know any better. They really believe that what they see in their call responses is the condition of the entire city. It is called generalization, and most people tend to do it even though it is a logical fallacy.
Case in point is the Santa Ana police officer who suggested to me that I look into Anaheim (where he lived) instead because he believed it to be much much safer. When we looked at the statistics for that year we discovered that Anaheim had a considerably higher crime rate. He just did nto know becuase he only saw the bad side of Santa Ana and did not see the bad side of Anaheim since he did not patrol there. HE was not lying, He believed what he said. He was just wrong.
We thought like you when we first considered Santa Ana. We believed that patrol officers would provide the best possible information of what things are actually like in the City where they work. We talked with several patrol officers about the area we were considering before we moved to Santa Ana. Three of them painted a picture of a war zone with constant rampant crime and gang bangers basically in control of the city. We were ready to abandon the idea of moving to Santa Ana because of the comments made by those officers. Then the US News & World Report "Safest Cities" issue came out and there was Santa Ana as number 1. Santa Ana was rated the safest city of its size in the United States. That made us investigate further and start talking to the people who actually lived there rather than just police officers. We got a very different viewpoint. We then started looking at more statistics and collecting additional information. I spent the night in my car parked at the curb several times to see what it was like on a Friday or Saturday night. Eventually we figured out that what the police officers told us was incorrect. We moved to downtown Santa Ana and never had any regrets, it was a wonderful place to live. Not perfect, but we had a really great life there. There were problems, we called the police from tiem to time about loud neighbors, apparant drug deals, child abuse, but we really never had any major problems or saw any major criminal or gang activity.
Over the years, as I got to know many of the the patrol officers and their bosses pretty well well, some of them told me I was crazy to live there. Others asked me if I could help them find an affordable house in our neighborhood. However my ongoing conversations and relationships with our police made me very much aware that many of them really did not understand what the city is actually like.
Simply put, the police officers do not get a realistic view of the City. they get called to the bad areas constantly and assume that the other areas are the same even though they do not get called there. Some officers know better. In fact, some officers even elect to live in Santa Ana. Others perpetuate the myth that it is some crazy dangerous place when it simply is not.
We learned otherwise, not only from statistics, but from actually living there. We walked through our neighborhood every night (except a few occasions when we were out of town). We raised five young children very happily in the midst of mid-town (part of the downtown area). I walked to work or rode my bicycle at least 50% of the time and walked home at night. We walked to bars or restaurants at least once a week and walked home after midnight. We mingled with our neighbors and discussed their experiences as well as walking to various events or just going for a walk with them. At neighborhood meetings (most neighborhoods have neighborhood associations), we discussed crime, code enforcement, and virtually every issue of life in Santa Ana with dozens of neighbors. I still walk a mile or so around the neighborhood most nights that I am there and not too busy with work. Once in a while, i attend neighborhood meetings to have a chance to visit old friends and to see what is going on.
If your relative is telling you that Santa Ana is some horrible place that no one should consider living in, they are flat out wrong. If they are telling you that Santa Ana is one of the highest crime cities in the country, they are wrong. You can look it up. Santa Ana is no longer at the top of the safest city list, but it is still above the middle. If that is what they are telling you they do not know what they are talking about and should not be saying such things.
It is not just Santa Ana. I have seen the same thing with some police officers in other areas (including Irvine as I mentioned, aind including the basically zero crime area where I live permanently now).
The odds are that if your relative has worked in Santa Ana for any length of time, I probably know her. I will not remember their name, but we probably have met. (Unless they are a dispatcher, I do not many know the dispatchers well, I also do not know many of the officers who have been there for less than six years). I did have a conversation with one dispactcher that I met when I was at the police station and she was not yet on duty. I was amazed with that particular woman to learn that she had almost never left the station. She did not even know where the good places to eat are. I can only remember one female patrol officer. She was great. She did not seem to have a problem with the City in genreal although she did nto like her job all that much.
It varies. Some of the officers have a really good understanding of the City while others have no realistic understanding of the city at all. Your relative may be one of those in either category. However just becuase someone has the job of police officer, it does not make them an accurate authority on what life is like for the enire city, especially if they are not a patrol officer.
The bottom line is that if you are simply repeating something that you heard somehwere in bashing Santa Ana, then you are dispersing misinformation. Go live downtown for a few years (really LIVE there, not just stay behind closed doors) and then come back with your report on life in Santa Ana. I did and I found it to be a pretty darned great place to live.
Hi, I am moving from NY and looking at an apartment on W. MacArthur Blvd. I am wondering since this is close to Costa Mesa/South Coast Metro area if that would be ok. I am a girl who will be living with my boyfriend but will be coming home alone from time to time- so ultimately I am wondering if this area would be all right for a 25 year old woman to come home alone to or if it should be avoided? Thanks, Cristina
Hi, I am moving from NY and looking at an apartment on W. MacArthur Blvd. I am wondering since this is close to Costa Mesa/South Coast Metro area if that would be ok. I am a girl who will be living with my boyfriend but will be coming home alone from time to time- so ultimately I am wondering if this area would be all right for a 25 year old woman to come home alone to or if it should be avoided? Thanks, Cristina
MacArthur's not the worst area but I hope you speak Spanish and don't mind a couple of families living above you. You'd be better off looking down Bristol on the other side of the freeway. There's several complexes along Baker and Paualarino between Bear St. and the 55 freeway that are a step up from anything on MacArthur.
I prefer to be either in the far north or the far south. I like it especially near the Santiago Park area where there is a nature trail extending from Tustin Avenue to Flower Street broken up in-between by a couple of sports areas.
I have come to speak of much of the city as "Tijuana del Norte" because so many men seem to expect all non-obese women to be street prostitutes like so many expect women to be in Tijuana. On any day walking to the library, an average of 5 men try to hit on me for sex, even when I wear a veil. Motorists are entirely untrustworthy, not respecting a pedestrian's right-of-way. Even if a motorist tries to motion a pedestrian to proceed, the pedestrian is in peril if she takes the gesture. The motorist will sometimes lunge at the pedestrian out of juvenile sport, sometimes with evil laughter or with teeth clenched in hate. Be very careful.
The downtown library is fairly good and has significant sections in English, Spanish, and Vietnamese. The connections with passenger rail are quite good with Metrolink.
Thanks for the input- my next question would be--- I am going to law school at Chapman 4 days a week in the afternoon and interning in downtown LA 2 days per week and since I have heard pretty ridiculous things about the commute, is there any area that would be particularly not as bad commute-wise for those two places? To answer you, escape, I do not speak Spanish. I am just looking for a middle-class ish area that like I said, I can feel safe if I come home by myself at times. I don't have alot to spend (looking for around 1200/mo for a 1bedroom) since my internship is unpaid and I have limited income from student loans. Would it be better to look closer to LA? Closer to Orange? Like I said- coming from NY I'm pretty, admittedly, clueless and could use whatever help I can get! Thanks guys (:
Thanks for the input- my next question would be--- I am going to law school at Chapman 4 days a week in the afternoon and interning in downtown LA 2 days per week and since I have heard pretty ridiculous things about the commute, is there any area that would be particularly not as bad commute-wise for those two places? To answer you, escape, I do not speak Spanish. I am just looking for a middle-class ish area that like I said, I can feel safe if I come home by myself at times. I don't have alot to spend (looking for around 1200/mo for a 1bedroom) since my internship is unpaid and I have limited income from student loans. Would it be better to look closer to LA? Closer to Orange? Like I said- coming from NY I'm pretty, admittedly, clueless and could use whatever help I can get! Thanks guys (:
Old town orange is a neat place. You might like it there. You will nto find large apartment complexes there, mostly house rentals or Granny flats (apartment above a garage behind a house). It is not exciting like New York, but it is pleasant.
The Commute to LA is pretty awful. Figure on 1.5 hours to downtown most of the time. You can make it in less or more on occiasions, but 1.5 hours is a good rule of thumb.
If you live near the train station, you can just take the train downtown. It is not a lot faster, but a lot more pleasant. From Union Station, you can take the subway and/or your feet to much of downtown.
You can walk to the train station from old town Orange. You can also walk to the train Station fromt he French Park Neighborhood In Santa Ana. You could walk from Park Santiago as well, but it is a long walk and you have to go through some quesitonable areas.
Some of those apartment complexes in the south coast metro area on MacArthur are pretty nice. They are pretty much just like all of the other mega apartment complexes scattered around OC. It makes little difference in those palces whether your address is Santa Ana or Irvine or Newport Beach. Although some of them are more low rise, have more amenities and cost more. The more expensive ones tend to preclude non-yuppy types so they are sometimes quieter and cleaner. MacArthur is a large and very busy street. Most of MacArthur is more commercial than residential.
It's largely a poor ghetto area with the exception of the business district bordering Fountain Valley.
Endless false posts by people who really do not know what they are talking about.
Floral Park is a ghetto? It is probably the nicest niehgborhood in Orange COunty. Park Santiago, French Park, Henniger park, Washington Square, and many other neighborhoods can hardly be described as a Ghetto. Have you ever been to Santa Ana?
It is not a perfect City. Nor is it as pristine as say Irvine, Mission Veijo etc. But a Ghetto? Do you even know what a ghetto is? Ever been to one?
Are you the same person making absurd racist comments earlier?
Endless false posts by people who really do not know what they are talking about.
Floral Park is a ghetto? It is probably the nicest niehgborhood in Orange COunty. Park Santiago, French Park, Henniger park, Washington Square, and many other neighborhoods can hardly be described as a Ghetto. Have you ever been to Santa Ana?
It is not a perfect City. Nor is it as pristine as say Irvine, Mission Veijo etc. But a Ghetto? Do you even know what a ghetto is? Ever been to one?
Are you the same person making absurd racist comments earlier?
Unfortunately, I have been through Santa Ana quite a few times. It definitely ain't no Laguna Beach
As for the making racist comments earlier...
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