Santa Ana? How bad is it? (Anaheim, Garden Grove: rent, place to live, low cost)

[Broadmoor]

Quote: "Hi Broadmoor you have "cute" screen name..Have you ever Googled it?"

Broadmoor is the name of my neighborhood in Tustin -- these were tracts of MidCentury Modern homes built around OC by Richard B. Smith in the 1960s. http://www.myspace.com/broadmoortustin

[ilikeoc]

I've lived in OC 27 years. I started on Bewley street in the heart of the Santana barrio. I never had any problems, but I was'nt crazy enough to venture into the neighborhood at nite. I would never live in Santa Ana - even the Leave it to Beaver section of floral park. As a white person I am a foreigner there, especially downtown. The schools there are like what you read about at Jefferson or Locke High School in LA. It is not a safe area for children or for adults after sundown. search hard, pay a bit more, and live elsewhere.

[OCMom2006]

I lived in "South Coast Metro" (aka Santa Ana near the mall) in a gated complex - and that still didn't prevent my car from being broken into four times.... and having to call police when a couple pulled through the gates after another car and started beating on each other in our parking lot. Tell your friends to pay the extra money and live someplace safe where people respect themselves, their neighbors, and their neighborhoods.

[Coldjensens]

Here are some statistics for those who think numbers can tell you what a community is really like.

We lived in Santa Ana for 9 years with our 5 children.

We were victims of crime once (that would be a 1 for numbers buffs), when we were moving out and the house was tented, someone stole some dog food from our back yard. Someone once tried to siphon gasoline out of my car, but he was caught and stopped by a neighbor so I do nto count that - he did not get anything. We also had some grafitti sprayed on our garage door a couple of times, but the City painted it over the same day. In Orange we were burglarized once, our dog was stabbed through the fence once, a dolly was stolen from my car once, and we got hit with grafitti several times (The city did not remove the grafitti, we had to). In Newport Beach our Barbque was stolen from our porch twice. Some laundry was stolen from the washing machine (it was in an alley behind the house (outside) and someone abandoned a baby on our front porch.


Our children attended Santa Ana schools for a substantail part of their time. After being educated in these teriible schools, our children consistently scored in the top 10 % on nataional tests (That would be above the 90th percentile for numbers buffs). Yes the schools struggle to produce high overall numbers due to language and cultural problems, but an outstanding education is avaialble for those who want to work at it.

Our house increased in value by almost 400% in 9 years.

5 different neighbors brought us gifts when we moved into Santa Ana. 9 different neighbors visited us asnd introduced themselves the first week we lived there. By comparison 1 neghbor brought us cookies when we moved into Orange. 3 Neighbors introdcued themselves. In several different locations where we lived in Newport beach the number of cookies and/or visitors was 0 (zero); In Costa Mesa also 0 (zero); in South Laguna - 0 again.


The number of times that we forgot to lock our door 12. The number of times that we forgot to close out door 3. The number of times that we were burglurized 0.

The number of neighborhood/community events that we attended: 70-100. In Orange: about 15; in Newport beach Languna and Costa Mesa 0. The number of times that we informally walked the nieghborhood with neighbors or had someone drop in from the nieghborhood: Santa Ana about 50; Orange about 10 (we only lived there for 5 years); Newport Beach 3-4.

Every year, our neighborhood got a little bit nicer as more and more people bought former rental homes and restored them as historic single family homes, schools improved, and new buisinesses opened. All of the other places that we lived in OC got a little bit less nice over the years.

There are some negative statstics too. We probably called the police to report illegal or suspciious activity 100 times in 9 years. The vigilence of the neighbors is probably why we had so few other problems.

Our children attended four different elementary schools due to changing quality levels (in some cases we changed becase a more local school had improved).

The number of people that I stay in touch with from our Santa Ana neighborhood (after moving away three years ago): 11. From Orange: 8. Newport Beach 0. Costa Mesa 0; Laguna 0.


Santa Ana can be a very plesant place to live. You just have to work at it a little bit harder. It is the most freindly place that we found anywhere in Orange Couty. It has the most beautifu neighborhoods with loads of architectural diversity in many neighborhoods (Floral Park, French Park, Park Santiago, Wilshire Square, Washington Square, Heninger park). These are all very livable neighborhoods (in descending order in my opinion).

[speedcat]

Santa Ana sucks period. Why cram more than 7 people in one bedroom apartments? For fun? Why throw garbage on the streets? For the livelihood of rats or for lizards to party in cool raves? Why so loud? Because living in the jungle or desert is the same as in the city? Why spit? Coz its cool like James Dean (which is not even true)? Why park all over the place? Coz *there are more than 7 people in studios and one bedrooms *duh. Why live like that? Because of ignorance and greed. Period. Do not live there and pretend to be symphathetic, no matter what race you are. Humanity, decency and responsibility for bringing up people who can live decently without causing unnecessary suffering is far better than illogical justifications of preserving and continuing a cultural/ethnic lineage. Utward rubbish!

[cabolissa]

A co-worker of mine moved from an apartment in Irvine to Santa Ana (2 miles away) to save $300/mo on rent. Turns out it was a roach-infested, section-8 haven from which they had to move last week when their apartment was broken into and robbed.

Stay away! There's a reason why it's cheaper!

[graciously]

Really just depends on yourself. Not so sure but from east or west around grand all the way to harbor and other way from 17th through around warner is almost mostly rundown or slum like area where alot of the crime and what some see as problems of the city is. So if that don't really bother you than there should be no problem. I guess the better areas would be like around the city borders or certain places in the central part of the city and not sure mentioned but just pass harbor going east to west there is portion of area that is nice place to live or not like many of the areas of santa ana.

[kyle lo]

from my expriences I would be safer in Tj or mexico city than Santa ana and since ive been to Tj like 20 times 10 of which by myself..to get places...

[GxGSieteUnoCuatro]

i lived in SA and now GG...SA is not a place to live if you care for yourself. I lived in the neighborhood around harbor and fifth, we had a violent gang feud between santa nita and hard times, there is prostitution alll nite and drugs readily available. if they can already afford to live in irvine hav no idea y move to SA, to be cool to be "ghetto"? lame stay in your suburbs. All gang infested areas are 90% hard working people but they arent the ones on the street at night or even the day... And also never judge a OC city by crime statistics because they cover them up to try to prevent a negative image. The taqueria at the corner was shot up two people killd it didnt make newspapers or news and this was jan. 3 and at end of january santana pd said had been no homicides. cant judge crime stats cuz ppl dont call the cops

[rah]

For all you people complaining about how dangerous Santa Ana supposedly is, did you even try and look up any crime stats? Because if you did you would see that in 2007 Santa Ana had:

-572.3 violent crimes per 100k residents
-2,291.7 property crimes per 100k residents

compare that to all other cities in CA with over 250,000 residents:

LA:
-718.4 violent crimes per 100k residents
-2,621.3 property crimes per 100k residents

Long Beach:
-722.8 violent crimes per 100k residents
-2,738.4 property crimes per 100k residents

Anaheim:
-424.6 violent crimes per 100k residents
-2,625.2 property crimes per 100k residents

Riverside:
-632.5 violent crimes per 100k residents
-3,726.5 property crimes per 100k residents

San Diego:
-502.1 violent crimes per 100k residents
-3,502.0 property crimes per 100k residents

Bakersfield:
-615.2 violent crimes per 100k residents
-5,037.9 property crimes per 100k residents

Fresno:
-644.5 violent crimes per 100k residents
-4,441.0 property crimes per 100k residents

Stockton:
-1,418.7 violent crimes per 100k residents
-6,285.0 property crimes per 100k residents

Oakland:
-1,917.8 violent crimes per 100k residents
-5,967.6 property crimes per 100k residents

San Francisco:
-874.1 violent crimes per 100k residents
-4,695.6 property crimes per 100k residents

San Jose:
-402.2 violent crimes per 100k residents
-2,574.7 property crimes per 100k residents

Sacramento:
-1,113.5 violent crimes per 100k residents
-5,297.8 property crimes per 100k residents

Santa Ana seems pretty safe overall to me. It sounds like many of you are just ignorant, even racist in some cases, and you feed into stereotypes about hispanic people making a place unsafe.

source for the stats: http://bjsdata.ojp.usdoj.gov/dataonl...risbyJuris.cfm