What can you tell me about Tukwila? (Seattle, Tacoma: section 8, apartment complexes)
Seattle areaSeattle and King County Suburbs
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Hey, I've lived in Washington before, in Pasco- the tri-cities area, but i know nothing about Seattle and it's surrounding areas.
My husband and I are going to be moving from a small town in Wyoming to Tukwila as of the 28th of September. I just decided to move to Tukwila after looking at apartments for rent and finding it to be the least expensive suburb. I have already payed for my apartment's deposit, and i definitely will be moving there, so I'm already stuck with that decision, But i would like to know about the area, what precautions should i take before going, how safe is it, costs, etc. I have read about it's statistics and such, but i want to know about people's personal experiences. Thanks so much!
I cringe that you have chosen this place to live, and made your decision to live here and then ask about the city. Tukwila is mostly shopping. The mall and mall strips are there. I go there a lot for almost everything. Movies, banking, shopping, resturants. BUT I know a Tukwila police officer that tells us to not go there after 6pm. It used to be the gang issues, at the mall, and eventhough that part of it has gotten better, he tells us all the other things that are worse. There is the whole underworld of that city that you don't see or hear about. But he's a cop, so they get to see the real city. As does any cop from any city.
I guess as long as you don't see or hear that part of it, then you might like it.
Knowing this side of Tukwila, through the eyes of a cop, he would say just be careful.
I have been going there, several times a week,for the past 4 years, all during the day, because of what he said. I personally have never had an issues. My SIL has gone at night and 3 times her car has been broken into. Window smashed and things stolen. Once at a resturant, once she was in Kohls, and once in Old Nay.
The Southcenter Mall vicinity is not dangerous and is certainly ok after 6pm until the stores close.
Tukwila is not really as dangerous as some people seem to think. It's nowhere near as bad as Seattle's ghetto areas, White Center, Skyway etc. The crime stats are skewed by the largest mall in the state which generates a lot of shoplifting arrests. There are some problem apartment complexes that account for lot of Tukwila's crime. If they accept King County Housing tenants or Section 8 I would look elsewhere. The worst ones are near International Blvd. aka Pacific Highway South.
The proximity to DT is nice, especially now that we have a light rail. Southcenter has just about every store you could want, plus great food (I love "Simply Thai"). There's a Safeway up the hill from Southcenter, and one other store (Tukwila Trading Co) on Hwy 99, but my family doesn't like to go either one-- so we either go food shopping either in Burien or Renton. There are trails around that are nice (though not as nice as other places) and Fort Dent is pretty. Hwy 99 is very unpretty but isn't as bad as before. Tukwila is a bit nicer around the river, but that area does have some flooding tendencies (as do the mall area). As a community, there... isn't really as much a feel as one. I would say it's a good starting point, but I would suggest that you start checking out other areas so that you know which works better for you.
I think the 6pm suggestion is odd as I've never encountered any problems. I do wonder if the SIL wasn't being responsible and left valuable things out in sight. I've left my car unlocked (accidently) more than a few times and never got jacked.
Tukwila is not one certain way. Like southking500 said, Pac Hwy, also known as International Boulevard is probably the worst part of Tukwila. And much of Tukwila is dedicated to shopping malls, offices, and business parks. There are a lot of apartments just up the hill from Southcenter Mall, and they too are a mixed bag, some being quite nice , others being run down. There's even an almost rural area of Tukwila both along the Green River and around E. Marginal and 130th.
Actually White Center and Skyway are not one certain way either. They both contain parts that are bad, but also parts that are much nicer, but people dismiss the whole area as ghetto. None of these places are like Detroit or Newark, where you have unsafe neighborhoods for blocks on end. Skyway, Tukwila, White Center, South Park, Tacoma, Kent, etc, have maybe 5-6 blocks each that are pretty bad, but also have perfectly nice, larger parts quite close to the smaller bad areas.
By nice, I mean well maintained homes and lawns, fairly low crime rates, but not necessarily good school districts. Tukwila does not have a good school district.
Tukwila's cool. It's one of the most diverse cities in Washington State. Many different nationalities are represented.
Great location too. It's very close to the airport and a 12 minute drive to Downtown Seattle on the freeway. Not to mention like the others said, it's got a light rail station and Southcenter Mall.
Well, the thing to keep in mind when folks start talking about Tukwila's crime rate is that Tukwila is pretty unique amoung cities in Washington state in that the town is completely dominated by the massive amount of retail present in the Southcenter area. What this means is that even though the population of Tukwila is pretty small (around 20,000 or so) the number of folks who actually come to Tukwila every day (to shop, to work, to dine, etc, etc, etc) is no doubt in the hundreds of thousands each and every day - and since the calculated crimes rates are determined by comparing the number of crimes to the number of RESIDENTS (not the total number of daily VISITORS) the crime rate numbers are REALLY SKEWED to look a lot worse than they really are. For example, say there are (just for the sake of argument) 10 crimes over a given period of time. The official statistics would tell you that there are 10 crimes per 20,000 people - when in truth, the REAL crime rate is better reflected by saying that there are 10 crimes per 300,000 (or more - I think I read somewhere that Tukwila gets nearly HALF A MILLION visitors a day). This TRUE picture of the crime rate is a LOT better than the "official" one.
The fact is, I'm pretty sure car break-ins etc do happen in Tukwila more often than other nearby communities, but I'm also pretty sure that the bulk of those happen in the vast parking lots of Southcenter and the other big shopping complexes that define Tukwila - NOT so much in the residential areas. The HUGE amount of retail shopping available in Tukwila (FAR more than anywhere else in the entire state) brings in LOTS and LOTS of daily shoppers - and this in turn tends to bring in carprowlers looking for careless folks going out to their cars and dropping off packages before heading to the next store to shop some more. This in turn means that there IS more such crime in Tukwila than in the other nearby communities - but it also means that the total number of people REALLY present is FAR greater than the official population numbers show - and this in turn means that the TRUE (more accurate) crime rate is MUCH lower than it appears - simply because the current method of calculating crime rate counts the CRIMES committed by and against visitors but the current method of calculation population does NOT count those people.
So, anytime you are talking about the crime rate in Tukwila you need to take that number with a very large (boulder-sized really) grain of salt - because of Tukwila's really unique status of a being a very very small city with a very very large collection of shopping that draws in many many times the city's population each and every day. No where else in Washington State does that to anywhere near the degree that Tukwila does.
Is there actually a community there? I always thought it was just a highway lined with businesses where people went to work or shop. You'll have to tell us all about it.
Is there actually a community there? I always thought it was just a highway lined with businesses where people went to work or shop. You'll have to tell us all about it.
Yes, there are residential areas of Tukwila. The very fact that you need to ask that question more or less validates what I wrote about the city being so dominated by retail. Like you, the vast majority of people don't even understand that people DO live there.
Ken
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What can you tell me about Tukwila?
