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According to different threads on this forum the cities of Rutland and Springfield in Vermont are considered bad places to live. I’d like to better understand why this is the case. To give you some background about my situation here goes:
I am looking to move family from Long Island’s North Shore to either: Southern Vermont, Rhode Island, Southern Massachusetts or Southern Maine. Sorry but the “deep South” is out of the running.
The reason for the move is to prove my family with an affordable, safe and stable place to live. It is important for them to be in a village/town or city. We are not rural people. Personally speaking, I have lived in various “inner cities” in such places as Albany in New York State. I’ll likely be far more adaptable and flexible than my family from Long Island.
My concerns for them are as follows:
Drug dealing/meth labs/petty property crime
The scourge of uneducated troublesome white trash (I mean culturally and not monetarily. There is plenty of white trash living in overpriced houses throughout the country)
Boredom (If bedtime is 8pm I think it could be a problem)
Total lack of economic opportunity (We’re all self-employed people. I am cognizant of the fact our country is still marred with financial difficulty)
Any advice or words of wisdom would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.
To be completely honest, I don't know if Vermont in general would be the right place for you based on those criteria. In another post on here I addressed some of the problems that Rutland had, but tried to counter those with the things I like about Rutland too (I don't know too much about Springfield). For example, Rutland has good shopping, decent road conditions for VT, and the people are neighborly. But here is why I think that VT may not be a great fit for you and your family:
"The reason for the move is to prove my family with an affordable, safe and stable place to live. It is important for them to be in a village/town or city. We are not rural people."
Vermont is incredibly safe pretty much everywhere. I live in Burlington and I feel comfortable walking the streets at any time of night. So that would definitely fit your ideal. But unless you're out in the boonies, housing is going to be expensive anywhere in VT. The quality of housing you get for your money is very low. I assume that you would probably not feel comfortable living in the NEK as you say that you are not rural people.
"Drug dealing/meth labs/petty property crime"
Vermont has very little of this. Rutland, however, definitely has one of the state's highest drug population. Drug dealers come up from NYC on the train. Most of the drug activity is isolated down by the train tracks and center of the city, not up in the neighborhoods though.
"The scourge of uneducated troublesome white trash"
You're going to find a ton of that here . I mean no offense to anyone, but whether it's a lack of jobs or just a general population trend, VT has it's fair share of trash and Rutland is no exception.
"Boredom"
Yup, we got plenty of that here too. Unless you are in Burlington everything closes by 5, maybe 7 if you are lucky. In Vermont you have to be able to self amuse. If you don't like being outside in nature you will get bored quickly.
"Total lack of economic opportunity"
Plenty of that too! Vermont is so off the grid that corporations do not want to move here. I would guess that 90% of the jobs here are in the service sector. This might not bother you too much if you are self-employed though, unless you can't stand the thought of associating with "lowly" waitresses and busboys who make up most of the population demographic.
If I were you I would probably look more to Massachusetts, or perhaps Rhode Island. I feel that they would be a better fit for you and your family, or at the very least offer you more ways of entertainment than VT would.
Why not Upstate NY again? Ithaca is similar to Burlington, but it is a bit more affordable. There's plenty of nice and relatively affordable suburbs too.
Whether Rutland or anywhere in Vermont is right for you is still under consideration. Still, generalizing about places you're unfamiliar with probably isn't useful for your decision-making.
I've lived in Rutland since 1997 (my husband since the '70s) and we do not think it's "horrible." Rutland has its problems, which I've discussed here at length, but words like "horrible" don't make the list for me.
There's nothing "inner city" about Rutland -- or anywhere in Vermont. Rutland has drug dealing and drug problems, which happens in far too many Vermont towns. But meth labs? Gangs? Anything like that here doesn't begin to compare to the way it occurs in other cities. There's no street in Rutland I would fear to walk on alone.
Rutland has some petty property crime, which is remarkable enough to make the newspaper when it happens. It often involves people who left their cars or houses unlocked. Years ago, someone took the parking meter change out of my husband's unlocked van parked in our driveway. We lock our cars now.
We might not have hand-picked Rutland, given a choice of any Vermont town (in that case, I'd have picked Montpelier), but living in Rutland has been great for us. For us, Rutland has been affordable, friendly, neighborly, walkable, beautiful, and conveniently close to great outdoor recreation.
Sorry if this seems a tad defensive. I grow weary of reading generalizations that seem to imply certain places are worthless and should be wiped from the map. If Rutland was "so horrible," it would be a ghost town. Instead, quite a range of people live and do business here. Many even enjoy it.
Quote:
Originally Posted by JayTwila
According to different threads on this forum the cities of Rutland and Springfield in Vermont are considered bad places to live. I’d like to better understand why this is the case. To give you some background about my situation here goes:
I am looking to move family from Long Island’s North Shore to either: Southern Vermont, Rhode Island, Southern Massachusetts or Southern Maine. Sorry but the “deep South” is out of the running.
The reason for the move is to prove my family with an affordable, safe and stable place to live. It is important for them to be in a village/town or city. We are not rural people. Personally speaking, I have lived in various “inner cities” in such places as Albany in New York State. I’ll likely be far more adaptable and flexible than my family from Long Island.
My concerns for them are as follows:
Drug dealing/meth labs/petty property crime
The scourge of uneducated troublesome white trash (I mean culturally and not monetarily. There is plenty of white trash living in overpriced houses throughout the country)
Boredom (If bedtime is 8pm I think it could be a problem)
Total lack of economic opportunity (We’re all self-employed people. I am cognizant of the fact our country is still marred with financial difficulty)
Any advice or words of wisdom would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.
I don't know that I would have used the word "horrible" either. Admittedly the two towns you mention do not conform to the sanitized Disneyland version of Vermont that is presented in the Sunday NYT Magazine. If that is what you're looking for, stick to Woodstock, Manchester and the ski areas.
Springfield used to be a nice town with four major factories running three shifts a day where anyone who was willing to learn a trade could live well with a high quality of life. Between the uppity unions helping to drive businesses first to the south (who then moved on to China) a state government that overregulates and overtaxes, and a town that imposes a capital assets tax, it's no wonder that the former factory space in Springfield is now being used to store old junk if it's being used at all. Vermont definitely has a north/south mentality. There is a lot of political pork that goes to Chittenden county, while the southern part of the state can just 'fry ice.'
Springfield has a very hard time competing with Claremont and Charlestown in NH, which both have industrial parks, no income tax, no sales tax, and no state regulators looking to see how much they can do to harm businesses. Both of these NH towns have been active in wooing and winning small businesses from CT and NJ, and several VT businesses have picked up and moved across the river in recent years, taking jobs and prosperity with them. Add to that the influx of people to Vermont who have adopted the mantra of business is evil so let's just live on a rainbow mentality, and it's no wonder that we are into the second generation of welfare recipients.
Drug deals? Uneducated white trash? Yup you got it. The folks who used the town to make their money are now snowbirds who show up with their nice tans in May and drive around with their FL license plates. We still get the occasional flatlander who moves up here and starts a boutique clothing store only to go out of business a year later.
Frankly if you are self-employed there are lovely homes to be had, the people are still friendly and helpful, and you can leave your car unlocked with the motor running with no fear of anything getting stolen. But since you said boredom might be an issue, I'd suggest taking a look at White River Junction. It has an active theater (Northern Stage), it isn't far from Dartmouth / Hanover, and there are good deals to be had on homes.
Last edited by FrugalYankee; 07-11-2011 at 06:15 AM..
Both towns are dumpy, run down, have crime issues, have seriously corrupt local governments and police departments that's hard to spot until you dig deep, have relatively bad traffic and pollution for VT, and are surrounded by much nicer towns to live in. Rutland is cheaper than surrounding towns, for example, because most don't want to live in Rutland, and as it's cheaper the trash move in. Rutland is full of apartments full of trash, and I don't mean rural redneck sorts either, I mean trash. Both cities have state prisons and get a lot of the ex-convicts too. The economy is bleak and perhaps accounts for much of the crime at that.
Springfield was once a thriving manufacturing town whose people made a good living working in the plants. The plants closed and a town of less than 10,000 lost over 3000 well paying jobs. Now like so many cities and towns across the country who lost their manufacturing businesses Springfield is a struggling town which the state government has taken advantage of. As one poster previously mentioned, much of the pork goes to the Burlington area. Springfield gets a state prison and mental health and substance abuse clinics. Springfield also has a heavily disportionate amount of low income, subsidized housing. You end with a town struggling to survive yet they have a larger than average police and fire department and spend more than the state average on education which doesn't mean the students are any smarter. You basically have a town where the population exist to support it's government structure. If you want to get a really good idea of the effect that has had simply look at the property prices in Springfield on any real estate site. There are several pages of house for under $100,000. Yet the taxes on those homes may be $3000 or $4000 per year.
Judging from your post, Vermont is not a good fit. Southern Mass. or even Connecticut would be more comfortable for you. By deep south, I'm sure you mean south Florida...
Vermont is very much a state of Have's and Have Nots. While Burlington gets the lions share of the states budget, universities and hospitals and is located on the western side of the state bordering New York which has a similar tax structure to Vermont, Springfield is located in the eastern side of the state and borders NH which has not sales tax and lower priced liquor and cigarettes which results in all the malls and retails stores are built on the NH side of the river and Vermonters spend their money in NH. It will be interesting to watch vermont over the next 10 or 20 years to see where they get the money from to maintain the social services they have. One thing for certain is the politicians will not tax the wealthy because most of them fall in that catagory. A state cannot survive on just a service based industry.
Hmmm, who says [smile] that Rutland and Springfield are horrible -- I think there are places in any town that can be better than others -- and, as a real estate broker, I have found all categories..Springfield has some stunning beautiful large homes AND they have some wonderful properties in the outskirts that look like they belong in Vermont Life or even NatGeo..and there are some wonderful homes in the Rutland area that are equally as descriptive as the Springfield ones too.
Of late, I have certainly noticed a lot more rehab going on in Springfield - some new businesses coming in - an initiative to have new businesses continue to come in. The Ellis Theater building, for example, which had a terrible fire [and, by the way was the home of The Simpson Premier] is finally being rehabbed and that will be a terrific bonus for the town again. Further, there is another restaurant that just opened up in Springfield [actually where Brickers used to be] and it is doing incredibly well [have been there and the food is good]; if you are also looking for additional stuff to do, Chester is about 15 mins away [sweet town]; Ludlow [Okemo] is 15-20 mins away, tops.
Rutland is certainly a larger city and has its merits as well.
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. I mean no offense to anyone, but whether it's a lack of jobs or just a general population trend, VT has it's fair share of trash and Rutland is no exception.
