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Hi. My husband and I live in Philadelphia, PA and are looking to relocate to the Palm Beach area. He is an emergency room RN and I am a massage therapist, no children or pets. Since he works 12hour shifts, we need to be close to the hospital. Good Samaritan is at 1309 N Flagler in WPB. I keep reading horror stories about WPB and just can't believe that whole area from Lake Park down to Lake Worth can be mainly druggies, prostitutes, rude, uncaring neighbors and noisy,crime ridden neighborhoods. We are looking to move from all that (especially all the shootings). We are both in our 50's but think and act very young at heart. We would rent before settling down to buy again but can only afford no more than $1200/mo rent. Most of the apartment complexes online look beautiful but all the WPB reviews I read are horrible. Palm Beach Gardens, Royal Palm Beach and Wellington are just too far and expensive for us. Any insight or suggestions would be greatly appreciated. HELP!!
Last edited by lunarose; 09-01-2008 at 12:49 PM..
Reason: Added wording.
It's not that bad. Check out anything from Cityplace South. You can definitely get 1bedroom condos in and around Cityplace in your price range (maybe even 2 bedroom), and be able to walk to theaters (movie and stage), nightlife, free concerts, farmer's markets, etc.
Now, don't get me wrong, there ARE "bad" parts of West Palm Beach, but the truth is, it's clustered in the Northern neighborhoods, and that which is often referred to as "suburban West Palm Beach," which isn't even incorporated in the city limits, but has a West Palm Beach address.
I lived in Cityplace for a year, and never had a problem. My building was full of young professionals, and retirees from the Northeast. I now live just South of Cityplace, in a single family residential neighborhood, and never had a problem.
If you give me the name of some buildings and complexes you were looking at, I can give you an idea of the area.
everything you've heard is true and then some. we moved here 4 years ago from n.y. and cannot believe this place!! it is night and day from the reputation we knew of Palm Beach before we got here. Yes there are "good areas" but bad things happen there too. this place is good for the very rich who live on the island or in gated communities, people to vacation but mostly career criminals and drug addicts love it here. Ex: when I found out we had 46 registered sex offenders in a 2 mile radius of my house and over 100 with in 5, a so called "middle class neighborhood", the common response is "that sounds about right." The worst part is that the people down here think this is normal and the rest of the country is like this too. There are some descent people here but they are few and far between and none of them are native Floridians. Don't even get me started on the health care, schools and government. Believe me if we had the money to get out of here I would run and never look back!!
Thanks TriMT7 for the bit of encouragement. City Place is a little pricey, but maybe it's worth it. I realize even in the best communities there are "bad people" - I'm not that idealistic or naive to think that warm weather and beaches would only draw Mary Poppins or surfer dudes. We just like to think we can walk around without carrying M15 rifles for defense, being vandalized (person or property) and have a nice quiet sanctuary to come home to without suspicious people hanging around, loud distorted bass and foul lyrics from some stereo down the block vibrating your walls, and not having to learn Spanish to communicate with your neighbors (no disrespect to those who speak Spanish as a second language or who speak English as their second language - you know what I mean). Hmmm. On second thought maybe I am idealistic. Anyway, there are quite a few complexes in the 33401 area near the Hospital - Malibu Bay, Clear Lake Club, Lakeside Commons, and Royal Lake. Only 5 miles away is Mariner's Key in Lake Park 33403, and across 95 only 4 miles away is 33409 - President's Walk, Fairway Vista, Villa Toscana, Village Place and Windward at the Villages. Does anyone know any of these apartments? We are down-to-earth people and not really into the "suburbanite" Stepford Wives culture. Thank you in advance if you know any of these areas.
Hi. My husband and I live in Philadelphia, PA and are looking to relocate to the Palm Beach area. He is an emergency room RN and I am a massage therapist, no children or pets. Since he works 12hour shifts, we need to be close to the hospital. Good Samaritan is at 1309 N Flagler in WPB. I keep reading horror stories about WPB and just can't believe that whole area from Lake Park down to Lake Worth can be mainly druggies, prostitutes, rude, uncaring neighbors and noisy,crime ridden neighborhoods. We are looking to move from all that (especially all the shootings). We are both in our 50's but think and act very young at heart. We would rent before settling down to buy again but can only afford no more than $1200/mo rent. Most of the apartment complexes online look beautiful but all the WPB reviews I read are horrible. Palm Beach Gardens, Royal Palm Beach and Wellington are just too far and expensive for us. Any insight or suggestions would be greatly appreciated. HELP!!
We moved down here almost a year ago from Montreal.
We love it!!!!
We are renting a home on 1.5 acres with a pool and sun-room, 1800 under air for 1400.00 per month in Royal Palm Beach.
I work downtown and my husband is over by the airport so we are driving 30 minutes to work, we drive right up southern and it is a breeze to get there with hardly any traffic!
The area is safe, wonderful neighbors, I highly recommend it.
There are a lot of homes for rent with the market crashing.
I don't want to be all negative so I'll say it may all depend on where you can afford to live. Rents here have become very high since the 2 hurricanes of '04 and then Wilma in '05 so it's become harder and harder to find an affordable place to live, especially for those of us with lower income.
I came here with my children 11 years ago and really loved WPB. I was able to find a nice little apartment in a small complex in the center of town (near Palm Beach Lakes Blvd., on the other side of Village, which is nicer, and close to 2 exits of I-95) and although we were living in an apartment too small for our needs, for several years we were happy as we had shopping, restaurants and other things within walking distance and everything else that we needed was 10-15 min. away by car.
However, soon crime began to encroach our once decent neighborhood. One day during broad daylight some teens tried to steal my purse, my son had his car vandalized and shootings began to occur on PB Lakes Blvd. Due to water damage to the carpet in our L/R we had to look for another place to live but they were hard to find.
Desperate, I ended up renting a duplex N. of 45th St. off of Haverhill and although by looks only I knew we were not in a very nice neighborhood, at least our first year (which was supposed to be our only one there) was Ok, my only complaint being occasional excess noise. But then maybe about a year ago the already existing drug trafficking problem grew exponentially and shootings began to happen regularly. The straw that broke the camel's back was a shooting right next door last July 3rd in which one man resulted critically wounded (found right at the gate of our backyard) and another one dead just one house away.
We haven't left this awful neighborhood because of a number of personal circumstances, including my son's job loss last month. In the meantime, I've decided that if I have to move again I may as well do it OUTSIDE of FL. I'm actually researching NC and SC because of their lower cost of living and general superior quality of living. My children, who are 25 and 24, still have ties here, or at least my daugher does so they are going to stay but my son, the oldest, is totally disillusioned with this place too. Besides the difficulty in finding a good IT job here his next big complaint is one I share: the difficulty in connecting socially with people here (too many "weirdos" for our taste...).
Yesterday, after I sent my daughter a link about a city in SC which has lots of trees she commented that she's tired of palm trees, I told her my problem wasn't that, my problem is that now in preparation for the hurricane season they are ALL getting chopped up to where they look ridiculously naked, so even the look of this place has changed and the thought made me sad. So, although I am grateful for the first few years when I loved it here and for some of the advantages of living in this area (for me easier to fly to where my parents lived), I've lost all desire of trying to make it here and would much rather do that somewhere else.
So my advice to you is to give this some more thought and if you still like the idea, come down here on a "scouting" visit and see if the "atmosphere" does it for you. I truly believe one can catch the "vibes" of a place and have a feeling of whether it's going to be good for us or not. On the positive side, once enough of us have left maybe housing and jobs will become more abundant and the cost of living may go down again. However, I'm afraid that is not going to take care of the Jamaicans and Haitians that are running the drug and fire arms trafficking here...
...that since it's just the two of you, $1200 will be enough to get you a nice apartment and even a small house in a number of different places. Village Blvd. is full of very nice complexes, also townhomes, (which unfortunately I couldn't afford) and if you get one fairly close to PB Lakes Blvd. all you have to do is keep on driving towards the hospital. There are also lots of places for rent near the hospital that should be nice too, I actually LOVED Flagler with i's wonderful view of the water of the intercoastal and Palm Beach during the early years I used to go there to ride bikes with my children or just to sit by myself to soak up the sun. Also, if you can find anything near CityPlace you could feel safe as the police keeps a good eye on that area since it's one of WPB's main tourist attractions.
I want to clarify that shootings aren't really happening all over the place all the time; we just had the misfortune that in '04 things got ugly around PB Lakes Blvd. for a while (in truthfulness since we moved away from there I disconnected myself from what was happening there so not sure how things are right now...) and then because we had to move where we are things got even worse but I am aware many others can afford to live in better places.
I've been told that a good way to find out how good/bad a neighborhood is is by contacting the local police and asking them, so here's the link to the WPB police: :: west palm beach police department :: (http://www.wpbpolice.org/wpbcop.php - broken link). Hope that helps!
Thanks everybody and thanks SKB for your thoughts on Royal Palm Beach. I looked on the map for that area and found two hospitals in Wellington where my RN husband could work. There are two apartment complexes right near there that seem wonderful and even reasonable - Polo Lakes and Estates at Wellington Green.Does anybody know them? I wouldn't even have realized that Wellington Regional and Palms West Hospital were there had you not given me the idea to look at RPB. I think the quality of life would be much better than downtown WPB and it's still not far from the beaches. I plan on going down next week to take a look. Hopefully I won't be in the middle of a hurricane. Thanks again.
I personally would stay away from anything North of Northlake Blvd. We moved here 10 years ago from OH. We bought a home in The Shores of Jupiter and love it here . Warm and friendly neighborhood and have made life long friends. I have been an ER Nurse for 26 years working in hospitals from Level 1 to Level 3 trauma. I started out working at St. Mary's Med Center because it is the only trauma center ( level 2) around. Next closest is in Delray Beach then Orlando and Palm Bay. I have also worked through a nursing agency for shifts at Good Sam's ER. Very hard to work there as a nurse. All the cabinets are locked for anything you need for patient care. Patients puking on the floor because you have to find you key to unlock the cabinet holding basins, etc...Are you moving here for a travel assignment? I noticed that there are alot of openings for this hospital . Makes you go Hmmmmmm. I hve been working for the past 6 years at Jupiter Med. Center and love it . Clean and friendly with a great dr/nurse relationships and respect. Am in the process of now moving to TX due to my husbands transfer. We had a ton more gsw/stabbing/rapes in OH than any other hospital I've ever worked at and I've worked as an ER RN in 6 different states. Don't hesitate to let me know if you have any other questions.
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