Austin Ghetto (St. Jo, Sanctuary: crime rates, house, safe area)

[balps]

Are there any "ghettos" in Austin (unsafe areas) that I should avoid if I was looking for an area to live around Austin?

[joejitsu]

Rundberg, N. Llamar, St. Johns, and East of 35 arent dangerous but arent the best places to own a home at.

[love roses]

Austin doesn't really have any ghettos. But I'd 2nd joejitsu, except that that there are some areas East of 35 downtown that are gentrifying.

[BentBow]

Because of the cities Sanctuary City status, it is getting worse everyday. SE Austin, is turning into little Mexico, Barrios, with pockets of Central East Austin, that have been that way for 30 years and expanding quickly. The Ghettos start where little Mexico ends. Basically I-35 has been the dividing line, for the last 40 years I have been in Austin. The East side was the bad side of town, and still is.

Now don't get me wrong, There is a lot of good on the East side, but that is where the most violent crimes are committed, and the only place in Austin, you will see very small ricked shacks with 5 families living there.

[TexasGirl@Heart]

Originally Posted by joejitsu

Rundberg, N. Llamar, St. Johns, and East of 35 arent dangerous but arent the best places to own a home at.

When you say N.Lamar--how far North are you talking?

[jobert]

anything north of 51st

[jobert]

If you're planning on moving close to town and staying in a good neighborhood, you have to stay south of that street. There are a lot of people cramming into the near north for this reason and driving up the price. If you aren't a student, and you don't work at UT, you will get more bang for your buck south of the river and be just as close to downtown, you won't be bidding against students/faculty/ and others who need the house more than you do.

[jamesia]

What? No. There are no ghettos in Austin. Some pretend white liberals have a problem with the areas with high concentrations of Latinos (east of 35, parts of North Lamar) but there are no ghettos here. Many Latinos and long-time Austinites have a very different style of decorating their yards, which will certainly seem "trashy" to HGTV types... I think that's what gets confused as being run down. One of my neighbors has a huge live oak in her front yard which she hung 26 rusting, old bird cages from. My aunt has rusting pieces of farm equipment in her front yard in Crestview, which is starting to look really odd with all the fancy remodels going on in the area.

It's absurd, really... I moved here from a city that had real ghettos, and it's so amazing to feel safe in every single part of Austin.

edit:
I agree with jobert... If you'll be commuting into town, stay south of 51st as car traffic is horrendous. South of the lake is a good area too, just stay north of 71 or maybe Stassney.

[gpurcell]

There are no ghettos in Austin. There are some working class neighborhoods with elevated crime rates but nothing like the decrepit areas you see in many older cities.

[CptnRn]

You can see the number of crimes listed by zip code here on the City Police website.

http://malford.ci.austin.tx.us/police/zipcode/zipcode/zip_2008.pdf (broken link)