Moving to Boston area from Denver; please help! (Springfield, Newton: middle-class, apartment)

[starr77]

My husband's company would like to transfer us from Denver to the Boston area, and we would appreciate any "inside scoop" you can offer regarding places to live. We have flexibility in where we could live in the area as he would be managing (i.e., traveling between) branches in Boston, Springfield, Lawrence, Providence RI, Lewiston ME, and Concord NH. His office would be out of Hyde Park, but he would not be reporting to it daily and he usually travels to and from work before/after normal rush hours. We have three elementary age daughters, two of whom are African American and adopted from foster care, so it is important for us to live in an area with good schools and that is accepting of our transracial family. Because his company has moved us regularly, we are looking to rent instead of buy, but we would really prefer a single family home instead of apartment living. I am a stay at home mom right now so we are on one income and want to make the most of it. Can you offer any insight into areas we should check into and what kind of rent we should expect to pay for safe, good schools?

[xS☺B☺s]

Look into the South End. It's a diverse area and the Hurley School is a little miracle in downtown Boston. My son had 5 wonderful years there and considers the almighty Plano Tx school district a significant step down.

http://discoverhurley.org/

Then they could aim for the prestigious Boston Latin, a very popular scouting ground for Harvard and MIT philanthropists.

//www.city-data.com/forum/12689635-post23.html

[ogre]

Some additional information would help narrow the possibilities:

1) Your rental budget.
2) Whether it would be especially convenient for your husband to be near any particular cities of those he will be commuting to.
3) Whether you'd like proximity to public transit.
4) What kind of general character you'd prefer in the local area where you'd live--typically suburban, woodsy, more urban, close to malls, walk to coffee shop around the corner, etc.
5) Whether you're simply looking for areas where your daughters would be accepted by the other kids or would prefer that there be a fair number of minority or mixed families in your local area.

On the last point, be aware that most suburbs of Boston have very white populations. The first suburb that comes to mind when I think about a generally nice town that has a higher percentage of minorities than many Boston suburbs is Milton. I don't know the town really well, but it looks nice from what I've seen of it, and has a good reputation generally. I have heard that some neighborhoods in Milton have gotten kind of rough in recent years--not sure, but I think these may be the neighborhoods that border the Mattapan section of Boston--but Milton has the reputation of being a nice town overall.

If you want a place that's really in the suburbs and also has a fairly significant minority population, the options will be somewhat limited. You'll have a wider range of possibilities if your main concern about your daughters is that they'll be able to get along with the other kids of whatever race, realizing that in the suburbs, and many urban areas but especially in the suburbs, most of the kids will be white.

[starr77]

Thanks to both of you for the insight; it is so difficult to move on a relatively short time frame to an area you know very little about! Ogre, I have read many of your other posts and really hoped you would help--thank you! To answer your questions...
1) If it is even possible, we would like to stay under $2500/month, but if we need to expect to pay more, we'd like to know...still negotiating pay!
2) My husband initially thought it would be good to be based out of the Hyde Park office in Boston b/c of its central location to the other branches, but we're flexible and open minded. Finding a safe, family-friendly area in our price range is most important.
3) We have never lived in an area with convenient public transit, but if it's available, we would certainly take advantage of it.
4) I would say we don't want anything too urban, but woodsy or suburban would be great.
5) We have lived in predominantly African American areas, predominantly white, and somewhere in between and have had a huge variety of experiences in all of them. It is most important that they be accepted by their peers, but they are accustomed to making friends with people of all backgrounds.

Let me know if more info would be helpful, and thank you again for your help!

[ogre]

With your having three children, I'm assuming you'd want to rent a house rather than an apartment. I'm not really familiar with rentals for detached single-family houses, so I don't know how abundant the possibilities are, but I've occasionally scanned Craigslist just to get an idea whether there are at least some options in various price ranges. There certainly are some options within your price range, but since I'm unfamiliar with the market for detached house rentals, I don't really know how many. I'm going to guess here that if it's possible to negotiate the salary up a bit so as to have as many housing options as possible, this would be worth pursuing.

I would not recommend living in Hyde Park itself. That would put you within Boston's city limits. This would mean dealing with Boston's city schools, which have the reputation for varying widely in quality, with the best chance of getting your kids into a good school going to longtime residents who really know how to negotiate the school system to their advantage.

Another piece of info that could be helpful is your husband's preferred commuting time. To start with options fairly close to Hyde Park, Newton stands out in my mind. Newton is an upscale older suburb with some woodsy areas on the south side, and nice old houses in tree-shaded neigbhorhoods in the rest of the town. Newton is known as a town with really top-notch schools. Also, Newton, though mostly suburban in character, is a small city with a population of something like 85k, so it has somewhat more of a mix of races and ethnicities than most Boston suburbs. Newton still does have mostly a white population, but the town has a reputation for being very accepting of all races and ethnicities.

By the way, if you're not really city people, don't get too worried about Newton's population. Rather than one large downtown, Newton has a number of smaller commercial districts spread throughout the town. It has the feel more of a collection of smaller towns rather than one single larger town. Just to give you some idea what you might be able to find for SFH rentals in Newton, I found these two properties on Craigslist (not sure, but the first one looks as if it may be a large apartment in a small apartment building; the second is clearly a detached SFH):

IMAC 3 BDRM 2BATHS GAR/ (http://boston.craigslist.org/gbs/fee/1970953419.html - broken link)

GORGEOUS SINGLE FAMILY VICTORIAN~PET FRIENDLY~NOW~ (http://boston.craigslist.org/gbs/nfb/1976662877.html - broken link).

These were the only two SFH properties I found listed in Newton, if the first one is in fact SFH, so this gives you some idea what I meant about how there are properties available at up to 2,500, but I'm not sure how many. On the other hand, Newton is a very affluent town, where the rents will often be on the high side. Yet on the other hand, as I look through the CL ads for some of the other towns I would suggest, I see some rents of more like 1,900-2,000 rather than right at the top of your preferred range, but even though the average rent may be a bit lower, I still find few SFH rentals below 2,500, maybe only two or three per town.

Once again, Milton comes to mind, mainly because it's close to Hyde Park, and it has a larger minority population, and specifically a larger black population, than most suburbs of Boston. In my previous post I mentioned rumors that some neighborhoods in Milton may have gone downhill in recent years, but I'd suggest getting info on this from people more familiar with Milton than I am. What might be considered "going downhill" in an overall nice suburban town like Milton might mean something no worse than maybe a neighborhood or two is looking a bit faded. My impression of Milton is that it seems like a nice town. I've never seen any bad neighborhoods there, but then I don't know the town really well. I can tell you generally Milton is a nice town. The overall look of the town is very suburban in an older, well-kept, established sort of way. One other area where you need more info about Milton than I can provide is the quality of the schools. My guess is that they are good, due to the generally affluent tone of the town, but I really don't know a lot about schools in Milton.

These next two towns could work well depending on the kind of commuting time your husband would prefer. They're not really far from Hyde Park, but farther than Newton or Milton.

First is Wayland, which in general is a low-density suburb, more woodsy in some neighborhoods, a little more dense in others, with mainly an affluent professional populace and a little bit of blue collar mixed in. The town has a small commercial district with a few basic small stores, but is also very close to a bunch of malls in neighboring towns. No public transit, though there is commuter rail in a couple of neighboring towns. And, very important for you from the sound of it, Wayland's schools have a really, really good reputation.

I'd also suggest looking at Natick, which is immediately south of Wayland. Natick is a typically suburban, middle- to upper-middle-class town in most parts, but more woodsy on the south side. The schools there are good overall, but generally viewed as not being at the level you'd find in Newton or Wayland. This is all relative, though. Schools in many of Boston's suburbs tend to be of high quality, and Wayland and Newton have really high-end, powerhouse school systems, so being a notch down from those towns is still very good.

Wayland and Natick both have very white populations. Part of the reason I suggest these two towns is that they fit many of your criteria about the general character of the town and quality of the schools. I'll have to say that it's largely gut feeling when I say I think your daughters would be fine in either of these towns, without race being a major issue. It's hard to put my finger on it, but just in general I get good feelings about both Natick and Wayland. Both seem like really good towns overall, for someone who would like these kinds of suburban areas, and my gut is telling me that your daughters would get along well in either town.

Okay, I'll tell you that the towns I've suggested are rather on the affluent side. I've suggested some upscale towns to start with because of the quality of schools you tend to find in these towns. Depending on your husband's commuting preferences, and whether you need to expand the list to include towns that might have more rentals in your price range, there may be other possibilities. At least these four towns are a starting point.