Would You Raise Your Children in Dorchester? (Boston, Quincy: 2014, rent)

[pennyone]

Seriously....why would you even consider a place where you might even HEAR gun shots? Gangs can be in cars, or bikes, and if you can hear them, then you and your children ARE NOT SAFE. One sidestreet over or a corner is still way too close. You want to trick or treat????? Do your really think trick or treating with the kids two or three streets over from a gang war is safe enough? The question is inherently absurd.

[David223]

Your question is: Would You Raise Your Children in Dorchester? My answer is no. I lived in Dorchester and when my daughter was about to go into the first grade we moved. I don't think it's safe at all.

[Popsiclestick]

It matters A LOT that you state when you grew up in Dorchester. 60's? 70's 80's? 90's? I lived there in the late 70's to the early 90's. In the sections east of Dorchester Ave it was safe and great. Not now. Case closed. (My apologies to those who still live in that area. Closer you get to Adams and Neponset, safer it is, right? And I sitll LOVE Dorchester and would back there and buy a house in a heartbeat if I didn't worry about safety.)

I lived there mid 60's to early 90's and my mother sold her home on Meeting House Hill in the late 90's, I can't say I remember it as ever being safe, safe is a relative term, there was always crime, always. Those decades were tough on every American city and it looks like Boston made it through and is going in a very good direction.
That being said it is not the 90's it is 2013, there was a 15% drop in crime in Boston in the first three months of 2013 Violent crime peaked in the 1990's nationally and has been in decline ever since. There are lots of economic forces at play that make the established stable neighborhoods in Dorchester very desirable and the marginal ones somewhat appealing to the right kind of person. Housing is expensive in metro Boston area, and how much of your life are you willing to spend commuting? The financial district is 8 redline stops, 16 minutes from Ashmont, where there is beautiful housing stock in the $500,000, range. Since Abolgani is really concerned about safety go to Trulia site's local info map lower on page and put in address. The individual crimes for the last 6 or seven months are there and you can decide what you can live with, and where. Dorchester is an urban neighborhood that has all the good and not so good elements of urban living. It is a lifestyle choice. People create the communities they live in. Crime is not a joke and feeling safe is very important, but Dorchester is not St Louse or Miami. Look on Facebook for community groups and see if you find like minded people you can reach out to. You can not know which way any neighborhood will go in a few years, nobody does

[pennyone]

"The financial district is 8 redline stops, 16 minutes from Ashmont, where there is beautiful housing stock in the $500,000, range"....

Yup, this is exactly the logic. You may just finish your whole line of rationale with....

If there are 8 red line stops to the Financial district from Dorchester, then why not just avoid all this crime and safe street/unsafe street business and move to Quincy? There are less stops between Quincy and DTX, and far less crime, better schools, and a much better mix of amenities (hills, beaches, quiet leafy side streets etc). The Quincy Downtown renovation is aimed precisely at this logic.

Yes, Dorchester has some very fine architecture, but so does Quincy. For 500K, you can find a very very nice house here in the Wollaston, N Quincy, Squantum or Merrymount sections of Quincy, and you can go trick or treating with your kids without any worries....but still be amazingly close to Boston etc. The beautiful Crane Library is in Quincy, and so is the largest YMCA in the South Shore, to be open on Dec 1st. So, more to think about. (disclaimer...we live in Wollaston and we absolutely love it here).

[professeurpablo]

There are definitely nice sections of Dorchester that are relatively safe. That said, you are never really far from very dangerous areas in most of the neighborhood. At the same time, crazy stuff happens everywhere, but not with the same frequency as in some of the more dangerous neighborhoods of Dorchester. As for the specific location you mention, Fuller and Bailey Streets are not the greatest at all. I would avoid that area. Incidentally, I don't believe it is technically Ashmont Hill because it's south of Ashmont St.

Go to your favorite search engine and do some exact searching (by using quotation marks) of street names. Include words like "Dorchester", "police", "crime" and "shooting" and see what comes up for streets surrounding the area in which you are looking. It may be eye-opening for you and more "real" than others' opinions when it comes to the future safety of your family in a neighborhood that, while great in many ways, suffers from lots of issues with gun violence.

[495neighbor]

The Universal Hub blog has a crime map for Dorchester you may want to look at.

[Martha Anne]

Originally Posted by David223

Your question is: Would You Raise Your Children in Dorchester? My answer is no. I lived in Dorchester and when my daughter was about to go into the first grade we moved. I don't think it's safe at all.

Thank God somebody has some sense. I lived there also for 12 years and would never live there now. It is more dangerous in the previously "safe" areas and just as bad as it ever was in the less safe areas.

Of course, many people live out their lives in Dorchester without injury. But just look at the crime stats.

Here is an interesting link: Armed home invasion in Dorchester: Residents tied up, one pistol whipped | Universal Hub

[missionhill]

Originally Posted by Popsiclestick

I lived there mid 60's to early 90's and my mother sold her home on Meeting House Hill in the late 90's, I can't say I remember it as ever being safe, safe is a relative term, there was always crime, always. Those decades were tough on every American city and it looks like Boston made it through and is going in a very good direction.
That being said it is not the 90's it is 2013, there was a 15% drop in crime in Boston in the first three months of 2013 Violent crime peaked in the 1990's nationally and has been in decline ever since. There are lots of economic forces at play that make the established stable neighborhoods in Dorchester very desirable and the marginal ones somewhat appealing to the right kind of person. Housing is expensive in metro Boston area, and how much of your life are you willing to spend commuting? The financial district is 8 redline stops, 16 minutes from Ashmont, where there is beautiful housing stock in the $500,000, range. Since Abolgani is really concerned about safety go to Trulia site's local info map lower on page and put in address. The individual crimes for the last 6 or seven months are there and you can decide what you can live with, and where. Dorchester is an urban neighborhood that has all the good and not so good elements of urban living. It is a lifestyle choice. People create the communities they live in. Crime is not a joke and feeling safe is very important, but Dorchester is not St Louse or Miami. Look on Facebook for community groups and see if you find like minded people you can reach out to. You can not know which way any neighborhood will go in a few years, nobody does

Hurray for Popsiclestick!

[Popsiclestick]

Thanks Mission Hill,
Anybody raising children today has a lot of things to consider. I have found my child a school where I believe he can be happy, in a neighborhood I can afford, in a city with plentiful job opportunities, near transportation, shopping, culture and nature that just happens to be my old home town of Dorchester. There is crime, but crime flourishes where it is allowed to flourish. Crime is allowed to flourish where poorer people and immigrants live. There are a lot of poorer and immigrant people in Dorchester. There always has been.
Charlestown and Southie were very tough places not to long ago, People got shot, stabbed, mugged and their homes were broken into all the time. Even now there are places in Southie and Charlestown (believe it) you might not want to live. But people who were more affluent started going bananas over colonial era homes, brownstones, and ocean views. A three decker sold in Polish triangle for a million this year, so the march south continues. People want to live in the city.

I want to ask again what is safe? The mother of schoolmate of my son's knew the woman from Sunnyside Queens who moved to Connecticut so her son would be in a safer environment than the NYC. That poor child died at Newtown Elementary School. So how after this, can I believe my child is really safe anywhere?
That young man who shot at the cops two weeks ago in Dorchester had tried toting a gun into community college class in Wellesley, ok? Wellesley. This is the world we all live in now, not just people in the inner city.

Really Dorchester is not for everyone, nor should it be. I hear a lot of grumblings about gentrification from people who do not want change, and there are a lot of them. They don't want people to move in and push them out like they have seen in other parts of Boston. They like their neighborhoods just fine. There have been sweeping arrests of organized drug dealing rings in the past year. 100 million is slated for the development of the Quincy corridor, plus there are new stops on the commuter rail in Uphams corner and Talbot Ave. The City of Boston is trying to bring North Dorchester back. I don't think they are going to let random crews with guns prevent this. Boston is not on the top 100 most violent cities lists and if people didn't keep hearing how " dangerous" it is, they would move in and add to the stability and economic diversity of the neighborhood.

[pennyone]

Agreed! While I have reservations about many parts of Dorchester, I do get a fun sense of community whenever I drive through parts of it, like Savin, Neponset, places around St Mark (where an awesome new dog goodie store just opened) etc. The architecture of many homes in Dot, especially around Ashmont Hill, is absolutely beautiful. There are also many diverse people in Dot, and you get that flavor in places like the Ashmont Grill etc where locals and gentrifying people hang out. There is even a great gay bar called DBar in Dot that serves a mean drink!

It's a great place, but it's also a work in progress. Given its massive size, it will take a long time for gentrification to complete, if ever. But regular people have to live somewhere, and so the gradual change is probably good for everyone. Just stay away from the tough parts where shooting really do occur regularly.