Whetsel Ave Madisonville house?

[Sarah Perry]

'Some entire blocks in those areas (Bantry in Kennedy Hts, and Lantana in College Hill, to name but two) are lined with those sturdy 1 1/2-story domiciles, with their cozy front porches and second-story gables. Both neighborhoods aresomewhat "integrated," though the sections with bungalows are less affluent and predominantly if not entirely AA. Neither community has a major crime problem..."

For what it's worth, I've heard from a couple area residents that Lantana has become a street with a lot of drug traffic.

[Ohiogirl81]

I can think of worse places to live -- even in Madisonville -- but no, I wouldn't buy a house there, either.

Madisonville isn't hostile to outsiders as a whole, but the folks that frequent upper Whetsel often are.

[goyguy]

It's worth a good bit. Thank you! Situations like that tend not to go on for too long. After enough complaints the police activity increases and the bad guys close up shop. But investigations can sometimes take months if not years to conclude before the big dramatic sweep of arrests that makes the news. I thank my lucky stars that I've never lived in a neighborhood where large-scale dealing took hold. It has to be aggravating (if not worse) to have to be extra cautious before leaving the house and arriving home, investing in security systems to guard against the burglaries that inevitably increase, etc etc, no matter that when the bad actors are finally incarcerated the block returns to being a great place to call home. College Hill in general rarely gets heard about for the wrong reasons (there's even a B & B there.) But last month there was a fatal shooting of a "suspected" dealer not far from Lantana Ave in an apartment complex (probably "Section 8'd".) Any seasoned urbanite knows what that means - not that the activity has now been curtailed because of that, but that it's now open season on who gains control of the deceased's "sales territory." The good side of the scenario is that the authorities are well attuned to it too.
I'm glad SP brought this to light, b/c it made me realize I'd made a glaring omission. My rule is to always suggest to prospective home buyers that they look at the police department's incident logs as part of checking out a neighborhood. One can even do this online, by visiting Cincinnati.Com and clicking on the "data center" link. All the crime stats for the past five years are stored there, street by street. It can be a real eye-opener both for those who think certain neighborhoods are terror zones when literally nothing goes on, and for those who have the notion that a given area has no problems when fill-in-the-blank-offense runs rampant. The OP may find that her "target" house in Madville is in the middle of an oasis of calm, and a quirk of cities of which I'm sure she's aware is that these oases are practically never breached. (When I once told my sister, in town for a visit, to steer clear of an intersection three blocks from my place after dark because of the drive-through drug sales she was completely nonplussed: "Oh yeah, there's a corner just like that which I can see from my [high-rent] apartment in Chicago." Ho hum. Over the past six months there've been all of two muggings and one GPS theft in my immediate area. It's safer than most of the suburbs.)

[Sarah Perry]

A quick note on the crime statistics: I checked them one time for my very quiet, safe neighborhood and noticed two or three recent crime reports for an address a couple streets away. I know the homeowners, and initially I thought the information just seemed plain wrong. Then I remembered that they own several rental properties near UC, and I figured out that the reports were being recorded under the property owners' address, not the address of the actual occurrence.

This kind of thing probably affects only a small percentage of the reports, but I thought it was worth mentioning.

[WhereForARt]

Oh for God's sake, Madisonville is perfectly safe. I'm an older middle-class single white woman who lives alone and have lived in Madisonville for 10 years without a single incident. It's a beautiful historic neighborhood and has a strong neighborhood council. The area you are talking about is a very quiet neighborhood, with some beautiful architecture there and I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it, especially if you are used to diverse neighborhoods.

During the last presidential campaign, I went door-to-door throughout the neighborhood campaigning as a volunteer and not once did I feel threatened. The people in Madisonville are genuinely nice and care about their houses and their community. It is a welcoming community and a wonderful place to live.

By the way, the article Wilson linked to is from 2003 - seven years ago.

[Tubby513]

Originally Posted by WhereForARt

Oh for God's sake, Madisonville is perfectly safe. I'm an older middle-class single white woman who lives alone and have lived in Madisonville for 10 years without a single incident. It's a beautiful historic neighborhood and has a strong neighborhood council. The area you are talking about is a very quiet neighborhood, with some beautiful architecture there and I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it, especially if you are used to diverse neighborhoods.

During the last presidential campaign, I went door-to-door throughout the neighborhood campaigning as a volunteer and not once did I feel threatened. The people in Madisonville are genuinely nice and care about their houses and their community. It is a welcoming community and a wonderful place to live.

By the way, the article Wilson linked to is from 2003 - seven years ago.

I love it here too. I've had my problems since moving in, but it's not going to force me out. My street is FULL of good people, and the houses are diverse and awesome.

[Ohiogirl81]

Hey, I lived in Madisonville myself for 13 years, and loved every minute of it. But I wouldn't choose to live in that particular area.

[mrsnj20]

I just moved to Madisonville recently and it doesn't seem to be as bad as everyone says. I haven't noticed anyone on the corner of Whetsel and Madison selling drugs. It does seem to be a little dicey at the corner of Whetsel and Bramble at times though. I think most of Cincinnati is infested with drugs as a whole, not just Madisonville. I work at a hospital downtown and it seems like half of the patients and families are on drugs. It's sad really. I just moved back from Miami Florida and there are more people on drugs in Cincinnati than there were there.

That being said, I think Madisonville is as good as any other area in Cincinnati. It butts up to Hyde Park and Mariemont and every place is convenient from here. All of my neighbors have been perfectly nice and friendly. It seems like lately, I have even seen at least as many white residents as black, so I wouldn't necessarily call it a black neighborhood. Really, it doesn't matter anyway what color the residents are. It matters what kind of people they are.

I know there is a citizens patrol and also a good guy loitering program that are targeting the area if anyone is interested in joining. I hope the area will continue to improve with these and become a great sought after neighborhood, because many of the houses here are beautiful and just as nice as the surrounding areas. Many of them just need someone to take care of them or rehab them.

[progmac]

i think serious house restorers often end up in 'less desirable' neighborhoods because they don't want to pay $150 per sf for someone else's lousy "restoration" work. check with restorationconsultant, a regular on here, for his opinions on some of the neighborhoods with the most potential for restoration. arts and crafts houses are our "newer" housing stock and are common in our neighborhoods closer to the outer boundaries of the city (but still ~ 5-8 miles from downtown). there are a couple craftsman style houses on what are now less desirable (but still safe) streets in pleasant ridge for under $75k.