Quality of living in Corpus? (Dallas, Corpus Christi: apartment, crime, neighborhoods)

[CalallenMom]

Personally, I don't particularly care for it here and am looking foward to moving hopefully this year. I will, however, miss the Calallen school district a LOT and can only hope I will be lucky enough to find a school like them. As for it being a good place to raise a family, well, that's debatable. Of course, people will say, "but there's crime everywhere" and while that's true, I find it particularly high for our sized population. There was a time where I said I would never leave (did as a child for a bit, but was extremely homesick, naturally), but the time has come and after my husband and I evaluated everything, we think it's a good decision career and family wise to make the move.

[CCMan]

I liked Corpus Christi a lot and missed it when I moved. I was raised there and have a lot of family there to this day that I visit from time to time. But the place isn't what I remembered from a kid. It looks real run down and dirty. Believe me when I say I wish I could go back for a while and experience it grown up. I just don't know if I could retire there or raise a family there. I want things to change.

[mhl]

20 year resident here. I'd avoid this city if at all possible. I fall under the category of people who were raised here and stay only because of proximity to family. The city has long suffered from an exodus of it's young people. Kids get sent off to college and never come back! The result is a poorly educated population (high school and undergraduate graduation rates are around 75% and 18% respectively).

More details:

The job market is pretty poor. Unemployment is relatively low, but well paying jobs are few and far between and seem to be concentrated in a just a few large companies. Median income for the county is well below the national average.

House prices are pretty good, but it's offset by high property taxes. The school system is decent. Some schools are good, some are bad.

Activities are a mixed bag. There's plenty of hunting and fishing opportunities, a few large festivals, and some minor league sports teams, but beyond that there's really not much.

Our live music scene is terrible compared to other Texas cities. Organized adult activities such as clubs and recreational sports leagues are mostly non-existent. The local museums are mostly tourist draws not worth visiting more than once or twice a year.

There's just a lot less to do than you would expect from a city of 300,000. Unless you love to go to bars and get wasted, chances are you'll end very bored most of the time.

Crime is high. Admittedly there's not a lot of violent crime (although we do have quite a bit of gang activity, it can be avoided by staying out of certain parts of the city), but I've had so many stolen bicycles and smashed car windows that it's infuriating. It's like we have to put up with big city crime without all the other benefits that come from living in a big city.

In summary, unless you have an aversion to living in a large city, there is really no reason to choose CC over San Antonio, Austin, Dallas, or Houston. And if you do wish to avoid the big cities, there are much better choices than CC, but you may have to look outside of Texas.

[Marlow]

Originally Posted by mhl

20 year resident here. I'd avoid this city if at all possible. I fall under the category of people who were raised here and stay only because of proximity to family. The city has long suffered from an exodus of it's young people. Kids get sent off to college and never come back! The result is a poorly educated population (high school and undergraduate graduation rates are around 75% and 18% respectively).

More details:

The job market is pretty poor. Unemployment is relatively low, but well paying jobs are few and far between and seem to be concentrated in a just a few large companies. Median income for the county is well below the national average.

House prices are pretty good, but it's offset by high property taxes. The school system is decent. Some schools are good, some are bad.

Activities are a mixed bag. There's plenty of hunting and fishing opportunities, a few large festivals, and some minor league sports teams, but beyond that there's really not much.

Our live music scene is terrible compared to other Texas cities. Organized adult activities such as clubs and recreational sports leagues are mostly non-existent. The local museums are mostly tourist draws not worth visiting more than once or twice a year.

There's just a lot less to do than you would expect from a city of 300,000. Unless you love to go to bars and get wasted, chances are you'll end very bored most of the time.

Crime is high. Admittedly there's not a lot of violent crime (although we do have quite a bit of gang activity, it can be avoided by staying out of certain parts of the city), but I've had so many stolen bicycles and smashed car windows that it's infuriating. It's like we have to put up with big city crime without all the other benefits that come from living in a big city.

In summary, unless you have an aversion to living in a large city, there is really no reason to choose CC over San Antonio, Austin, Dallas, or Houston. And if you do wish to avoid the big cities, there are much better choices than CC, but you may have to look outside of Texas.

Everyone is entitled to his/her opinion, obviously, but I disagree with the bolded statement. If you like beach and water-related activities--fishing, birding, surfing, wind-surfing and kite sailing, kayaking, sailing, etc.,--you'll never be bored.

Also, while we don't a big live music scene, there is a small local and regional scene and bigger bands do come. There's also a wonderful symphony and two dance companies if you like that type of thing.

[bb54321]

The job market could be a lot worse. It's much better than the rest of the country right now. You go a little overboard in painting an ugly picture, mhl. It's not nearly as bad as you make it out to be.

[CalallenMom]

Originally Posted by bb54321

The job market could be a lot worse. It's much better than the rest of the country right now. You go a little overboard in painting an ugly picture, mhl. It's not nearly as bad as you make it out to be.

In terms of career opportunity, I think Corpus is scarce in that department. Almost every man I know has considered or has done refinery work not necessarily because they want to, but because it's usually available. Yes, you're right that the job market could be worse, but there's also no growth, few thriving large businesses, etc. I've mentioned it before, but my husband and I are looking to relocate to San Antonio because the career he's in, he could get paid salary, work a LOT less hours, great benefits, etc. Of course, this is our reasoning, but there's a lot of people moving for similar reasons.

[CptnRn]

I was surprised by all the comments about crime in Corpus, so I decided to verify that. This website lists the crime rates in most US cities. Rates are based on cases per 100,000 for all of calendar 2007.

United States cities by crime rate - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

You can sort the list for each type of crime by clicking on the little box with triangles at the top of each column. Doing so I found that Corpus Christi has the following crime rates.

Overall Violent crime is average putting Corpus at 38th place out of 76 cities listed.
Violent crimes include murder, rape, robbery and aggravated assault.
Rape is surprisingly high putting Corpus at 6th place in the nation.
Assault is also high putting Corpus at 26th place in the nation.
Murder and robbery are below average

Property crimes is a big problem putting Corpus at 11th place in the nation.
Property crimes include burglary, larceny-theft, motor vehicle theft and arson.
Larceny-Theft is very high putting Corpus at third place in the nation.
Burglary and Arson is average. Motor Vehicle theft is extremely low.

[Austin97]

Originally Posted by mhl

20 year resident here. I'd avoid this city if at all possible. I fall under the category of people who were raised here and stay only because of proximity to family. The city has long suffered from an exodus of it's young people. Kids get sent off to college and never come back! The result is a poorly educated population (high school and undergraduate graduation rates are around 75% and 18% respectively).

More details:

The job market is pretty poor. Unemployment is relatively low, but well paying jobs are few and far between and seem to be concentrated in a just a few large companies. Median income for the county is well below the national average.

House prices are pretty good, but it's offset by high property taxes. The school system is decent. Some schools are good, some are bad.

Activities are a mixed bag. There's plenty of hunting and fishing opportunities, a few large festivals, and some minor league sports teams, but beyond that there's really not much.

Our live music scene is terrible compared to other Texas cities. Organized adult activities such as clubs and recreational sports leagues are mostly non-existent. The local museums are mostly tourist draws not worth visiting more than once or twice a year.

There's just a lot less to do than you would expect from a city of 300,000. Unless you love to go to bars and get wasted, chances are you'll end very bored most of the time.

Crime is high. Admittedly there's not a lot of violent crime (although we do have quite a bit of gang activity, it can be avoided by staying out of certain parts of the city), but I've had so many stolen bicycles and smashed car windows that it's infuriating. It's like we have to put up with big city crime without all the other benefits that come from living in a big city.

In summary, unless you have an aversion to living in a large city, there is really no reason to choose CC over San Antonio, Austin, Dallas, or Houston. And if you do wish to avoid the big cities, there are much better choices than CC, but you may have to look outside of Texas.

Im from austin and I love living here, but Im really starting to like corpus. We are looking to buy a place down there to enjoy the beach and the water sports. The one thing that corpus needs is city leadership to have a unifying vision for what corpus should be. As a pretty nice waterfront community there is so much potential.

We had a place in galveston that got destroyed by hurricane ike so we thought we would visit corpus and we like it and the area a lot better.

If they would develop north beach into a boardwalk it would be awesome. Im just amazed that that area has so much open land and the property is downright cheap! You can get a 1 br waterfront condo for around 60K.

[changeofpace]

Relocated here from Minnesota a little over a year ago and love it. We did 2 years of research before deciding to relocate to Corpus for our retirement (have 10-15 years to work before we turn retirement age). You don't need to speak spanish, everyone is friendly, we have experienced no discrimination, housing costs and cost of living is less here than most parts of the country, there is plenty to do and the city is improving in many ways thanks to the bonds passing in last years election. We chose Flour Bluff to build our home because of the schools reputation and due to the fact the bluff is improving in so many ways. My wife moved her business here and she loves the business climate as well.

[CptnRn]

Originally Posted by Austin97

Im from austin and I love living here, but Im really starting to like corpus. We are looking to buy a place down there to enjoy the beach and the water sports. The one thing that corpus needs is city leadership to have a unifying vision for what corpus should be. As a pretty nice waterfront community there is so much potential.

We had a place in galveston that got destroyed by hurricane ike so we thought we would visit corpus and we like it and the area a lot better.

If they would develop north beach into a boardwalk it would be awesome. Im just amazed that that area has so much open land and the property is downright cheap! You can get a 1 br waterfront condo for around 60K.

I have to agree, Corpus has so much potential for an awesome waterfront development. Maybe I should just shut up and go start buying up property?