Possibly moving to Annapolis area.. safety? (Baltimore, Silver Spring: for sale, rent, HOA fees)

[Cutea]

Hi everyone,
My husband and I are considering a move to Annapolis (we currently live in Bowie and HATE IT.). We saw an adorable townhouse for sale on Clay Street, but I was reading forums and the crime reports and it seems like this area is dangerous..We really want to live in downtown Annapolis so that we can walk places and enjoy the town.. But the main issue is that we haven't found that much in our price range.

Does anyone have firsthand experience with the Clay Street area of Annapolis??? (Not just what you've read, but do you either LIVE near there, or on that actual street?) I know that neighborhood safety can be subjective, and I have seen some actually dangerous neighborhoods, like inner city Baltimore, Detroit, etc. We used to live in downtown Silver Spring and I saw my handful of strange incidents and arrests there. We also lived near the Johns Hopkins campus in Baltimore for a while... And we live next to the Bowie Town Center now (supposedly a "high crime" shopping center)..Not to mention, I've seen neighborhoods in Brooklyn where you wouldn't even want to walk around in during the day.. Considering all of this, how bad is the Clay street neighborhood, really? For example, would I be able to walk home from my car after dark (I'm a White female in my 30's) without worrying about being followed/harassed/assaulted/robbed? Would we have to worry about things like our cars being broken into, getting burglarized, etc.?? I can deal with some level of crime in a neighborhood. My main concern would be someone following me and assaulting/raping me, or hurting me in some way.

Thanks for any advice you can provide.

[cjmeck]

Have you googled "clay street Annapolis"? Just wondering... I read an article by the Capital Gazette that seemed pretty thorough. What was the vibe you got? It is supposed to be a nice weekend, so go by in the middle of the day and take a walk. I don't know that area specifically, hope someone else can chime in.

[bus man]

Clay Street is a low-income, primarily black neighborhood. The transition from Historic Downtown to unkempt residential area is abrupt, and I would imagine that it would be rather startling to someone not expecting it. Personally, I don't think it would be a good fit for you.

[PylesFord]

STOP!!! Based upon years of walking in & around the Clay Street area you do NOT want to walk, live, rent or buy there IF you value your safety.

[Cutea]

Bus Man and Pylesford,
Thank you for your input. Can you tell me a bit more though? I'm aware that it's a low-income primarily black neighborhood... what crime have you witnessed there? Is it all perception, or is the whole street actually really dangerous? The woman who lived in the townhouse for 10 years is a 60 year old Caucasian woman and she told us that she felt safe there and "never" used her alarm system.. She also knew all the neighbors on the street and said some of them had lived there for 50+ years.. was she lying to us?

I'm just trying to understand what types of crime specifically are known in that area.

[North Beach Person]

Clay Street and surrounding areas:
drugs
prostitution
robberies
break ins, both car and dwelling
assaults

[bus man]

Originally Posted by Cutea

Bus Man and Pylesford,
Thank you for your input. Can you tell me a bit more though? I'm aware that it's a low-income primarily black neighborhood... what crime have you witnessed there? Is it all perception, or is the whole street actually really dangerous? The woman who lived in the townhouse for 10 years is a 60 year old Caucasian woman and she told us that she felt safe there and "never" used her alarm system.. She also knew all the neighbors on the street and said some of them had lived there for 50+ years.. was she lying to us?

I'm just trying to understand what types of crime specifically are known in that area.

The only specific "crimes" I have witnessed on Clay Street are loitering and littering. But one can tell a lot about an area just by looking at it. For example, well-kept houses and clean streets indicate pride of ownership and a desire to improve one's community, whereas unkempt houses and litter in the streets indicate the opposite. From what I've seen, Clay Street does not strike me as an especially safe place to spend a lot of time. I guess you can say that it's my perception, as I've never lived there and thus cannot back up my apprehensions with solid facts.

You did not mention a 60 year old Caucasian woman in your previous post. Is she the owner of the townhouse you are considering buying? If so, I would take her remarks with a grain of salt. She might be telling you the honest truth, or she might be desperate to get out and thus will tell you anything to close the deal. Or, if she is not the owner but is someone else who lives nearby . . . she might love her neighbors and be happy living among them, or she might feel isolated and is eager for more white people to move in around her. You just don't know.

[K-Luv]

I don't know about Clay Street, but despite the $1M yachts and Naval Academy, Annapolis definitely has a sketchy side.

Annapolis is also very touristy. Sometimes I do not know which is worse: drug dealers and prostitutes hanging out; or tourists. (yes, I am being serious. Tourists tend to be extremely annoying in general. Drug dealers and prostitutes will leave you alone unless you give them a reason not to).

[Cutea]

Thanks, BusMan. The "60 year old Caucasian woman" was the owner of the unit for 10 years... Yeah, it was hard to say if she was just eager to sell the place, or if she was telling the truth. We ended up letting it go, because she was asking WAY too much for it ($310,000) and we actually went to Clay Street at 9:30 pm on a Friday night and walked around.. It didn't feel safe to me. Too many housing projects with loitering folks and there was a creepy guy sitting in a parked car watching us walk around.. Not great.

The biggest problem for us is that we have a low budget, and Annapolis is insanely expensive. We saw another house on Parole Street that we are going to look at this week... does anyone know about that area? I looked on Spotcrime and Neighborhood Scout and nothing abnormal came up... I guess like you all said, the best way to find out is to spend some time in the neighborhoods and get a "feel" for them.. As I mentioned in my original post, I'm a pretty seasoned gal and I have lived in many areas that others would consider "sketchy".... We live right next to the Bowie Town Center now, and people always gasp and say, "ooh, you live in PG County!" But of course, it's a boring suburb and we haven't seen anything dangerous or unusual here in 2 years.. so, it's all a matter of perspective. Or, maybe we are just lucky>??

[Cutea]

K-Luv: Agreed! Annapolis, at least downtown is definitely touristy.. It does get annoying, especially in the summer, and trying to find parking down there. We would love to live downtown, but of course, the houses are very expensive.. Even a condo we saw near the State circle was $350,000 and that wasn't including the $520 monthly HOA fees...

It doesn't seem that there are a lot of mid-range housing options in Annapolis. It's either: you are wealthy and can afford to buy a nice-sized house near downtown, OR.. you have to live in an iffy neighborhood. We don't want to live in Arnold or Cape Saint Claire, or Odenton areas, because they are too suburban and far from my work... We've tried Edgewater, but the neighborhoods we've looked at there seemed a bit trashy- lawns with old cars strewn all over, old bathtubs, beat up cars, run-down houses.. Maybe we weren't looking in the right areas, I don't know. Edgewater also seems kind of boring.