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I reside in Astoria Queens and understand your plight. If I did not live in a rent stabilized apt I would be looking to move back to Kearny where I was raised.
A few misconceptions about Kearny mentioned:
1) "It has gone downhill". It has not. Kearny did decline from about the 80's into the 90's and then began a slow turnaround beginning just before and accelerating with the present long-time mayor. I was raised in Kearny at a time when the town suffered a good deal of political corruption. And even then the demographics of the town were changing - first wave of the large Portuguese population moved into the town. Also, as with many other industrial areas, Kearny's industrial base did shrink. However, much has been done in the past 20 years to shore it up and use the large Meadowlands of Kearny for warehouse, distribution and light manufacturing as well set aside as nature preserve.
2)The biggest change in Kearny happened in the mid 90's - the largest populations from South America moving into town. Today it is as one poster said more like a United Nations. The make-up of the commercial district changed over time so that along Kearny Ave from Midland Ave past Bergen you will find more establishment selling, Mexican, Ecuadorean, Venezualen, general Spanish food along with standbys such as Italian and Chinese restaurants. This in addition to the expansion of Portuguese style cafes which are somewhat unique though the food offerings share some commonalities with Brazilian food.
3) Kearny is more walkable than West Orange BUT the main shopping areas are a bit spread out. One of the best redevelopments is the old industrial areas near the East Newark border which borders the edge of a lovely river side park that extends for a good 2 miles. Riverbank Park, excellent for dog walking and bbqs to the north near North Arlington and further down there are recreational facilities - hockey rink (year round) archery. The other shopping areas are Kearny Ave from Midland past Bergen Ave where the nice Carnegie Library is (and Civil War museum is) the town hall. Other shopping areas are smaller or have local grocery stores -or minimalls - for example at the North Arlington Border near the Pike and Schuyler there is a small shopping center for food and groceries. At the north end of town into North Arlington there is a smattering of bars with one good one called Republik in North Arling, a good Cuban place on Kearny Ave.
4) Roosevelt Elementary School is excellent the high school s sfrom what I hear solid but you have to check it out and just stay on top. The high school does a free show for seniors and the community featuring there musical and arts each year.
5) Parks - for quiet compact with a lovely lake and plenty of jogging paths with one or two touches showing the type of design you would see say at Branch Brook or even bits of Central Park, West Hudson Park is a lovely park off Kearny Ave a few blocks from the Harrison border. There is a nice baseball field off Belgrove not far from a mini mall. In the "manor section there is a one block square playground/playing field/basketball court well-used and maintained.
6) Transportation, the town is working hard to get a NJ transit train station back in Kearny but at a more convenient location. As has been mentioned the best area to live for access to public transport is either in the center of town where you can catch the 30 and 76 that bring you to Newark Penn Station or about 1/2 mile from Harrison PATH. The 40 bus can be caught to drop you right by Harrison PATH along Bell Pike in the "manor section" which is quite nice with single family homes and some of them quite gorgeous (those on Clinton Ave and the streets of West Bennett having a few of these). You can catch the 40 also further into town along Davis and Schuyler to get you to the PATH or Newark Penn. Along the Bell Pike you can catch the DeCamp 44 to NYC. The main drawback is you have to rely on buses to get to the PATH. The plus is you are a short, low cost cab ride to Newark Airport. Overall Kearny is more convenient than West Orange for public transportation and the following thoroughfares are served by public transport: Kearny Ave, Belgrove Drive, Bell Pike and Schuyler/Davis Aves.
7) Crime - it is low BUT it ain't Mayberry. As you lived in Brooklyn I would say the crime rate would be comparable to Midwood Brooklyn, East Elmhurst Queens. The housing stock varies with some areas looking a little more like Elmhurst Queens and South Park Slope with the predominance of 2 and 4 family houses while to the north in the Manor section, areas of Belgrove Drive you have housing stock similar to the solidly middle class suburban areas of Bayside, Queens and the areas south of Brooklyn College in Brooklyn. The only areas I would say are a prone to crime (shoplifting and theft) is down by Bergen Ave into Schuyler near the Walmart. When they arrest folks for drugs (mainly pot) it seems to be the street off the western side of Kearny Ave near the border with East Newark.
8) Public works - it depends. They have spent much time and effort in renewing all parks and playgrounds and they do there best to keep up streets and infrastructure. But it is very tough - Kearny is quite a complex town in geography and zoning - it has an international port (South Kearny), wetlands preserved, industrial manfuucturing areas as well as wetlands damaged from pollution. These areas you at most would drive along (Schuyler Ave) or heading to Jersey City but would not little or no housing there. The residential areas are all situated along a slowly rising ridge starting from Harrison and continuing past Hackensack.
9) Kearny is developing more quality retail and there are many mom and pop shops - but I would not say it is a shoppers paradise. However, eating wise it is great for ethnic eats. Recently tn 2016 they did there first Kearny Food Truck Festival and it seemed to be a hit.
Overall, you will need a car - even in the old suburbs and industrial towns of New Jersey. It is just you will use it more likely on weekends if you live near groceries and public transport. Again for this I suggest: the center of town off Belgrove or Kearny from Midland to the Harrison/East Newark border, Bell Pike and above Schuyler not far from the North Arlington border.
...I've been trawling citydata for comments on areas that I've been looking at and, with a budget of $350K, I've somewhat narrowed it down to Kearny or West Orange. ... I need a somewhat walkable area, as the mother in law does not drive (you can all be thankful for that.) but she is very active for her age.
Walkable area? Forget West Orange. Kearny is for you!
But MontclairNative suggests two towns you've overlooked: Rutherford and NUTLEY!
Although Nutley taxes are by no means cheap, none of the three others have West Orange's sky-high taxes. Keep in mind that at current mortgage rates, a one thousand dollar difference in the annual property tax bill equates to an $18,000+/- difference in the how much of a mortgage you can afford!
Accordingly, compared to WO, you could probably afford another $40-80K on the house price in Nutley, Kearny, or Rutherford.
Walkable area? Forget West Orange. Kearny is for you!
But MontclairNative suggests two towns you've overlooked: Rutherford and NUTLEY!
Although Nutley taxes are by no means cheap, none of the three others have West Orange's sky-high taxes. Keep in mind that at current mortgage rates, a one thousand dollar difference in the annual property tax bill equates to an $18,000+/- difference in the how much of a mortgage you can afford!
Accordingly, compared to WO, you could probably afford another $40-80K on the house price in Nutley, Kearny, or Rutherford.
I do not know about Kearny and Rutherford but Nutley tax rate I think is the same as Wesr Orange.
I have 2 relatives that work in the Kearny school system and I can tell you the schools are terrible, especially the high school. They even said they would never send their own kids through that school system.
Lived in Kearny for a while. I agree with Astoria and Ansky. My kids went to Roosevelt grammer school which is a good school. When it was time to move onto middle school it was time to relocate. The high school isn't that good imo. We lived in the manor section which was heavily treed and resembled the suburbs. It is the nicest section.
If you're a Brooklyn urbanite you should seriously check out Newark. Easy shot to WTC on the 24 hr PATH train. It's got it's rough spots to stay away from just like BK does but it's not as bad as it used to be and will only get better.
Kearny has 6 options for commuting to NYC. We also have a n active senior community for your mother in law and a tremendous youth program. We have a high school that had been named a school of distinction and a new middle school that is equipped to prepare the kids to enter High School. At the high school level in addition to our own High School kids can apply for and be bused to High Tech, Hudson County School of Technology and one more whose name escapes me. Both of my boys went to Kearny High and one for them went to public middle school, the other t o Catholic grammar school. We have youth activities ranging from soccer to bowling to cub scouts, West Hudson arts and theater, many programs including cooking class at the library. We have 3 senior groups, we have UNICO( Italian) Scots American Club ( Including horseshoes, and Shuffle board leagues) Portuguese Cultural Association, We have at least 3 catholic Churches 2 Presbyterian, A Jewish Synagogue, A Hindu center, Woman's Club, I suggest you look at Kearnyusa.com and click on town information where it lists the various organizations such as Marine Corp House, the Community Garden, VFW, Churches etc.
Former WO resident here. I'll give you the low-down. I don't know Kearny really well at all.
1) West Orange is essentially two towns in one. There is "up the hill" and "down the hill." The borderline is Prospect Avenue and Gregory Avenue. "Down The Hill" are the parts of town that border Orange, South Orange and Montclair. "Up The Hill" borders Livingston, Millburn, Roseland and Verona. The town has a very steep incline that is very noticeable.
2) There are certain neighbohoods within Down-The-Hill and Up-The-Hill. St. Cloud/Pleasantville/Englishtown/Redwood are Up The Hill. Down The Hill has The Valley/Tory Corner/Eagle Rock (also known as Lourdes).
2A) The Gregory neighborhood is the one area that sorta straddles both.
3) People from West Orange don't really like to admit there is a difference between two towns out loud. Privately? Yes. But in public? No. It has always been like that and it will always be like that. I don't know what it's like now but there were even two separate Little Leagues when I grew up.
4) There is a pretty significant difference between DTH and UTH.
DTH was traditionally more working/middle class and had a little more of a city feel. This is because Thomas Edison had his factories right on Main Street, which attracted a lot of Irish and Italian immigrants from Newark, Jersey City and New York. Tory Corner gets its name from being a pro-English stronghold during the Revolutionary War. There is still a big St. Patrick's Day Parade every year on Main Street.
DTH changed a lot in the 90s/00s. A lot of people in the area were second or third generation residents. A lot of people retired. Taxes in WO are notoriously high (as stated above). And there was definitely a certain degree of white flight. (This is also someone no one will talk about.) Main Street now has a lot of Mexican/Salvadoran/Latin American restaurants and bodegas. Down The Hill has a very sizable Latino and African-American population.
Certain neighborhoods DTH (where I grew up) aren't so great. The areas down by the factories/Tory Corner (Watchung Ave. in particular) have always been petty banged up. Harrison Ave. and some of the blocks by Colgate Field are also pretty rough. It's not as crazy as Newark, but there's certainly a fair amount of urban blight/poverty/drug dealing. The Valley also has some blocks that are really sketchy, especially the blocks that border Orange (which has a lot of problems).
Some parts of DTH are still pretty nice. Eagle Rock/Lourdes is really quiet. The Valley is nice the closer you get to Seton Hall Prep.
4A) The factories in themselves are a really crazy story. There's the Edison National Historic Site. And across the street is a big redevelopment project. This used to be "the factories." There were some pretty awful shops and a gym in there for a years, but largely the buildings went more and more derelict. The town council entered into a really shady deal with a developer, who had a bunch of financing problems, which resulted in the building being a big pile of rubble for about a decade. They just within the past year selected a new developer. They're billing the final project as something to appeal to people who would normally look at Montclair and South Orange/Maplewood. We'll see about that.
5) UTH developed later than DTH, so it has a more suburban character. There are some middle class areas and some really wealthy sections. There's a sizable Jewish population, with a fair amount of Orthodox temples (and an Orthodox Jewish high school). The neighborhoods close to Livingston tend to be pretty ritzy. St. Cloud is also very nice, too.
6) I'm not sure of all of the bus routes into NYC from town, but I don't know if there's one to Lower Manhattan. Any of the buses I took to NYC went to Port Authority. But there are a few lines (the 21 on Main Street) goes to Newark, where you can take the PATH over to the WTC.
7) Walkability in West Orange isn't really a thing because of how spread out it is and that it's on a giant hill. Main Street DTH has a commercial strip that starts at Eagle Rock (with a few Irish bars and places like that) past whatever they call what used to be Edison Middle School and then another commercial district in Tory Corner and then into St. Mark's which is where Town Hall and the library are. I guess you could walk that stretch but it's pretty dumpy, to be honest.
Up-The-Hill has a few different commercial districts like in Pleasantdale and St. Cloud. But they're really spread out from each other. And they're also on major roads that sorta feel like highways. (Like Eagle Rock Ave., Pleasant Valley Way.)
8) The schools in WO are pretty fascinating. The quality of your education can very much depend on what neighborhood you live in, although the sending zones have changed a lot after I moved from town. But the education experience in Washington School (built in the 1800s and a crumbling mess when I went to school there in the 80s) is going to be different than St. Cloud. Redwood took in kids from that part of town and Eagle Rock when I was growing up. That was the only school in town that served both UTH and DTH neighborhoods. But I'm not sure what is what now.
8A) Seton Hall Prep and Solomon Schecter are also in West Orange. And there are also a few other private schools in the surrounding towns. A lot of kids from DTH (especially Eagle Rock) whose parents could afford it send their kids to Seton Hall Prep. It's an all-boys Catholic prep school and definitely has a jock culture attached to it. Schecter is a private Jewish school.
9) The middle schools also changed. There are three now, and I don't know how they split up. When there were two, it was Roosevelt and Edison. Roosevelt was definitely better than Edison. Some families I knew actually moved to the other side of town to avoid sending kids to Edison.
10) The high school is super interesting. I graduated in the mid-90s and it was incredibly diverse. My graduating class was 90% white kids but my sister graduated a few years later and it was 60% white kids. I had another family member graduate this year and the mix was even bigger. And a good percentage of the white kids are also Jewish.
Some people say the high school is a pit filled with fights. Others love it and rave about it. It's definitely an interesting experience.
I would say that when I graduated in the 90s it was a little of column A and a little of column B. If you were in all honors and AP classes, you could very much get an education to send you to an Ivy League school. A few of my classmates went to those types of colleges. If you weren't in those classes, the quality dropped drastically because there were plenty of fights and just general nonsense. The only time there was really any mix with everyone was in lunch, gym, the hallways and school buses.
It wasn't Season 4 of The Wire but it wasn't West Beverly, either. There were all sorts of crazy things that happened when I went to school there. I lived DTH but hung out mostly with up-the-hill kids. My experiences were definitely different than my friends who grew up on the other side of Prospect.
Growing up in that atmosphere really made me understand the world a little bit better, I think. Smaller towns and other districts definitely didn't have the diversity WO does, which has a lot of benefits. But the school system definitely has its issues, too.
We have a high school that had been named a school of distinction and a new middle school that is equipped to prepare the kids to enter High School.
A "distinction" of what? Kearny High is ranked in the bottom 20% of high schools in the state. When the NJ high school report card came out a couple years ago, Kearny was ranked in the same category as Irvington. That's certainly nothing to be proud of. I know someone that teaches at Kearny High and I hear nothing but bad things.
Harrison Ave. and some of the blocks by Colgate Field are also pretty rough. It's not as crazy as Newark, but there's certainly a fair amount of urban blight/poverty/drug dealing.
I think you have been out of town too long. I have been living in WO for close to 10 years and this comment is just plain silly. Pretty "rough" compared to what? I walked these streets almost every day when my daughter went to preschool in that area. The houses are not as nice as other parts of town, but "rough" is a ridiculous way to describe this area. I have never felt even remotely unsafe and the kids at school walk to Colgate Park to play every day. There is certainly no drug dealing going on. Go take a walk down South Orange Ave. in Newark if you want to know what "rough" looks like.
My daughter now attends Redwood Elementary. The school is top notch and ranked a 9 out of 10 on Greatschools. Edison school is now a 6th grade middle school that all kids in town attend. The other 2 middle schools are Liberty and Roosevelt. My neighbor attends Liberty. The school is brand new and he loves it there.
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