Millennials want to buy in Pittsburgh (Allentown, Penn Hills: section 8, best suburbs, homes)

[bluecarebear]

Originally Posted by tyovan4

Someone I know just got an apartment for about $500 a month near Troy Hill. It is still possible to find bargains.

I would never suggest someone move to Troy Hill. First, safety. Second, the Shaler school district would be a wiser investment choice considering the proximity of Troy Hill to Spring Hill and Northview Heights. That whole area is known for drugs and crime.

[I_Like_Spam]

Originally Posted by bluecarebear

I would never suggest someone move to Troy Hill. First, safety. Second, the Shaler school district would be a wiser investment choice considering the proximity of Troy Hill to Northview Heights.

Troy Hill isn't particularly close to Northview Heights at all. Maybe as the crow flies, it looks close, but the wide Spring Garden Valley sits between the 2.

[bluecarebear]

Originally Posted by I_Like_Spam

Troy Hill isn't particularly close to Northview Heights at all. Maybe as the crow flies, it looks close, but the wide Spring Garden Valley sits between the 2.

I updated my post. I would include Spring Hill with Troy Hill. It's all petty crime and drugs. Why not move to Millvale or Reserve township instead? Doesn't Troy Hill and Northview Heights share the same school district, Perry?

[erieguy]

Originally Posted by Merge

Statistics are only one part of a larger understanding of any issue. You'd actually have to understand context to give meaning to those numbers.

What is the risk that a member of a white middle class family is going to be murdered in Brighton Heights or Bellevue? What is the chance that such an individual would be murdered by someone they didn't know? If you claim such a grasp of these statistics (which, as you say, don't lie) then go ahead and offer some real insights. Otherwise you are spouting nonsense.

All one has to do is compare stats from one area to another to realize the odds of the the things you mentioned happening are greater in one area vs another.

[erieguy]

Originally Posted by RogersParkTransplant

I have friends with PhDs in Statistics, and the first thing they will tell you is that the numbers can be manipulated in a million ways to suit any agenda. The truth is that we are all individuals who just live our own lives as we see fit. My family is very happy here, and we have great neighbors who also seem happy. I know there are streets within a few miles of here that are not safe, but I also know that our street is absolutely fine. In exchange for living within two miles of the unsafe streets, we also get to live within two miles of the Strip district, and a ten-minute bus ride to downtown. I think that's a fair trade. I also save a lot of money by living in the city, because my employer gives me a free bus pass, and it would cost far more than 2% of my salary to park in Oakland every day.

I'm not exactly a millenial, I think (born in the late 70s), but I can definitely see why so many of my neighbors are choosing to live in the city. Of course we have friends in the near suburbs too, and that's also cool -- I am not interested in a competition between the two, because they are two different lifestyles and that's fine. I just don't understand why so many people think I am lying when I say the city is a great place to live.

I don't recall any post where anyone said you were lying, only that it's your opinion that where you live is a great place to live. Some agree and some don't.

[I_Like_Spam]

Originally Posted by bluecarebear

I updated my post. I would include Spring Hill with Troy Hill. It's all petty crime and drugs. Why not move to Millvale or Reserve township instead? Doesn't Troy Hill and Northview Heights share the same school district, Perry?

I was under the impression that Perry was a magnet school, which might make Oliver the high school serving the area? Nowadays, there are a lot of choices for parents to make for their children's education, magnet and charter alternatives.

[RogersParkTransplant]

Originally Posted by bluecarebear

I updated my post. I would include Spring Hill with Troy Hill. It's all petty crime and drugs. Why not move to Millvale or Reserve township instead? Doesn't Troy Hill and Northview Heights share the same school district, Perry?

Spring Hill, Spring Garden, Troy Hill, Reserve Township, and Millvale are all very close to one another. Similar housing stock; similar mix of good streets and bad streets. Perry is not a school district. If you live in the city, you have a variety of options in the Pittsburgh Public school district. This includes the option to have yet another stupid fight between all the parents on here who send kids to PPS and say it's fine, and all the people who don't and have problems with it. Millvale and Reserve Township are part of the Shaler school district, which is also good.

But honestly, I had to laugh at the line about how "it's all petty crime and drugs" -- it's just not. I'm well aware of the heroin epidemic, and it's very sad, but that's not "all" there is over here. The area has seen some tough times, and Northview Heights has seen even tougher times, but honestly this area is full of families and people walking their dogs and nice houses. We know a lot of our neighbors, and a lot of them grew up here and decided to stay. It's a real community.

The weird part is that half the time people on here are complaining about how the city has gotten too ritzy and too expensive, and the other half they are complaining that it is too dangerous and too run down. This neighborhood is neither one. I don't understand why the disconnect with reality is so strong, but part of me feels like I have to keep speaking up on these threads, or else you're all going to assume I was shot in a drug deal or something, when in reality I am just creeped out by all the negativity on here.

Pittsburgh is a great place, with lots of positive energy going in its favor, both in the city limits and beyond them. I don't know why that's so controversial around here, but I suspect some people just gave up on it so long ago that they can't even see the good things happening right before their eyes.

[eschaton]

Looking at the 2015 murder map from the other thread, I see two murders in upper Manchester, one in Fineview (right near Allegheny Dwellings), two in Perry Hilltop, three in Marshall-Shadeland, and three in the Woods Run valley (two of which seem to have also taken place in Marshall-Shadeland, and one of which was in southern Brighton Heights). Aside from a double murder in Marshall-Shadeland, all of the victims were black.

Originally Posted by I_Like_Spam

I was under the impression that Perry was a magnet school, which might make Oliver the high school serving the area? Nowadays, there are a lot of choices for parents to make for their children's education, magnet and charter alternatives.

They closed down Oliver because it was a "failing school" and transferred the entire student body to Perry, which then became a partial magnet school. Unsurprisingly, this resulted in Perry pretty quickly becoming almost as bad as Oliver was, along with a drop in the general regard for Perry's remaining magnet program.

[RogersParkTransplant]

Originally Posted by eschaton

Looking at the 2015 murder map from the other thread, I see two murders in upper Manchester, one in Fineview (right near Allegheny Dwellings), two in Perry Hilltop, three in Marshall-Shadeland, and three in the Woods Run valley (two of which seem to have also taken place in Marshall-Shadeland, and one of which was in southern Brighton Heights). Aside from a double murder in Marshall-Shadeland, all of the victims were black.

Yes...the Fineview one is really sad, because it was a toddler shot by a stepfather. On the whole there weren't many murders on the North side in 2015, and it struck me that none of them were on the east side of 279.

All of this is a matter of perspective, of course. Pittsburgh is smaller and safer than the other cities where I have lived; coming most recently from Chicago, the rates of crime and violence here just don't get under my skin. The murders bother me in the sense that I want my community to be a better place, and things can always get better, but they don't make me feel unsafe personally. I can imagine, though, that I would feel differently if I had moved here directly from my sleepy home town in southern California, without having spent so much time in Boston, NYC, DC, and above all Chicago.

[ferraris]

One major upside to all of the worries people have about living in the Big Bad Northside is that I get to enjoy a sub-$400 mortgage payment, have a 20-30 minute door to desk commute, remain a 1-car family (and any car troubles are not an urgent issue for us), all while living in a neighborhood and house that I'm overall happy with, and without feeling unsafe.