Austin to Sac ...help! (Sacramento, Elk Grove: upper-class, apartments, lease)

[rj975]

I am moving from Austin, TX to Sacramento early next year for business reasons. I am self-employed and work from home so commute is no issue. I am more concerned with neighborhood safety and proximity to entertainment/recreation.

Does anyone know of a good apartment locator service for the Sac area?

My wife and I are in our twenties with no children so we're not ready for the suburbs yet. We're looking for a one bedroom apartment that allows pets in an area that is relatively urban but still relatively safe.

I've received mixed reviews regarding different areas of Sac so now I'm in the dark. For reference, I live in a fun yet safe urban neighborhood in a college town and we're looking for something similar.

Also, does anyone happen to know how Sac neighborhoods compare to Austin crimewise? Before Austin, we lived in a rough area of a major city with police towers, etc. and we are looking to avoid that.

-J

[mike1974]

There is crime just about everywhere,but Granite Bay,or Land Park area seem the least busy.Land Park is an older neighborhood but alot of successful young people with money have been moving in.Stay out of Elk Grove,or extreme south sac,it sucks.

[ElectroPlumber]

Originally Posted by rj975

I am moving from Austin, TX to Sacramento early next year for business reasons. I am self-employed and work from home so commute is no issue. I am more concerned with neighborhood safety and proximity to entertainment/recreation.

Does anyone know of a good apartment locator service for the Sac area?

My wife and I are in our twenties with no children so we're not ready for the suburbs yet. We're looking for a one bedroom apartment that allows pets in an area that is relatively urban but still relatively safe.

I've received mixed reviews regarding different areas of Sac so now I'm in the dark. For reference, I live in a fun yet safe urban neighborhood in a college town and we're looking for something similar.

Also, does anyone happen to know how Sac neighborhoods compare to Austin crimewise? Before Austin, we lived in a rough area of a major city with police towers, etc. and we are looking to avoid that.

-J

I wouldn't move to CA. You are in one of the best places in the country right now. I'd stay there and try to make your business work from there.

[Mossy]

Originally Posted by ElectroPlumber

I wouldn't move to CA. You are in one of the best places in the country right now. I'd stay there and try to make your business work from there.

I totally agree!!!!!!

[edwardius]

The local economy is stronger in Austin. The music scene is stronger in Austin. There is no state income tax in Austin. Housing is less expensive in Austin than Sacramento. Why exactly are you move here and why now?

[wburg]

Assuming that the OP still plans on moving here after hearing about the state of the economy (it is unspeakably, blindingly horrible here, people are eating their own children to survive, the air is poisoned and the water taps run red with blood, etcetera, etcetera), I'm going to offer my usual advice: look at Midtown.

Granite Bay is a very wealthy suburban tract up in the hills. If the OP were looking for a quiet upper-class neighborhood, that would be a good choice. Land Park is nice, close to the central city but not quite walking close.

Sacramento is not Austin. In general, it is a lot quieter, and in direct comparison to the musical epicenter of the southwestern United States, it's not going to look like much. But there is a music scene here, not the busiest or best in the world but a pretty good one. Lots of local bands, lots of touring acts, and if you want more than Sacramento has to offer it's pretty easy to attend shows in the Bay Area.

Midtown and Sacramento's central city are relatively safe, the main problems are the kinds of things one expects in a place with entertainment districts: drunk driving, vandalism and fights on the weekends, noise, public intoxication, street people bumming change and muggers rolling drunks. There isn't a lot of prostitution, street drug dealing, or overt gang activity. So while the central city has crime, it's generally not very dangerous.

I'll refer rj975 to a couple other threads where I go on about Midtown in general and Sacramento's music scene in particular at some length, rather than repeat it here. The threads below cover some things like the music scene, where the neat stuff is, and where the scruffier parts of the central city are.

//www.city-data.com/forum/sacra...nsidering.html

//www.city-data.com/forum/sacra...acramento.html

//www.city-data.com/forum/sacra...wn-27th-d.html

//www.city-data.com/forum/sacra...acramento.html

//www.city-data.com/forum/sacra...-downtown.html

//www.city-data.com/forum/sacra...o-weekend.html

And here's a thread comparing Sacramento vs. Austin:

//www.city-data.com/forum/sacra...acramento.html

[Damnitjanet]

You can find a map of poverty in the region here.

Sacramento Office: Sample NKCA Maps

For crime maps, I would check here

Online feature - Crimemapper - sacbee.com

and here

California Megan's Law - California Department of Justice - Office of the Attorney General

Because someone needs to fact check wburg's incessant and excessive civic boosterism, I will point out that according to the Sacbee crime mapper, there is a fair amount of gang activity in the central city. You might also want to look at the number number of sex offenders as a proxy for the number of parolees in the area (hint its high in the central city)

If you don't want to deal with that type of crap, I would look at East Sac or Land Park, Campus Commons or Sierra Oaks.

[wburg]

East Sac, Land Park, Campus Commons and Sierra Oaks are all nice suburbs, but the OP made it pretty clear that they aren't looking for the suburbs. Midtown isn't the most urban place in the world, but it's the most urban place in the region, with the best access to nightlife and entertainment in the region. It isn't super duper safe, but they specified "relatively" safe, given that most urban places known for entertainment and nightlife aren't always the safest parts of town. Sacramento doesn't really have a "college town" area, our only four-year college is a commuter school located between residential neighborhoods that don't have much college-town feel--but there is some of that feel in Midtown, in a cafe/bookstore/record store/consignment shop kind of way.

At least according to the City-Data stats, Sacramento is somewhat worse crime-wise than Austin, but not horrendously so.

[Phil Minor]

The distinction between East Sac, Land Park and Midtown as being either urban or suburban strikes me as completely illusory. If you want to define urban as any place which is filled with pedestrian oriented mixed use neighborhoods, all of them are urban. If you want to define urban as some sort of base level of density, than all of them are suburban. The primary difference is that East Sac and Land Park and just much more upscale communities than the grid with fewer social problems. The grid has a lot more pretty sketchy areas like Alkali Flat, Southside Park, or near the welfare office in Newton Booth.

When you are moving into an area from far away, my own feeling is to find someplace safe first and sign a short lease. Then after you know the various areas better, you can move later if you must. But if I was moving to the area from out of the region and didn't know any of these neighborhoods very well, I would move to the safer ones like East Sac or Land Park.

The problem with city to city crime comparisons is that crime is usually experienced more at the neighborhood level. I don't know Austin well enough to know what proportion of neighborhoods in Austin are as dangerous as Oak Park, Del Paso Heights and Meadowview, what proportion of neighborhoods in Austin are as safe as Sierra Oaks and what proportion are neighborhoods somewhere in between like say College Green. Your idea of how safe living in Sacramento is based upon what neighborhood you live in Sacramento and I suspect the same is true for Austin as well. There definitely are parts of the grid, I wouldn't want to live in, especially if I was not just living there but working there and especially if my girlfriend was living with me.

But I did think Damnitjanet had the right idea, look at the crime mapping programs and see what crimes have happened in a given neighborhood and how comfortable you feel with the crime that have happened in those neighborhoods. I also thought her general recommendations for someone out of the area looking for safe neighborhoods were pretty spot on. If you did both of those things, you have a reasonably good chance of figuring out from Austin how much it costs to live in a safe neighborhood in this region.

[wburg]

And if you use the crime mapping tool she posted, you'll see that some neighborhoods in the central city (like Southside and New Era Park) seem to stack up pretty well compared to the old suburbs.

There are density differences between the central city and most of the old suburbs. About 85% of the central city is multi-unit housing, not single-family homes. The scale of buildings isn't that different, but once you get out of the central city you find far more single-family homes in neighborhoods like Land Park and East Sac. Now, in some ways that's a measure of affluence, since apartments are generally more affordable than single-family homes, but it does make a difference in density. Walk around the central city and take a look at the housing stock--a lot of those pretty Victorians are actually duplexes, four-plexes or six-plexes, or big single-family homes split up into apartments--plus apartment buildings ranging from the mundane Mansard-roofed fourplex to Art Deco, Renaissance Revival and Modernist multi-story apartment buildings with up to 50 units on a lot equivalent to two or three large 40x160 old-city lots. And then there are the new buildings, like the 180 unit apartment/mixed use building at 1801 L Street, or the nine-story condo across the street.

A few parts of the central city, specifically places like Boulevard Park, are more comparable to the 1920s streetcar suburbs in terms of density--but even they have a lot of duplex conversions, basement apartments, and small apartment buildings.