Union Square-East Village-Feedback please! (apartments, for rent, condos)

[jem299]

How is this area? Anyone have experience with these buildings/community? Would love some input. Thank you!

[NYSD1995]

Don't have any experience with living in the buildings but they were among the first condos to go into downtown SD, well before the condo boom. They are well-regarded and I have known some people that lived there and had a good experience.

10 years of redevelopment has passed and the area is still in transition. It's not all the the way there yet but it's much better than it was when I used to live around there. There is still not much in terms of basic amenities around there and lots of homeless. There is a new supermarket a few blocks south but you are going to be walking past a weird mix of light industrial and redeveloped, mostly vacant condos and storefronts.

I would say if you are renting, there are better locations like Little Italy, Cortez Hill, Bankers Hill or even Golden Hill which have more neighborhood feel and better access to basic stuff like drycleaning and restaurants. Those areas also have easier access to Balboa Park which in my opinion is more of a destination than the Gaslamp or Downtown SD which is mostly centered around tourists.

[moved]

It's about a block away from the police station, but as Sassberto says, there are other areas that are much better. I used to live in the East Village, and I'm glad I'm out. There are still lots of homeless people on the street there, and the area is still in redevelopment.

[sdlife619]

All the Redevelopment downtown still hasn't cured the homeless problem, because the city refuses to help build a permanent homeless shelter.

Until that is done, East Villages attempt to massively gentrify the place, will not go as planned. What's been happening lately, is a lot of newcomers have been complaining about all the homeless, and I'm like "Well they were there first" Duh? So deal with it, or move out.

Too many condo projects is over saturating downtown SD and especially in East Village, this causes for concerns because you start having less affordable places to live, and where will all those recovering homeless people stay at when all there is down there are over priced condo unit and zero apartments for rent?

I do remember not too long ago, downtown SD was a scary place, really ghetto and run down for the most part, especially off Market St. and Broadway. Lot's of drugs, homeless, crazies, gangsters, ho's and so on. Today it's nothing like that. Of course you still got your spots, but for most of all, it's cleaned up big time. What sucks though is the more newer downtown becomes, the blander it looks and feels.

Golden Hill is a much better choice, it has more character, hasn't been raped by developers, so it still retains many older charming buildings, and many of the small shops are unique compared to "Generic" East Village.

[moved]

The only problem with Golden Hill that I see, is that the homeless people are being slowly pushed there. They can't go back downtown, so they're being pushed up Market Street, and after they leave Sherman Heights, they go to Golden Hill.