Planning to move south to BLM (Seattle, Bellingham: rental market, to live in, garden)

[andeee]

I plan to move to Bellingham in the next few months. Any info anyone can give me how the rental market is, even after the students move back, would be great. Like for a decent 2 bdrm. What areas are good to live in and where is sketchy? I visited there last May for a brief stint, and it seemed like people who lived there were friendly, cared about the environment/Earth, and what's up with the community garden thing? Can anyone sign-up, is it a co-op?
Also, are there any other areas somewhere around the outer areas of Seattle that would be worth checking out, like Olympia for example? I wasn't too hip on some of the areas east of Seattle, due to massive traffic and all that Rat Race stuff. I do like Seattle, but coming from an island in SE Alaska, that would probably be too much to deal with right away. Thanks to whomever takes time to communicate.

[scirocco22]

When you're talking about the community garden, I'm assuming that it's the one sponsored by the city parks department. They're pretty popular all over Washington.

Here's a link that will tell you all about it:

http://www.cob.org/cob/cobfaq.nsf/0/e536827bedee14a088256c1500535964?OpenDocument (broken link)

You're actually renting a plot from the city to grow your personal veggies, etc. They must be successful because they seem pretty popular. Evidently there's trust among the gardeners because you'd think there might be problems with people stealing other's produce, etc. ...I don't know.

--'rocco