Which Seattle neighborhood will let me and my 11y/o live car-free?
November 15, 2015 2:39 PM
I'm probably moving to Seattle next June. What neighborhoods should I look at to live car-free with my wife and 11 year-old daughter that will have an urban feel but still be safe and have good schools?
We'd like to live in a nice apartment. (Did the home ownership thing for a few years, and it's a lot of work.) I'm in my 30s. Neither me nor my wife will have a commute. We'd like for downtown Seattle to be accessible.
We don't go out partying or drinking. I'd like to be able to get out to web developer meetups. We'd both like to have a nice place to work out, good restaurants, and somewhere to see an occasional movie.
We've been looking quite a bit but have discovered it's really hard to understand the character of an area from across the country. So far, I've been looking at First Hill, Queen Anne, Ballard, Fremont, Wallingford, and West Seattle. Any other suggestions? Budget tops out at $3k.
We'd like to live in a nice apartment. (Did the home ownership thing for a few years, and it's a lot of work.) I'm in my 30s. Neither me nor my wife will have a commute. We'd like for downtown Seattle to be accessible.
We don't go out partying or drinking. I'd like to be able to get out to web developer meetups. We'd both like to have a nice place to work out, good restaurants, and somewhere to see an occasional movie.
We've been looking quite a bit but have discovered it's really hard to understand the character of an area from across the country. So far, I've been looking at First Hill, Queen Anne, Ballard, Fremont, Wallingford, and West Seattle. Any other suggestions? Budget tops out at $3k.
All those neighborhoods are nice, West Seattle is the furthest. Even more than most cities the transit focus is focused in and out of the downtown due to geography, the long lake Washington and the water from enforces north/south corridors. First Hill and Queen Anne would be walkable (QA has stairs for sidewalks) the others are that mid range between urban and suburban. Fremont is it's own region, almost a separate town. Wallingford is walkable to the U District.
You will find it's very car oriented compared to the downtowns of some east coast cities.
posted by sammyo at 2:54 PM on November 15, 2015
You will find it's very car oriented compared to the downtowns of some east coast cities.
posted by sammyo at 2:54 PM on November 15, 2015
If you're considering Seattle public schools, my recommendation would be to focus on neighborhoods north of the ship canal... Especially with middle schools.
posted by jimmereeno at 3:02 PM on November 15, 2015
posted by jimmereeno at 3:02 PM on November 15, 2015
You might look at the reddit Seattle wiki. Lots of advice on moving to Seattle area. Includes discussion of nieghborhoods.
Our family shares one car. We supplement with Car2Go subscription service. There's also ZipCar. In North Seattle the bus service is very good (in my opinion). I've heard that some of the bus lines downtown and central can be really over-crowded.
posted by valannc at 5:05 PM on November 15, 2015
Our family shares one car. We supplement with Car2Go subscription service. There's also ZipCar. In North Seattle the bus service is very good (in my opinion). I've heard that some of the bus lines downtown and central can be really over-crowded.
posted by valannc at 5:05 PM on November 15, 2015
Will you be working from home? If not, so much depends on where you'll be working..
posted by Nerd of the North at 5:09 PM on November 15, 2015
posted by Nerd of the North at 5:09 PM on November 15, 2015
Without challenging your decision to not pursue homeownership in Seattle, You should maybe look at average rental costs over the past five years here. We're experiencing rapid increases in rental costs which would be likely to squeeze your rental budget in a few years. The equivalent in mortgage payments could remain stable over the same period of time. You probably know this, generally speaking. But I would encourage you to look at our rental cost growth.
posted by mwhybark at 6:03 PM on November 15, 2015
posted by mwhybark at 6:03 PM on November 15, 2015
First hill sucks as a neighborhood to live in and walk around in. There's no parks or greenery, there's not really "normal" residents and neighbors walking around on the street(just people going to and from the offices, hospitals, etc), and it has a lot of the knock-on problems of being the back side of capitol hill with aggressive homeless people and drunks staggering around and backing their cars into others. The biggest thing for me though is that it just doesn't feel like a neighborhood. It feels like parts of downtown vancouver, or really business-oriented parts of manhattan or something. Everyone i've known who lived there left the neighborhood to do anything. It also lacks a grocery store, and a lot of other amenities.
To state my bonafides here, My parents live in first hill, and i live in capitol hill. I grew up in fremont, and i've lived all over town.
I think every neighborhood you mentioned other than first hill is a good bet. I'd tentatively drop greenwood in there as it's mostly a "family" neighborhood but is rapidly being built up.
Wallingford sucks for transit since you've jammed in between the two main transit corridors north to south, and behind the lake from downtown. You have to go east-west to get anywhere and there's only a few slow buses(and if you choose to go west and then south, you have transfer). There's no "straight shot" to downtown or really anywhere else. The traffic on 45th and 50th is regularly horrifying too, which doesn't help buses like the 16 and 44 that just get mired in it. However, there's also basically everything you'd need to live a pretty self-contained life within wallingford.
I second the recommendation to get a car2go or zipcar membership. You will occasionally need to go to e.g. home depot and while you can bus there, what besides like a smoke detector can you haul back that way? And all the "big box" stores like that, best buy, etc are up north. There's no kmart in the middle of downtown like some cities have(there is a "city" target, but it's hit or miss).
I've lived car free in or near most of the neighborhoods mentioned besides west seattle and they all worked out fine. Be prepared to have to make awkward transfer-involved journeys that take 1-1.25 hours when without traffic it would be a 20 minute drive sometimes though. There's also trips in which the only really logical thing to do if you value your time is bus downtown, then bus back out to wherever that is. Each neighborhood has it's ups and downs with this.
posted by emptythought at 8:10 PM on November 15, 2015
To state my bonafides here, My parents live in first hill, and i live in capitol hill. I grew up in fremont, and i've lived all over town.
I think every neighborhood you mentioned other than first hill is a good bet. I'd tentatively drop greenwood in there as it's mostly a "family" neighborhood but is rapidly being built up.
Wallingford sucks for transit since you've jammed in between the two main transit corridors north to south, and behind the lake from downtown. You have to go east-west to get anywhere and there's only a few slow buses(and if you choose to go west and then south, you have transfer). There's no "straight shot" to downtown or really anywhere else. The traffic on 45th and 50th is regularly horrifying too, which doesn't help buses like the 16 and 44 that just get mired in it. However, there's also basically everything you'd need to live a pretty self-contained life within wallingford.
I second the recommendation to get a car2go or zipcar membership. You will occasionally need to go to e.g. home depot and while you can bus there, what besides like a smoke detector can you haul back that way? And all the "big box" stores like that, best buy, etc are up north. There's no kmart in the middle of downtown like some cities have(there is a "city" target, but it's hit or miss).
I've lived car free in or near most of the neighborhoods mentioned besides west seattle and they all worked out fine. Be prepared to have to make awkward transfer-involved journeys that take 1-1.25 hours when without traffic it would be a 20 minute drive sometimes though. There's also trips in which the only really logical thing to do if you value your time is bus downtown, then bus back out to wherever that is. Each neighborhood has it's ups and downs with this.
posted by emptythought at 8:10 PM on November 15, 2015
3k a month in a good school district is a lot to ask. Are you willing to consider private?
posted by k8t at 8:23 PM on November 15, 2015
posted by k8t at 8:23 PM on November 15, 2015
I am car-free in Lower Queen Anne, and I have no idea what rents are here, but there are a lot of new places going up. We've got restaurants, movies, very good transit to downtown, good grocery and drug stores. I rely on the buses (90% of which will take you anywhere you want to go as long as you want to go downtown) and Car2Go, and very occasionally Uber. I'm also childless and single, so I can't speak for school districts, but my friends have kids so some of that might weigh in.
You can look at a transit map and see where the buses go to the north and south, and that'll tell you where the arteries are. I'd say Go North, Young Man! I'm most familiar with areas north of downtown, so I'll stick with those:
Your transit corridors and the neighborhoods they tap into are 15th Ave NW (Ballard, Crown Hill, connects to Magnolia), Aurora Avenue (Greenlake and many other neighborhoods), Greenwood Ave/Phinney Ave (they run parallel-- Greenwood, Phinney Ridge), and Roosevelt Way (U District, Maple Leaf, Northgate). The cross-town arteries are Market (==55th, which wraps down to 45th, connecting Ballard to Wallingford, which is also decent walkabout neighborhood with no parking, bad-ish transit access to downtown), 65th (connects Ballard to Greenlake), 85th (up-and-coming walkabout neighborhood in Crown Hill/Greenwood), and 105th (connects Crown Hill to Greenwood and Northgate. Where transit goes, so go the business districts. Also I guess Queen Anne Ave, which connects Lower Queen Anne to Upper.
Places I'd avoid reflexively: Aurora Ave itself is high traffic, and high sketch factor-- it's our red-light district. Get a few blocks away from it and you're mostly good. Avoid Fremont (young singles and high rents), U District (broke students and high homeless), South Lake Union and Westlake next to Lake Union-- SLU is overrun with people these days thanks to being Amazon HQ, and the surrounding neighborhoods are also going up in price. Eastlake-- probably suffering the same Amazon-itis. (Many like to blame Amazon for a lot of our boom problems, but they were inevitable due to geography; Amazon is at worst moving up the timetable.)
Capital Hill and First Hill: no parking ever, and high homeless, higher crime. (Seattle has Detroit-level property crime rates, I shit you not, but violent crime is very low. Watch your stuff first, and your back second, generally speaking.)
posted by Sunburnt at 8:38 PM on November 15, 2015
You can look at a transit map and see where the buses go to the north and south, and that'll tell you where the arteries are. I'd say Go North, Young Man! I'm most familiar with areas north of downtown, so I'll stick with those:
Your transit corridors and the neighborhoods they tap into are 15th Ave NW (Ballard, Crown Hill, connects to Magnolia), Aurora Avenue (Greenlake and many other neighborhoods), Greenwood Ave/Phinney Ave (they run parallel-- Greenwood, Phinney Ridge), and Roosevelt Way (U District, Maple Leaf, Northgate). The cross-town arteries are Market (==55th, which wraps down to 45th, connecting Ballard to Wallingford, which is also decent walkabout neighborhood with no parking, bad-ish transit access to downtown), 65th (connects Ballard to Greenlake), 85th (up-and-coming walkabout neighborhood in Crown Hill/Greenwood), and 105th (connects Crown Hill to Greenwood and Northgate. Where transit goes, so go the business districts. Also I guess Queen Anne Ave, which connects Lower Queen Anne to Upper.
Places I'd avoid reflexively: Aurora Ave itself is high traffic, and high sketch factor-- it's our red-light district. Get a few blocks away from it and you're mostly good. Avoid Fremont (young singles and high rents), U District (broke students and high homeless), South Lake Union and Westlake next to Lake Union-- SLU is overrun with people these days thanks to being Amazon HQ, and the surrounding neighborhoods are also going up in price. Eastlake-- probably suffering the same Amazon-itis. (Many like to blame Amazon for a lot of our boom problems, but they were inevitable due to geography; Amazon is at worst moving up the timetable.)
Capital Hill and First Hill: no parking ever, and high homeless, higher crime. (Seattle has Detroit-level property crime rates, I shit you not, but violent crime is very low. Watch your stuff first, and your back second, generally speaking.)
posted by Sunburnt at 8:38 PM on November 15, 2015
If you were not aware, Seattle public schools are not good. Middle school is the worst. My kid's k-8 school triples in size in the 6th grade from people that try to hold put through the elementary years.
I live in Greenwood and I know people who send their kids to the public elementary school here but few that do public mode. It is very hard to get into before and after school programs although your child may be past that. Otherwise Greenwood is a decent neighborhood. $2.5k-3k will get your a decent small house or apartment but there aren't many rentals. I see about 3 Padmapper listing per week. Sorry to be a downer.
posted by k8t at 8:54 PM on November 15, 2015
I live in Greenwood and I know people who send their kids to the public elementary school here but few that do public mode. It is very hard to get into before and after school programs although your child may be past that. Otherwise Greenwood is a decent neighborhood. $2.5k-3k will get your a decent small house or apartment but there aren't many rentals. I see about 3 Padmapper listing per week. Sorry to be a downer.
posted by k8t at 8:54 PM on November 15, 2015
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by bq at 2:51 PM on November 15, 2015