High COL Cities

[OrionGrad]

Some of the other cities are Spokane WA, Portland OR then further east and south Salt Lake. There are a ton more all through out the US...

You can definitely find a home within driving distance of OHSU for $1,500/month. Many of the residents with families live in Beaverton, since it's only a short drive away and the housing is much more affordable. Let me know if you have any other Portland housing Qs. We've only been here for a few months, but I absolutely love it.

[v-girl]

I'm not sure I understand the question. What you quoted was in answer to a very specific question about commuting between Tacoma and Seattle.

Hour-long commutes? I guess I'm so used to Dallas where so many live in the suburbs and then drive an hour each way for their daily commutes. We never gave a second thought to living 35-40 miles from the med school.

[poky]

Hour-long commutes? I guess I'm so used to Dallas where so many live in the suburbs and then drive an hour each way for their daily commutes. We never gave a second thought to living 35-40 miles from the med school.

Ah! Now I understand. And...not to me. I think I'm currently living the furthest I've ever lived from a job I've had to drive to, at 25 minutes. I'm OK with it mostly because there's still almost no traffic (one benefit of living in a town with a shrinking population). The traffic lights affect the total time more than other cars do. My parents lived 5-10 minutes from where my dad worked for most of my life, and DH grew up in a small town, and lived just a few blocks from his dad's work. In Portland, we bought a house 10-15 minutes from work. Neither of us *likes* driving, especially in traffic, and neither of us is a job-hopper, so living close to work has always been a priority.

[v-girl]

Interesting. My mom always lived close to work, but she's always worked in the same town that we still live in. The farthest we lived was 10 miles away. Unfortunately, a lot of the better-paying jobs in DFW are in the city. We never ever considered living in Dallas. Or even in Richardson (just north of Dallas). We're in one of the fastest growing counties in the country.

[ladymoreta]

Jumping in on the mini-hijack... When we lived in Dallas, we decided to live close to the hospital, so DH had a very short commute. However, anything else we did took 45 minutes to get to. There wasn't a really close grocery store - it was about a 20 minute drive - and the closest Wal-Mart was about 30-40 minutes. Most of our friends lived in suburbs, so it was almost an hour drive to go see them. All that to say that if you live in a sprawling city, living close to work doesn't always eliminate the driving.

[MDPhDWife]

Jumping in on the mini-hijack... When we lived in Dallas, we decided to live close to the hospital, so DH had a very short commute. However, anything else we did took 45 minutes to get to. There wasn't a really close grocery store - it was about a 20 minute drive - and the closest Wal-Mart was about 30-40 minutes. Most of our friends lived in suburbs, so it was almost an hour drive to go see them. All that to say that if you live in a sprawling city, living close to work doesn't always eliminate the driving.

That's a great point! Where we live now is a good 30 minutes away from the hospital (45 minutes-1 hr in rush hour traffic) but it's absolutely the epicenter of everything else suburb wise. I'm less than 5 minutes from a huge mall, tons of strip malls, restaurants, great schools, other hospitals, etc. We often joke that the only reason we ever cross the bridge is for DH's work. Call me selfish, but it's just more of a priority to live closer to the things I'll be running around with all day than to where DH will be stationary. Not to mention the neighborhood around the hospital isn't what I would consider the safest and the housing prices (rent or buy) are absurd for what you actually get.

My question is, do you guys often find that the neighborhoods around the hospitals where your DH works to be safer, nicer, and more expensive?

[v-girl]

Charlene - There are hookers, drug dealers and homeless people by DH's work. In fact, the main street the goes by the hospitals and university is the same street where I saw a hooker in real life for the first time. You can even rent motel rooms by the hour over there. Yikes!

There are safe, nice neighborhoods not too far away, but residents can't afford them unless they have a spouse who makes a good living.

[ladymoreta]

Everything v-girl said about Dallas. Our apartment there was really nice - I loved it - but the neighborhood was very scary! A guy was murdered down our hallway, and cars (including mine) were broken into. The complex was gated, but they often left the gate open, and it was a slow gate, so anyone could just follow another car in.

The neighborhood around the hospital in OKC isn't a whole lot better. It's close to the Capitol building, so the politicians have nice homes there, but the rest of the area isn't very safe.

[oceanchild]

My question is, do you guys often find that the neighborhoods around the hospitals where your DH works to be safer, nicer, and more expensive?

Here, no. We live by the hospital, and it's perfectly fine, but probably nobody would describe it as nice. And it was cheap.

The hospital where DH went to med school was in a prestigious, expensive area of DC. But they were affiliated with other hospitals in really not nice parts of town. Lot of variables there.

[Sheherezade]

Lousy areas for living around the hospitals DH used in Philly and Baltimore. Still, there were areas within 10-15 minutes with public transportation available that were being gentrified. (More than half the housing good, some still rundown. Lower crime. Lots of new things popping up.) We are DIYers so gentrification is are game. We made money on both areas by buying clunkers and fixing them up during the time we were there.

In Boston, the problem was the reverse. The area directly around the hospital was too nice. Beacon Hill! We opted for Brookline because the public schools were good and the T was a ten minute commute to work.

[scarlett09]

Lousy areas for living around the hospitals DH used in Philly and Baltimore.

Can't speak for Baltimore, but I can agree with this assessment of the major Philly hospitals. Temple is a definite NO, as is St. Christopher's (my cousin works there and commutes in from Manayunk section of the city). UPenn/CHOP and Drexel are kind of iffy - had a friend who lived in the area for grad school and she never felt really safe and there were multiple break-ins in her building. TJU is a possibility - but probably not directly around the hospital, as it is in Center City. You would need to do some searching to find housing in and around that area (Angie and some of our other Philly residents would probably know more about that than I do). Feel free to PM me for info about TJU!

[Sheherezade]

I think TJU immediate area is OK as is some of the area around CHOP/HUP. At least, it was. I'd imagine things have only gotten better in Philly since we left. We lived in "the great northeast" - a working class neighborhood to the northeast of the city. We bought a row house for pennies and commuted on light rail and trolley. Very safe area - very cheap area - very boring area. FWIW

DH was at Temple. Temple is in North Philly and definitely a no go. There was even an uproar when the residents were forced to park four blocks away. At the time, it was a war zone. Not sure about now.

Baltimore JHU was in another drug culture area with lots of shootings. That said, DH and most of the docs at both Temple and JHU felt they were never targeted for crime - in fact, they felt like they were kind of "safe" because they were the docs at the hospital that patched people up. You'd never live within walking distance though by choice.

For JHU, the closest livable areas would be Fells Point and Canton. We lived in Federal Hill. All these are safe and close to JHU - but public schools are still an issue if your kids are that age.

[DCJenn]

San Antonio commutes can be easy (mine is 5 minutes) to brutal (if you lived at 1604 and 281 and had to commute to downtown or the Medical Center.)

There are a ton of neighborhoods out by the Medical Center that are ridiculously affordable. Even now, I live in ostensibly a higher COL area (not one of THE expensive historic neighborhoods but not a cheap-o one either) but even so if my house here were in DC it would be over a million bucks. We have four city lots, a pool, 250 linear feet of front yard, and the house is 3200 square feet. We paid barely over 400k and my commute is 3.7 miles and my husband's is 8 miles. We walk everywhere. And if you're willing to do some work, you can still find historic properties in and around downtown SA for nothing. A smaller house on the street behind mine just sold for 30k. Yes, you read that right.

There's a big Victorian on the street that needs some love but it's going for $259.

The school systems vary in SA- Some are generally pretty good, some, like ours are very neighborhood dependent. The Catholic School System is humongous and there are lots of scholarships available.

As for Pittsburgh, it's climate isn't too dramatic. It gets hot in the summer and cold in the winter (there is snow) but they also have gorgeous spring and fall weather, too. The COL is comparable to San Antonio.

Jenn

[ides]

I know nothing about Spokane, but would imagine it'd be even easier/cheaper.

Just say no to Spokane or all of eastern Washington for that matter. Blech!

On a positive note, yes the cost of living is pretty low there. They do have seasonal summer wild fires which can be kind of freaky (well they did when I lived in eastern washington). I would stick to the west side of the state.

[MDPhDWife]

Baltimore JHU was in another drug culture area with lots of shootings. That said, DH and most of the docs at both Temple and JHU felt they were never targeted for crime - in fact, they felt like they were kind of "safe" because they were the docs at the hospital that patched people up. You'd never live within walking distance though by choice.

I had heard through the grapevine once that the docs at JHU were often escorted not only to their vehicles but other places by security guards because the crime in Baltimore was THAT bad. Because both our DD's are school age, school systems are definitely of some concern and I really don't want to fork over the dough for private school on a residents salary. We crossed Baltimore off the list entirely for the crime reason. Would you consider that foolish?