Not sure if you're being humorous or probably just not familiar with DC. Both of those cozy apartments are in SE DC. I'm being a 100% serious when I say that if I moved to those apartments, as a white guy, I'd almost certainly be a victim of violent crime within a few months. I wouldn't even get off the metro in those neighborhoods.
You don't have to just worry about murder. You have to worry about rapes, muggings, and property crime. Nobody wants to live in a place where you have to "watch out" or stay inside at night.
Luckily DC has some pretty urban suburbs like Arlington and Alexandia. They are more urban than most of the district. I don't have to worry about my car getting broken into and I can take the blueline to work.
I'd prefer to live in Georgetown or DuPont but that stuff is insanely priced.
What NOVA and Maryland need are more and better commuter rails to DC. The VRE is awful.
DC always looks good in these because they never take into account all the cheap rents are in neighborhoods your average young professional is not going to wanna live in. I don't care how progressive you are--you're not moving to Anacostia.
Everything in from East Falls Church on the orange line is walkable. It was car dealerships and gas stations 25 years ago. Silver spring on in on the red line is walkable.
My point about DC was more that the district itself has tons of ghetto that could easily be re-gentrified. The middle class left the row-houses in the 60s in many cities, they turned to ghetto, but this is not necessarily a permanent state of affairs.
To repeat, this is basically what has happened in NYC. The former ghetto inhabitants are now driving up the crime rate in northern Pennsylvania and other areas.
I lived in DC, just south of Logan Circle for the past 5 years, before moving out to Falls Church. I lived in Arlington for 2 years before that, and have plenty of friends in Alexandria and other parts of DC and NoVA, so I feel like I have a pretty good sense of things.
I've been all over, and I really do think DC is an underrated city. The food in DC is definitely competitive with New York, LA, and Chicago, the quantity is just not quite the same. There are a ton of little pockets in DC, all with different vibes, and there's actually pretty solid access to green space in Virginia, if you have a car. Rock Creek Park is a nice little oasis for greenery too.
My favorite thing about DC was that it still has the energy, diversity, food, and other amenities that big cities offer, but the streets are bigger, it feels more open and less oppressive than New York, and it feels a bit more clean.
My least favorite things about DC were being smack dab in the middle of January 6th and other riots. I lived right on Mass Ave, and many protests basically walk down Mass Ave towards the National Mall. So being woken up to helicopters and flashbangs was getting a little old when there were a string of nationwide protests. By the end of my time in DC, I also noticed crime seemingly getting worse. The biker/ATV gangs from Baltimore run rampant every now and then, and it can definitely put a bad taste in your mouth. I also had a few close encounters with drivebys or shootings (just south of Shaw) which honestly put me on edge and made me want to not live there. However, most of the crime is very very localized and you're unlikely to wander into a bad part of town if you're in pretty much any area of central and North West DC.
I think other people's criticisms of bros in Arlington, and political staffers, lawyers, etc. are fairly true. But there's also a very very diverse culture here, full of African American history, and lots of international influence in the cuisine. El Salvadorian, Ethiopian, lots of Vietnamese, Korean, and other Asian cultures. It's really a huge melting pot and that's awesome.
I can't speak to the tech scene, unfortunately. I work for a Government Contractor. The bar is very low, and you can get a pretty good base salary there, but you said you didn't want a clearance, and I don't blame you. The work is typically mind numbing and feels meaningless. I do know there are a handful of startups and small tech companies operating in and around DC and Arlington though. And a few of the big tech companies have satellites for the access to gov.
I setup a home here in NoVA for the foreseeable future, mostly because of family proximity, but I also just really enjoy DC and Virginia as places to live. Wineries, breweries, and a lot of good hiking is all within an hour. A ton of good food, and international cuisines are all within 30 minutes. Good nightlife, bars, live music, theater, and the rest of the Urban amenities are also all present.
Again, I think it's a very underrated city, but I haven't lived anywhere else for any significant period of time, just visited a lot of cities in Europe and the States.
Edit: One other thing: access to Dulles and Reagan is pretty convenient and fly to a lot of places!
My reply (I've lived in and next to DC for 8 years):
I like a lot about DC, but my thoughts on why I'm moving away within a year:
Vastly inflated real estate prices. Silicon Valley prices but with god-awful weather. (Look here http://weather-explorer.com/compare?USAF=745090&WBAN=23244&U...)
The house price to median annual income exceeds a factor of 5 in any neighborhood without an hour plus commute.
The coolest place to live is DC, but it has an AWFUL, CORRUPT, INCOMPETENT city government and horrifically bad public schools. Violent crime is a problem too, but the residents don't like to admit it. My good friend was shot in the back walking through his neighborhood. He didn't die, so it didn't even make the news. The police, naturally, never caught the perpetrator. He is currently walking around DC and likely feeling very empowered to commit more violence. My other buddy has been mugged 3 times at gunpoint. He moved to Maryland. My brother's wife was punched in the face and had her purse snatched. As she lay on the ground sobbing, the local racist asshole kids crowded around her laughing and calling her a "stupid white bitch." She had a broken jaw and it took 15 minutes for someone to actually help. This was the "up and coming" neighborhood of Columbia Heights.
The suburbs here are AWFUL. Overpriced, congested on all days, even weekends. The culture in the suburbs is not like in other places I've lived. Unlike in the city of DC, the people in the suburbs here are rude and keep to themselves. Its a notoriously hard place to meet people. Perhaps they are all angry and miserable because of the traffic, which is horrific. Expect an hour plus commute each way.
Or you can take the Metro. The Metro is awesome, until you factor in the fact that the union here prioritizes employees benefits and pay over the integrity of the system. I won't even go into how this contributes to the decay of the infrastructure, but trust me when I say that if you bring a person in a wheelchair to DC, do not count on any elevator at the metro stations actually being operational. Also, expect significant delays one day out of 5.
Your developers will be constantly being tempted with high-paying job offers by government consulting gigs. Due to the extremely high cost of living, they might take it. The fact that these jobs are awful, mind-numbing bullshit with strict 9 to 5 schedules doesn't mean anything when they have a kid on the way and can't afford the rent in Arlington.
That being said, I do love the tech community here. It is my refuge. The only downfall is you run into a lot of so-called developers who are just .NET recipe corporate drones who can't do FizzBuzz when you interview them. But then you meet the brilliant amazing but bored kid leaving a consulting firm.... and all is salvaged.... But I can't handle the rest of it. I'm done.
You can find apartments for that much in DC proper. Maybe not the average, but certainly present. And it gets better even staying on the Metro lines out into NOVA and (more so) MD.
Look for immigrant neighborhoods in the area that are near outlying metro stations, or on bus routes which are within 10 driving minutes to a metro station.
We are all complaining about metro on here, but going into the city it's the only option. Rent is sky high in the city, and you want to avoid these kinds of places:
Hip places like Dupont or Columbia Heights. Hip is expensive
Places with the new and upscale appearance that appeals to young professional women who tend to be very non-price sensitive, like Ballston or Rosslyn. Rents are insane there.
Places to check out:
Crystal City is less hip and less pricey, but going up fast.
Huntington is a great bet. It's an immigrant neighborhood, which scares away the yuppie white people who pretend to be multi-cultural but really are closet racists according to any realtor or apartment manager in the area. Rents are affordable, and the neighborhoods near there are walkable, but decidedly not hip or party places. Plus you have quick access to the Mt. Vernon Bike Trail, which will zip you up into DC in 30 minutes or even across the bridge into Maryland. Plus, Old Town Alexandria is a quick bike ride up the trail for bars.
Arlandria used to be super cheap. Again, look for the immigrant areas.
I don't know the Maryland neighborhoods as well, but there are a ton of good ones. They tend to be pricier.
If you want to stay in the DC area and want to live somewhere that isn't insanely expensive but also walkable, perhaps look into renting an apartment in Del Ray, Alexandria. Granted, I'm a bit biased, but it's a cool part of town and there are some affordable places to live, if you look hard.
Because the parts of DC that you can safely, raise a family in are either:
1) Really expensive
2) Essentially suburban anyway. Most of NW is suburban.
3) both 1 & 2
Another cause is that until 10 years ago most of the city was considered to be too unsafe. Gentrification has gone into overdrive and has greatly expanded the area middle class and UMC people will live. But even then a lot of that area is still pretty crazy in terms of cultural stuff. And it isn't as safe as people claim. There has been a recently uptick in violence. People getting murdered on the metro. A home invasion that led to a family getting massacred. A guy got shot in a luxury high rise in NOMA.
Strongly advise against living in the District. There is little to no benefit to doing so. If you want a "downtown" feel, I'd recommend Alexandria or the north side of Arlington (the south side of Arlington is very DoD, so probably not your vibe).
Virginia has a much lower violent crime rate (104 per 100000 vs 977 per 100000 in DC), lower taxes, a better social scene, and is more accessible to any of the common recreational activities (hiking in Shenandoah, camping in West Virginia, wineries, breweries, etc.).
Even if you like going out to a bar to socialize, I still think the Clarendon area on the north side of Arlington is better than literally anywhere in the District.
Well DC isn't "Bay Area or Manhattan", so you're sidestepping my argument by jumping from one location to another.
There I guess you'd want to be in Arlington or Alexandria, less than 1000 feet from a Metro stop. DC itself, at least the residential parts that don't need a car, is far from decent. In any case it clearly isn't "Bay Area or Manhattan".
Rent prices normally track house prices. Except during the steep parts of a bubble and crash, you can compute one from the other. One expense is thus a proxy for the other.
I'm pretty sure your "very nice place" isn't so nice. First of all, rentals are fundamentally inferior. Second of all, I doubt you are getting equivalent size. (indoor space, parking spots, land) Third of all, the cheap parts of cities are horribly violent.
I wouldn’t do it. I grew up in northern Virginia and work in DC and lived there for a time. DC was nice 10-15 years ago when it offered some of the amenities of a big city at a much lower price point. Today there’s not much to recommend. It’s almost New York prices now but the restaurant and entertainment scene is a shadow of those places. Your apartment building will probably be full of political staffers and lawyers and think tank wonks. And the tech scene, insofar as it exists, is mainly out in Northern Virginia.
Also, the pandemic hit DC really hard. DC is heavily reliant on commuters. It has one of the largest daytime-nighttime population changes in the country. But those government and knowledge workers are never coming back into the office at the same scale as before. Metro ridership has cratered, putting it in a budget crisis even when substantially reduced service levels. And lots of bars and restaurants that had built up over the last decade have closed down.
I will say, DC has some very charming and walkable neighborhoods. The area between DuPont Circle and Logan Circle is very cute, in a 1970s sort of way.
It is literally the worst area of DC.
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