Poor Jonestown (Austin, Cedar Park, Leander: houses, transfer, to buy)

[LuvNLakeLivN]

I think Wikipedia is a nice site for reference, some of the time. If you see below, it is a collaborative. From what I understand, if something is posted under a topic that is incorrect and can be proven to be, it will be edited. However, the JTown Devoe incident, DID occur. It was not a random act of violence, however, but a personal relationship gone very bad. It would be very difficult for the random insane person with a gun to even find the neighborhood/street where this horrendous crime occurred. It is past history and not anything worth basing whether Jonestown is a good place or a bad place to live. Would you move to Dallas? JFK was shot there....

"almost all of its articles can be edited by anyone with access to the site"

Wikipedia ( /ˌwɪkɪˈpiːdi.ə/ WIK-i-PEE-dee-ə) is a free,[4] web-based, collaborative, multilingual encyclopedia project supported by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation. Its name is a portmanteau from wiki (a technology for creating collaborative websites, from the Hawaiian word wiki, meaning "quick") and encyclopedia (from ancient greek meaning "the circle of arts and sciences"). Wikipedia's 15 million articles (3.2 million in English) have been written collaboratively by volunteers around the world, and almost all of its articles can be edited by anyone with access to the site.[5] It was launched in 2001 by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger[6] and is currently the largest and most popular general reference work on the Internet.[2][7][8][9]

[mdeblois]

I live in Jonestown, Texas for the last 13 years. Compaq computers moved me to Texas. I bought here because of the large, 1/2 acre lots and single family homes. I am sure there are drugs out here like everywhere, but I have 3 large dogs and wanted elbow room. The only trouble I have ever had is the drunk red necks next door, husband and wife team, and one of the Jonestown police men that fear my large dogs, the police said my dogs were barking at them, and yes they will bark at you if your standing at my fence!!!!!!!! The lake is beautiful, I walk there almost everyday, I am 1 mile from Lake Travis. The red necks that live next door drink, and will curse me out if I say anything to them, so I just do not speak to them . If there are meth addicts out here, I have not seen anyone "crazy" on meth, but drunks and RED NECKS do live out here, along with the "brave" police. You can not find the large lots and affordable houses in Austin, and the property taxes are less out here. I drive into Austin less than 30 minutes to downtown, and many stores for shopping are north now anyway. When I sell my house it will be to buy 5 acres in Bastrop or to move out of state. Happy real estate shopping.

[rednoise]

I grew up in Jonestown (from 1999 - 2006.) And to be clear, I lived in Jonestown. I didn't live in one of the mansions in the hills or in one of the vacation homes, where the rich folks came to chill at the lake when it had water in it. While I was living there, we got a police department around 2000 or 2001. They were a bunch of keystone cops; rejects from other towns. The city was primarily served by the county. Jonestown was poor; a lot of working class folks (like my family) who sometimes struggled. Shortly before I left high school, Jonestown had started the process of gentrifying. A lot of people lost their homes and they were bought up by people who would redevelop them, or developers bought up land just on the edge of the town and build huge suburban box homes. Folks who wanted to live in some place like Westlake, but didn't make quite enough to do it.

"Vast forests" is a dumb way of putting it, but, yes, there we had a meth problem and there were a lot of make-shift (usually shake-and-bake operations) labs set up in the woods. At one point, we were considered to be the meth capital of central Texas. If you can find a Travis County cop or a Leander cop who was working in that time frame, or before, they'll confirm this. One of my friend's dads actually had a meth lab that blew up. There were more than a few times that we had helicopters flying over the town and raids down the street from my house, and in other parts of the town. Back then, we had just two gas stations, True Grits, a bank and a few other small businesses. If you had walked across the lake bed in Jones Brothers Park when there was no water (which was often -- it'd get drained away so the rich folks down river could have something pretty to look at all year round), you'd find used needles and **** there.

There was no employment options for a while and people either had to commute into Austin, Cedar Park or Lago Vista to find jobs. Which was difficult, especially for a lot of people who didn't have cars, so a lot of people made their money in drugs (and prostitution to a lesser extent.) And those folks were good, more or less, about not getting caught. We had the LV Feeder come through Jonestown next to the library, which would cut through most Cedar Park (not stop), except for at Lakeline Mall and the transit center right on the edge of Cedar Park, off of 620 (where the train station is now.)

It was a place of, more or less, misery. Lots of poverty, lots of drugs, quite a bit of domestic violence (much of went unreported to the police.) But my part of Jonestown was considered the "good" part. Much of the drug concentration was in Nameless Hollow or Cherry Hollow or somewhere abouts Nameless Road. Travis County cops were up and down there all the time. I got pulled over a couple times and interrogated because cops thought I might've had illegal drugs in my cigarette pack. That's where you had the greatest amounts of labs and busts, in part because some parts of Nameless are extremely remote, and there are lots of guns up there.

I realize this thread was from 6 years ago, and I'm sorry for necroing it (I found it on Google, incidentally) but it's still good to register something here. The Wiki is (or was; I just checked and that tidbit is no longer there) correct, essentially. Nowadays, it's much more expensive to live there. My wife and I were just checking house prices. My family bought our house -- a simple 3 bed, 2 bath, 1-story small house, for about 75k. I looked and the only sub-100k houses that are there are "handyman specials," and smaller than the house I grew up in. There's developments, where they just razed entire faces of hills in order to accommodate the not-so-rich, but-rich-enough people to live there. Which is new tax revenue, I suppose, and Jonestown has quieted down a lot since I moved away from there. But, really, the town's "transition" into basically an extension of Lago Vista, came at a cost of families (my friends and neighbors) being forced out of their homes. What would've been a better way of easing the transition is introducing better job opportunities, economic programs and treatment programs. But Jonestown's story is a lot like other small towns that have been engulfed by Austin and the rush for property here: poorer folks are being concentrated elsewhere to make room for rich folks.

[rednoise]

Originally Posted by Lana Pettit

I was deaply hurt by your comment...POOR JONESTOWN...That you would make a comment like that not even knowing or having the understanding that their are hard working, familys raising children that live there. What were you thinking? Poor you..
I attend First Baptist Church Jonestown, Texas. Welcome everyone....

It wasn't maligning. My family was one of those hard working families. Everyone in Jonestown was hard working, even the drug dealers and the prostitutes, and many of whom I counted as friends. That **** takes serious hustle. But the fact of the matter is that Jonestown was poor, did have a meth problem and has undergone a painful transition for those hardworking families...especially the ones who were forced out of their homes because of the new development that happened in the town.

[AguaDulce]

Originally Posted by JayBrown80

Oh NOES! And no one has answered my question yet!

My mother moved to Jonestown about 10 years ago. She and her husband are retired. They got a great deal on a house that may have been a former meth lab. It was trashed. The view is incredible. It sits on an acre up on the hill.

My sister bought a house there a year ago down closer to the lake.

They both love it! No complaints whatsoever.

I don't like it because it takes forever to get there.

That murder spree was a blip on the radar.

[another_hot-day]

Interesting to read this thread that goes a little back in time.
I live in J-town and it still has it's share of meth heads and drunks but what town doesn't?

I remember before I lived here we used to stop by Lone Star Bar years ago and the place was full of tweekers. They are more rare than the norm now.

Little Jonestown has undergone a bit of a transformation through the years for sure.

What sucks is Travisso down 1431 a bit , I fear that will be the next Steiner Ranch. Traffic is already much heavier during commute times and they are just getting started. They have completely clear cut that entire hill side. It's an eye sore to be sure.

[hound 109]

Originally Posted by rednoise

I grew up in Jonestown (from 1999 - 2006.) And to be clear, I lived in Jonestown. I didn't live in one of the mansions in the hills or in one of the vacation homes, where the rich folks came to chill at the lake when it had water in it......

Rednoise, thanks for taking the time to write this informative post.

[mhudson78641]

The lake has water again.

[creepy]

Glad to hear the Wiki was lying and the OP finally got his answer. I hear Wikipedia is more accurate as a source now but in 2010 it was truly beginning and not allowed for me to use as a source at my job. Now we are allowed to as long as we site a second source as well. Something created by average people cannot be truly a responsible source because of tricksters.

It is true anyone can go in and add anything to it. Try it, it's fun. And you sure don't have to prove it. It is not a good source, thankfully most folks have added to it to be nice and accurate but that does not mean someone else has not gone in there and submitted total lies for many, many entries.

[CptnRn]

Originally Posted by hound 109

Rednoise, thanks for taking the time to write this informative post.

I repped him, great post!