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Can someone give me the art of town to stay away from due to crime? I really don't feel like being shot.
There are a few threads about areas that we all feel you need not to visit. As far as your comment "I really don't like feeling shot", not many of us do. Here's a great illustration of the neighborhoods in this city; we live in the neighborhood called Point Breeze, which we are surrounded by million dollar homes. Come up stairs with us to our beautiful 3rd floor apartment and look to the east, and you're looking at the neighborhood that boasts over 3/4 of Allegheny County's homicides, a neighborhood called Homewood. Generally, Homewood/Brushton, Hill District, PARTS of Wilkinsburg, East Liberty, Lincoln/Lemmington are the areas you most likely will have no need to visit and should not visit. However, as I was/am trying to illustrate to others, anything can happen at anytime, anywhere.
Last edited by johnycakes; 12-04-2007 at 09:24 AM..
Reason: Deleted reference to another poster.
jicle,
many questions to answer-you can get shot in any area-rich or poor
Penn Hills is great for commutes to the city-I work at UPMC and travel thru homewood,(like many others whites)during different times of the day. If you have no children, easy access to anywhere via parkway or turnpike. Cost for a home is affordable for older great homes. I live on the side closest to Graham Blvd,(some refer to as the bad side),have been here for 18+years and love my diverse neighbors and friends. Have never had issues stated by others and shootings have occured in the middle and other end of Penn Hills. If your looking for a quiet tree line street, we have a few houses for sale. The school district and muncipality are refocessing on meeting the needs of residents to meet the future need of all our students and residents(a new doggie park)
Good luck with some of the other areas(more expensive) with the prices of gasoline.
I like having the extra cash to do what our family needs instead of a bigger mortgage and no cash to play.
How is PennHills? Anyone? Crime? Schools? I know its about 15 mins. from P-burgh right?
How is it? Compared to most other suburbs Penn Hills is near the bottom. I once lived in an apt. there and got a sewage bill for $42,000. People who lived in houses were billed much more. Wild gangs of dogs roamed the neighborhood getting into everyone's garbage. We were cited by the health dept. We had called animal control many times except Penn Hills used Plum's animal control and it would tale about an hour for them to get there. The dogs didn't wait for them. One of the tenants got a large wodden bin to keep our garbnage cans in and the dogs out. The garbage men lifted the entire thing into their truck and crunched it up. Officials from the boro building refused to respond. The garbage co. said they had a note from the manager to take it. I was the mabnager and I didn't write any notes. I could go on and on. Penn Hills is the worst place I ever lived.
Crime? Lots of crime. If nobody is home there's a good chance you'll get robbed.
Schools? Must be pretty bad because I've never been impressed by intelligence of Penn Hills residents or those who graduated from there.
If there's no traffic on the Parkway you can get to town in 15 or 20 minutes. The turnpike is not convenient, it's in Monroeville or Harmarville.
Peter Rabbit,
Those are some pretty strong statements about Penn Hills. How long have you lived there and how many cities or towns have you lived in so far? And where did you go to school? Public or Private?
The statements I've made on this subject about Penn Hills comes from 18 years of living,supporting,volunteering and creating great friendships in Penn Hills and I am very proud of my children for what they have learned in this "BAD" public school system.
You did not state which apartments you managed nor for how long. Maybe it was you're building that received the $42,000 sewage bill. I never received such an amount as a resident,only my normal bills. Crime happens in the best city and towns only they cover up the bad stuff, so their image is clean on the surface.
Please stop giving Penn Hills an incorrect image unless you have walked the walk, like I have. Best Place to live, if you care and are active in your community.
There are more way to get to the city besides the parkway, I can get into town from my home in less than 20 minutes-have done so many times.
Hope I didn't offend you with my Peabody(public)school intelligence.
Maybe you need to spend more time in an area before you make statements that are not impressive or correct due to your lack of intelligence of the area. It's people like you that cause the problems and then leave the rest of us to fix.
Have a wonderful day, wherever you now live.
Sorry to offend you-just speaking from the heart,soul and experience.
Peter Rabbit,
Those are some pretty strong statements about Penn Hills. How long have you lived there and how many cities or towns have you lived in so far? And where did you go to school? Public or Private?
The statements I've made on this subject about Penn Hills comes from 18 years of living,supporting,volunteering and creating great friendships in Penn Hills and I am very proud of my children for what they have learned in this "BAD" public school system.
You did not state which apartments you managed nor for how long. Maybe it was you're building that received the $42,000 sewage bill. I never received such an amount as a resident,only my normal bills. Crime happens in the best city and towns only they cover up the bad stuff, so their image is clean on the surface.
Please stop giving Penn Hills an incorrect image unless you have walked the walk, like I have. Best Place to live, if you care and are active in your community.
There are more way to get to the city besides the parkway, I can get into town from my home in less than 20 minutes-have done so many times.
Hope I didn't offend you with my Peabody(public)school intelligence.
Maybe you need to spend more time in an area before you make statements that are not impressive or correct due to your lack of intelligence of the area. It's people like you that cause the problems and then leave the rest of us to fix.
Have a wonderful day, wherever you now live.
Sorry to offend you-just speaking from the heart,soul and experience.
I lived there for a few years and more than once. I've lived in other major U.S. cities and around the world including Alaska and Hawaii. How about you? Have you always lived in less than desirable neighborhoods?
I went to public school in Oakmont and private school in Shadyside where I graduated. And you?
The apartments I managed were owned by the real estate company I worked for. I was manager there maybe 5 years and that was long enough to watch the entire neighborhood go way down hill. The building doesn't have a name. It's directly across from the entrance to Longue View Country Club on the corner of Vine Street, beside the little church. I left there in '82 or '83 and moved to the great community of Wilkins Twp.
I learned what a low-life Penn Hills was the first time I went to East Hills Shopping Center when it opened. Some gang of thugs calling themselves the Eastwood Gang was tormenting everyone in that shoppin ctr. The place never had a fair chance then things got worse. The stores had no choice but to close down and leave. I'm sure you've heard about all the people getting robbed as soon as the left the store and about all the murders there.
PA Municiapl service did the sewage collection and billing for Penn Hills at that time. All utilites were separate and the bill wasn't for the entire bldg., me only. Most of Penn Hills got outrageous bills at that time. They hadn't billed anyone in the previous nine months. The township manager refused to take calls over the situation so I went up there in person and he hid in his office or somewhere using his secretary to try to get rid of people who wanted an answer about this. It got straightened out over the next few months but it should never have happened in the first place and if mistakes are made own up to it, don't hide like you don't know what to do about it. Some manager! Did you live there in the late '70s/early '80s? That's when it happened.
I have previously posted that my preferred areas of Penn Hills would be Rosedale and the Penn Hills part of Verona at the very top of the hill starting at 5th or 6th Street.
Having worked in real estate I observed Penn Hills crime rate steadily rise and the property values continue to drop from back 30 years ago. I haven't noticed any improvements. Buying a house in Penn Hills is a real bad investment.
How can you get downtown in 20 minutes from where you live? Crossing the Wilkinsburg line doesn't mean you're in the city, in town. If you take Penn Avenue then 5th Avenue there's far too many lights to make that kind of time.
Peabody used to be alright juding by my friends who went there. I think they all were Jewish from Highland Park and Stanton Heights. I met them after they had their college degrees or were working on one.
My intelligence about Penn Hills is far greater than yours. I would hate to see someone make a mistake and locate there because they fell for stories like yours. Penn Hills is a lower class of people, always was. It shows. Nonetheless I have many friends from there and many of them still live there although most have left. Nearly all of them are business professionals. One was a dispatcher for the Penn Hills police which I don't consider professional. Somehow he ended up in the Alcoma men's bowling league where I belonged for nearly 40 years. No riff-raff welcome.
I’ve seen a lot of bickering back and forth about living in Penn Hills, and what it’s like. As a native of Penn Hills, I’ll throw in my opinion. People are dancing around the truth, trying not to offend anybody. I’ll be truthful, but blunt in my statements about Penn Hills, and its inhabitants. Please don’t be offended. This is what happened when I lived there.
I was born and raised in Penn Hills, attended and graduated from the Penn Hills School District, and moved out in the mid 1990’s. My parents moved out of Penn Hills shortly when my father was transferred out of Pittsburgh. When I lived in Penn Hills, I absolutely loved it. I was very Penn Hills proud. I loved my community. When I was in college, I desperately wanted to return to Penn Hills and purchase a home.
At the time (the early to mid 1990’s), Penn Hills was primarily middle class. There were a lot of upper class people that lived in Penn Hills that did not want the expense of owning a large home. Penn Hills was maybe 75% white, 25% black, give or take a few percentage points. At least that was what my graduating class was at the time. The majority of my street was comprised of white families (mostly elderly), but had a sizable percentage of upper class black families too. I loved my street and neighbors. Everyone looked out for each other and was respectful of one another. It was very safe. Regarding the white/black issue, people need to realize that Penn Hills has ALWAYS had a black population. Lincoln Park is a historically black neighborhood. It was a wonderful neighborhood at the time, rich with history and social do gooders. The black neighborhoods (Lincoln Park, Eastwood, areas near Homewood) were middle to upper class black and were very safe and well maintained. I had several friends that lived in the Lincoln Park area and we would ride our bikes all over the place (which was difficult as the area is all hills!) and we never encountered any problems or safety issues. When I was enrolled in school at Penn Hills, all of the kindergarten classes were held at the Lincoln Park Elementary school. Now, I believe the school is closed.
When my parents were trying to sell their house, they had a horrible time selling it as the rumors were that Penn Hills was going to turn into the next Homewood. One rumor I heard was that the city was going to demolish down Homewood and Penn Hills was going to turn into a ghetto black neighborhood full of gangs and crime. At this time, Wilkinsburg and Homewood were absolute warzones. Every day, you’d hear of drive by shootings, robberies, and gang related crime that occurred in Wilkinsburg, Homewood, and the East Hills area. There was a lot of black on white crime occurring. Some of the realtors (one whose name is still extremely prevalent in Penn Hills) were rumored to be “block busting†neighborhoods. “Block busting†is where a low class, trashy black family with all kinds of issues is granted some kind of loan to purchase a house on an all white street. This in turn starts to scare all the white people to think of selling their house as they think the neighborhood is turning black, and their property values will plummet. Meanwhile, this particular realtor that sold the house to the black family would go door to door offering his/her services, encouraging all of the white people to list with him/her to sell their house and get the most out of their property. I’m almost positive this is what happened on my street. It’s funny how she didn’t knock on my neighbor’s door across the street. He was black. After polling the neighbors when this happened, it turned out that she didn’t knock on any of the black neighbors doors.
Then, the mortgage interest rates fell into the toilet, allowing almost anybody to purchase a home in Penn Hills. A lot of wonderful black families began purchasing homes in Penn Hills. However a lot of low class black families from Wilkinsburg, Homewood, and Lincoln Larimer also began purchasing homes and they started bringing a lot of the crime with them. I remember vividly the first couple of drive by shootings that occurred in Lincoln Park. One of the shootings happened two doors away from one of my friends. My friend’s parents up and moved when we graduated from high school. They had enough, and they were black! This, tied in with the official closing of the East Hills Shopping Center and the closing of the Shop N Save (which eventually reopened to Giant Eagle) started the downfall. People (both black and white) got scared and scrambled to get out of Penn Hills. Then, the stores started getting stolen from. I personally knew the head managers of Foodland and Hills Department stores and although they advertised the closing of their stores due to reasons as retirement, relocation, etc., they both told me that the real reason why they left Penn Hills was that they could not keep up with the theft that was occurring. I asked them who was stealing from the stores, and they said that it was almost always black people from Homewood and the west end of Penn Hills. I did a college internship with the district magistrate in Penn Hills and they spent every Tuesday dealing with theft from Hills Department Store. ALL of the people caught stealing were black. Homes were getting robbed (even our house had an attempted burglary), cars were getting stolen or vandalized, and buildings were getting tagged with gang graffiti. My neighbor got his windshield smashed. A lot of the stores and restaurants ended up closing down, never to reopen. Not to mention, all of the drug possession/selling that started occurring. All of this had never happened until the 1990’s. It started happening rapidly, and caused a lot of white/middle & upper class black flight out of Penn Hills.
Now that the interest rates have skyrocketed back up, a lot of people that purchased these homes are foreclosing on them. Many homes are sitting empty, now owned by the bank. The bank can’t sell these homes and they are all starting to turn into Section 8 rentals, bringing in all kinds of unruly people into the neighborhood. Others are sitting abandoned and are turning into derelict properties. Even some of these owners went so far to totally vandalize the inside of their homes and make it unlivable before they were evicted out of it, so the bank can’t resell it. One home on my street was torn down as a result of the previous owners stealing all of the copper plumbing out of it, pouring cement down the toilet, and trashing the inside of it. The property wasn’t worth the cost to repair the house.
It’s very easy to read this post and say that I’m writing this from a racially motivated point of view. I’m not. I’m writing this from a social class point of view. Penn Hills was a middle to high class neighborhood that was always diverse. Now it’s a working/low class neighborhood. It turned this way rather quickly. I would now estimate that Penn Hills 50% black, 50% white. Penn Hills has lost population, and the population that remains is a lot poorer than what was there 20 years ago. Think about it….why would anybody (black or white) if they had financial resources want to live in a lower class area with bad schools and heightened crime?
I don’t know if Penn Hills can rebound from this. It’s unlikely that I would purchase a home in my old hometown as the school taxes are higher than that of Murrysville, and that there’s literally no decent place to shop. I would probably sell the home for less than what I paid for it as property values in Penn Hills continually decrease over time. Improvements are being made to the area (Wal-Mart and Lowes coming to the Old East Hills Shopping Plaza) and I hope this will boost the economy of the municipality, but it’s doubtful.
There are still parts of Penn Hills where there are hard working people, and being low class does not have to equate to being a criminal. I was lower class, made very little money, and my parents were lower class. Lower class means that you have to work harder, thru education and committment to a job/carreer. When you are doing these things you have little time to "get in trouble". Sad to say that a few crazy people, sick families, or children can impact a school, community, or street in such a negative way.
How is it? Compared to most other suburbs Penn Hills is near the bottom. I once lived in an apt. there and got a sewage bill for $42,000. People who lived in houses were billed much more. Wild gangs of dogs roamed the neighborhood getting into everyone's garbage. We were cited by the health dept. We had called animal control many times except Penn Hills used Plum's animal control and it would tale about an hour for them to get there. The dogs didn't wait for them. One of the tenants got a large wodden bin to keep our garbnage cans in and the dogs out. The garbage men lifted the entire thing into their truck and crunched it up. Officials from the boro building refused to respond. The garbage co. said they had a note from the manager to take it. I was the mabnager and I didn't write any notes. I could go on and on. Penn Hills is the worst place I ever lived.
Crime? Lots of crime. If nobody is home there's a good chance you'll get robbed.
Schools? Must be pretty bad because I've never been impressed by intelligence of Penn Hills residents or those who graduated from there.
If there's no traffic on the Parkway you can get to town in 15 or 20 minutes. The turnpike is not convenient, it's in Monroeville or Harmarville.
I was born and raised in PH,and in general,most of your comments are correct for the area you lived.The area you refer to ,Lincoln road,which leads to Lincoln park area of PH has always been notoriously bad.I drove school bus in PH for 3 yrs and no one wanted this run.In all honesty, I had no problems with the kids in this area.They were all very nice and polite,not at all what I expected.
pennhills native80,
you couldnt have hit the nail on the head anymore than you did... i remember living in PH when all of this was going on and haveing my relatives speak about it... (early to mid 80's) i went to Lincoln Park in i think 1982 give or take. The school has been closed, as you suggested. It is now open as a community center. it took we a while to research the information.
but this is how that all occurred...
around 1981 or 1982 the Hebron (i think i spelled that right) burn down. and lincoln park was used as an elementry school for some time. IN 1993, the school was closed and the City gave the school to Lincoln Park Community Inc, under the agreement that the Corporation could not sell it. The community center operates as a food bank and other things. In 2004, the center was set on fire and then volenteers re-habed the building. I won't bore you with the detailes, you can google them...
someone had posted that PH people where seen as low-lifes... we were never wealthy, but i never thought of our families, or the people around there as low-lifes... i am not offended, but trying to be accurate. As far as race relations, i am white and i got along with many blacks... so i never saw an issue...it seemed like everyone co-existed without any racism... unless i was just to naive'.
If anyone has any other historical information or photos of Lincoln Park, or Shannondoah, please let me know...
Go Steelers! Go Pens! Pirates?? lol
sorry for any spelling mistakes...
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This is what happened in Penn Hills....
