Cheaper cities to live in near Seattle (drug, people)

[tobester]

Originally Posted by Kopro

We do like the Olympia area, but we hear driving on I-5 going back and forth from Olympia can get pretty bad near JBLM. But, it is a much cheaper area to live in and its only just over an hour (depending on traffic obv.) from Seattle.

Olympia to Seattle is just over an hour Sunday morning at 5 am. Weekdays - 90 minutes on a good day (longer depending how far north you're going).

[RotseCherut]

Consider living in Mount Vernon in the Skagit Valley which is cheaper than any of the places mentioned in this thread so far. For $1200 a month you can get a decent house. $900 a month will put you in a decent apartment. Rentals are somewhat scare in the area, but affordable when you find them. You are only 30 minutes commuting distance from Everett where there is more job potential. Seattle is about an hour commute, but would be pretty brutal during rush hour, IMO, but not impossible.

[mkarch]

Originally Posted by RotseCherut

Consider living in Mount Vernon in the Skagit Valley which is cheaper than any of the places mentioned in this thread so far. For $1200 a month you can get a decent house. $900 a month will put you in a decent apartment. Rentals are somewhat scare in the area, but affordable when you find them. You are only 30 minutes commuting distance from Everett where there is more job potential. Seattle is about an hour commute, but would be pretty brutal during rush hour, IMO, but not impossible.

Ehhh... OP has kids. While I'm sure there are a number of family friendly neighborhoods up there, it's not really what most people would consider to be a great place to raise children on average.

If he's considering going that far out, he may want to consider University Place, which actually is a good area for families with children.

[elkotronics]

I don't know about that. After all, Glenn Beck is from Mount Vernon, WA. And look how well he turned out.

[angelenogirl]

You may be able to count on increased profit. There was a thread here about cleaning and how it costs more here than other parts of the country. I've seen housekeepers here ask for up to $50/hr. I paid $12/hr. in Los Angeles! Not sure what people in residential cleaning are making on average, but it certainly seems like they're asking for more.

[NewbiePoster]

$1200 is doable on the Olympic Peninsula, Kitsap Peninsula, Bainbridge Island, Olympia, Bellingham. What were you planning to do for work?

[RotseCherut]

Originally Posted by mkarch

Ehhh... OP has kids. While I'm sure there are a number of family friendly neighborhoods up there, it's not really what most people would consider to be a great place to raise children on average.

If he's considering going that far out, he may want to consider University Place, which actually is a good area for families with children.

There is a lot of family friendly neighborhoods in Mount Vernon. You just have to live in the suburban neighborhoods which are growing very quickly in the city. Mount Vernon is becoming, more or less, a suburb of Everett.. Let's put it this way, you will pay less money and have a higher standard of living than the other places mentioned. West Mount Vernon is where the trailer parks, older homes near the train tracks, tweekers and poor Hispanic neighborhoods are located. I would avoid west Mount Vernon like the plague. However, the eastern part of Mount Vernon I thought was quite nice and has a lot of great scenery and outdoors opportunities right outside your door.

I always though the Eastern part of Mount Vernon is about as family friendly of a place as you can live anywhere in Washington or the entire USA for that matter. I, myself, just moved from Mount Vernon and lived right on the border of West and East near the college. The difference between the neighborhoods is night and day. I really enjoyed hiking through the nice, clean and quiet neighborhoods of the eastern part of the city, which is actually expands quite far. There is many new housing developments being constructed and homes for sale are very cheap for being in the Western part of the Cascades.

Arlington and Smokey Point other options which are even closer to Everett and Seattle.


Except for Puyallup, if I had kids, I would much rather them grow up in Mount Vernon then in places like Kent, Auburn or some of the other places mentioned. Puyallup is nice, but is more expensive than Mount Vernon and some may consider the horrible layout of the city and suburban sprawl appalling.

[Ira500]

Originally Posted by RotseCherut

There is a lot of family friendly neighborhoods in Mount Vernon. You just have to live in the suburban neighborhoods which are growing very quickly in the city. Mount Vernon is becoming, more or less, a suburb of Everett.. Let's put it this way, you will pay less money and have a higher standard of living than the other places mentioned. West Mount Vernon is where the trailer parks, older homes near the train tracks, tweekers and poor Hispanic neighborhoods are located. I would avoid west Mount Vernon like the plague. However, the eastern part of Mount Vernon I thought was quite nice and has a lot of great scenery and outdoors opportunities right outside your door.

I always though the Eastern part of Mount Vernon is about as family friendly of a place as you can live anywhere in Washington or the entire USA for that matter. I, myself, just moved from Mount Vernon and lived right on the border of West and East near the college. The difference between the neighborhoods is night and day. I really enjoyed hiking through the nice, clean and quiet neighborhoods of the eastern part of the city, which is actually expands quite far. There is many new housing developments being constructed and homes for sale are very cheap for being in the Western part of the Cascades.

Arlington and Smokey Point other options which are even closer to Everett and Seattle.


Except for Puyallup, if I had kids, I would much rather them grow up in Mount Vernon then in places like Kent, Auburn or some of the other places mentioned. Puyallup is nice, but is more expensive than Mount Vernon and some may consider the horrible layout of the city and suburban sprawl appalling.

I happen to like Mount Vernon, and could happily live there, but when most people say "Family friendly" that's code for "good public schools". Mount Vernon doesn't have them.
Even Kent and Auburn have some excellent schools( certainly not most or all of them), but Mt. Vernon just doesn't have even one school that's thought of as better than mediocre.

[mkarch]

Originally Posted by RotseCherut

There is a lot of family friendly neighborhoods in Mount Vernon. You just have to live in the suburban neighborhoods which are growing very quickly in the city. Mount Vernon is becoming, more or less, a suburb of Everett.. Let's put it this way, you will pay less money and have a higher standard of living than the other places mentioned. West Mount Vernon is where the trailer parks, older homes near the train tracks, tweekers and poor Hispanic neighborhoods are located. I would avoid west Mount Vernon like the plague. However, the eastern part of Mount Vernon I thought was quite nice and has a lot of great scenery and outdoors opportunities right outside your door.

Look at the school statistics. Even the ONE elementary in the "nicer" part is borderline failing. MV is really bad in this regard, so once you factor in the cost of private school it doesn't look so affordable for someone with 3 kids. If the two "halves" had separate school systems, it wouldn't be as much of a problem. But they don't, and the current schools are dominated, apparently, by the kids from the areas you avoid like the plague. When things are that out of balance it throws the whole 'family friendly' aspect into a weird zone where the parents who are actively investing in their children's future have isolate them from most of the other neglected kids in town. That's a recipe for raising some precious little snowflakes who grow up detached from reality.

[truthxxawake]

That's partially why there's thousands of homeless people in Washington and California. Not just the over inflated housing prices and rental markets, but thousands of people moving from places like Wisconsin, Louisiana, North and South Carolina... etc. All with unreal expectations. I met a lady in Louisiana while I was stationed there and she claimed that her husband was rich. His home was only worth 370,000. That's laughable, when in California and Washington, the average price for a home can be as low as 500,000 or more in major cities. I keep hearing people say, they moved because they liked the area or dreamt of living here their whole life, and there's less racism, but that is not true. I think what they think is high enough rental money, is far from it. 900 a month will get you 300 sq foot room in someone else's home, if that. Homelessness is a real problem in Washington and California, but peoplerisk coming over here thinking they can find employment and a cheap but decent place to live. First of all, if you find anywhere cheap, it's probably a gang territory, with tons of homeless people loading up on needle injected drugs, and very unsafe. Also, cheap here is 1,900 a month for one bed. Please do your research before willy nilly deciding you want to live the dream, because you can potentially find yourself like many, homeless. :/