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Thinking about moving to Detroit area


USA11B

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Here's the deal, I may have a chance to take another job with my company in either Detroit or Boston. Currently we live in Atlanta. I'm looking for some suggestions on areas of Detroit to live. We're leaning towards Detroit my wife and I both grew up in Lansing and all our family still lives in MI, so the homesick factor is definately there, plus Boston area is just so godawful expensive I'm not even sure if we could afford it.

I will be on the road in the Detroit area, so I won't be commuting to one particular place everyday. We can't wait to get out of Atlanta, we can't stand the phony Southern Hospitality BS, the sprawl, the big box on every corner, the blandness, the lack of anything original or anything with any character. I've heard from friends the Detroit area is becoming a lot like that (minus the Southern Hospitality part). We have kids, as much as I would love living in the city or maybe Hamtramck or Dearborn, there's no way I want to send my kids to the public schools there and we can't afford private, and of course crime is a factor.

So any recommendations of where to look? We can probably afford about 180-200k max for a house. Any areas that are safe good places to raise kids that aren't going to go to hell over the next years because of sprawl? Sprawl-burbs around Atlanta basically good schools, low crime, but then every area is cheesy McMansion Subdivision-->Super Wal-Mart-->Home Depot-->Applebee's-->then it starts all over again. Definately want to avoid areas that are headed in that direction!

I can probably go out as far west as Ann Arbor, as far north as Flint and maybe as far south as Monroe.

I really dont blame you for wanting to leave sprawlanta...it is just awful there. I dont think people understand how bad it really is there in the burbs.

I cant really help you on where to live..I havent lived here long enough to say. Depot Town Ypsi is nice.

compared to Gwinnett or Cobb anywhere in Washtenaw is better!!!! :)

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I suppose you are right, and actually I shouldnt speak so definitely about downriver since I have very limited exposure with those locations... but the school systems are significantly better in the nothern suburbs.

Actually, Trenton, Riverview, and Grosse Ile have three of the top school districts in the region. Grosse Ile in particular ranks alongside Birmingham and the Grosse Pointes, while Trenton and Riverview are on par with Troy and Berkley. Allen Park also has good schools. Really the only school districts in the Downriver area that aren't good are Taylor, Lincoln Park, River Rouge, and Ecorse. The Royal Oak area probably does have more young professionals, but that's not to say that they don't exist in the Downriver area. Downriver is also much larger than the Royal Oak area, so there is more variety in schools, income, and housing. Granted, aside from Grosse Ile, Downriver doesn't even come CLOSE to the wealth that northern and Western Oakland County have.

The Northern portion of Downriver (Allen Park, Melvindale, Lincoln Park, Southgate, Wyandotte, River Rouge, and Ecorse) is about the same size as the Royal Oak area, while the Southern Portion (Trenton, Riverview, Grosse Ile, Woodhaven, Brownstown, Flat Rock, Gibraltar, and Rockwood) is a little larger than the Royal Oak area. The Northern portion is what people "stereotypically" think of when they think "Downriver", while the southern portion is mostly middle-class families.

For instance, this is typical of an upper-middle class neighborhood in Riverview:

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This is what you'll find in Grosse Ile:

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...For instance, this is typical of an upper-middle class neighborhood in Riverview...

...This is what you'll find in Grosse Ile...

While those are all lovely homes, they are all well above the $200,000 limit which I believe was stated in the original post that started this thread.

I think one could get more house for their buck in Allen Park, Taylor, Dearborn, Trenton or Wyandotte than Grosse Ile or Riverview right now. And from my experience, Royal Oak is kind of expensive for what you get.

I suggest playing around on www.realtor.com to get an idea of how much house you can get in your price range then narrowing down neighborhood choices from there.

There's also other things to consider besides schools, like house insurance, car insurance and property taxes. If you live in Detroit or work in Detroit there's a city income tax.

I think schools are only as good as the parents who are involved with them. Schools aren't the only factor in the equation...a big part is parental involvement. You get out of it what you put into it.

Well, good luck with your search and let us know how it goes.

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I really dont blame you for wanting to leave sprawlanta...it is just awful there. I dont think people understand how bad it really is there in the burbs.

I cant really help you on where to live..I havent lived here long enough to say. Depot Town Ypsi is nice.

compared to Gwinnett or Cobb anywhere in Washtenaw is better!!!! :)

Yeah I can't wait to get out of here. Besides really missing the north this place just isn't for us. I live in Forsyth county, live 30miles from work and it's an 1 1/2hr commute ea. way. And of course they love their sprawl here, so they have all these huge developments going on up there w/no relief in sight for the traffic situation, no real job creation so everybody moving here is usually going to ATL. Now they have hopped the Forsyth/Alpharetta sprawl and are starting to build up Dawson county and create sprawl there. So I imagine if I were to stay here another yr or 2 I will probably be looking at about a 2 1/2hr commute ea. way.

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Thanks for all the feedback and suggestions. Quick update, the position didn't happen, but good news it should be happening in the near future, so for now we're just going to keep looking and narrowing things down until the time comes.

There's a chance I may be able to relocate anywhere in the eastern part of the state so if that's the case we may consider Saginaw or Flint area, maybe Davison. But planning more likely it'll be the Detroit area, here's what we've narrowed down to. Wyandotte, Ann Arbor, Royal Oak, Berkley, St. Clair Shores, Troy, Sterling Heights, Beverly Hills/Birmingham, and Allen Park. As far as the inner burbs Wyandotte and Allen Park definately seems most affordable. SCS while out a little bit, doesn't seem like a sprawl burb, and if I remember from being there before it wasn't. Sterling Heights and Troy, not sure about, lots of homes for sale though, decent prices, schools seem decent, but seem like sprawl burbs. AA, Royal Oak, Berk, Bev Hills/B'ham areas definately like, just don't know how affordable, found things in all of them in our price range, but the houses were pretty small, most around 1,000sq ft for around 200k. So we would max ourselves for very little in way of what we would get.

Other areas we're thinking about, but not sure they seem like they are sprawl areas, Huron & Superior Twp., Brighton, Lake Orion, Clinton Twp., Utica, and Shelby Twp.

So we'll just keep looking and researching. Hopefully I'll get some time to be up there and look before we have to move. Anyway can't wait, we're really getting anxious to move back up there!

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Yeah I can't wait to get out of here. Besides really missing the north this place just isn't for us. I live in Forsyth county, live 30miles from work and it's an 1 1/2hr commute ea. way. And of course they love their sprawl here, so they have all these huge developments going on up there w/no relief in sight for the traffic situation, no real job creation so everybody moving here is usually going to ATL. Now they have hopped the Forsyth/Alpharetta sprawl and are starting to build up Dawson county and create sprawl there. So I imagine if I were to stay here another yr or 2 I will probably be looking at about a 2 1/2hr commute ea. way.

The thing that I find really frustrating is that even the towns there dont really have character...its too bad. Cumming has a downtown, but its nothing compared to Ypsi or Plymouth...or even Dexter! and the housing stock doesnt compare either.

I dont even know if the 400 expansion will really help with traffic...

I really like Gainesville and Athens...but theres no jobs and its too far to drive to Atlanta.

Good luck finding work!

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The thing that I find really frustrating is that even the towns there dont really have character...its too bad. Cumming has a downtown, but its nothing compared to Ypsi or Plymouth...or even Dexter! and the housing stock doesnt compare either.

I dont even know if the 400 expansion will really help with traffic...

I really like Gainesville and Athens...but theres no jobs and its too far to drive to Atlanta.

Good luck finding work!

Yeah I really hate that, there is no character at all here! Outside Atlanta it's all the same. Even in Atlanta, so often it seems so contrived and phony. Cumming has a nice downtown if you speak Spanish and are looking to do day labor for $5/hr, other than that the real heart of Cumming is the Big Box corridor off exit 14.

What a fine example of suburban Atlanta character...the heart of the city is one jam packed over crowded traffic nightmare where they have a cluster of every big box, chain store/restaurant ever known to man in about a 1/4mile radius, then that connects to the downtown which is full of Mexican owned spanish speaking businesses and illegal day labor gathering places!

The expansion can only help. But problem is its like Leap Sprawl here, Alpharetta is still a mess so they go past there and sprawl Forsyth, now Forsyth is like Alpharetta years ago and now they are bypassing and starting to sprawl Dawson, a lot of people think in another couple years Dahlonega is going to be the next sprawl victim. So really adding a couple lanes up to exit 10 is going to have very little effect.

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I currently live in the Atlanta area with my boyfriend who is from Arizona but has several friends and family in Michigan. I've visited both states and have found them to be very beautiful and nice. Though Arizona is far away from my family here in Georgia. I know I'll miss the greenery that is provided in the east and midwest and it's a fact that the cost of living is lower in Michigan that it is in the west. Any advice you guys could give me on what the right decision would be (Arizona or Michigan) and if so, where would be the best place for two gay men to live...who aren't really into the "gay scene"?

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Michigan doesn't really have a "gay scene". The closest thing you'll find is Ferndale and to a lesser extent Royal Oak. Ann Arbor's liberal college-town atmosphere is another "gay-friendly" option, though Michigan in general isn't as homophobic as the South. West Michigan is conservative, but compared to some Southern states even they could be viewed as "socially liberal". And even West Michigan has a "gay-friendly" town in Saugatuck.

For instance, when the state voted to ban same-sex marriage, 41% of Michigan voters voted against the measure. While that may not seem like much, consider that only 14% of Mississippi voters, 23% of Texas voters, and 24% of Georgia voters voted against their measures. Only Oregon (where gay-rights groups spent millions of dollars in advertisements) had a higher portion of its population vote against the ban and that was only by 2%. And when you consider they didn't really even focus on Michigan, it makes the results even more astounding.

And if you only include Metro Detroit, 45% of voters voted against the ban with 60% of Washtenaw county voters voting against the ban. It should also be noted that Metro Detroit has 2 million more people than all of Oregon. Even in conservative Metro Grand Rapids 34% of voters voted against the ban.

Results for other Michigan metros are: Lansing (46% voted against), Saginaw-Bay City-Midland (41% voted against), Kalamazoo-Battle Creek (44% voted against), and Traverse City (40% voted against).

Compare that to the Metro Atlanta (sans Chambers county, AL) where only 28% of voters voted against the ban, with 40% of DeKalb county voters voting against the ban. Michigan had 15 Counties where more than 40% of voters voted against the ban; two, Ingham (53%) and Washtenaw (60%), saw a majority of voters vote against the ban. Clarke County (with 48%) was the only other county in Georgia to see more than 40% of the voters vote against the ban.

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Michigan doesn't really have a "gay scene". The closest thing you'll find is Ferndale and to a lesser extent Royal Oak. Ann Arbor's liberal college-town atmosphere is another "gay-friendly" option, though Michigan in general isn't as homophobic as the South. West Michigan is conservative, but compared to some Southern states even they could be viewed as "socially liberal". And even West Michigan has a "gay-friendly" town in Saugatuck.

For instance, when the state voted to ban same-sex marriage, 41% of Michigan voters voted against the measure. While that may not seem like much, consider that only 14% of Mississippi voters, 23% of Texas voters, and 24% of Georgia voters voted against their measures. Only Oregon (where gay-rights groups spent millions of dollars in advertisements) had a higher portion of its population vote against the ban and that was only by 2%. And when you consider they didn't really even focus on Michigan, it makes the results even more astounding.

And if you only include Metro Detroit, 45% of voters voted against the ban with 60% of Washtenaw county voters voting against the ban. (It should also be noted that Metro Detroit has 2 million more people than all of Oregon) Even in conservative Metro Grand Rapids 34% of voters voted against the ban.

Results for other Michigan metros are: Lansing (46% voted against), Saginaw-Bay City-Midland (41% voted against), Kalamazoo-Battle Creek (44% voted against), and Traverse City (40% voted against).

Compare that to the Metro Atlanta (sans Chambers county, AL) where only 28% of voters voted against the ban, with 40% of DeKalb county voters voting against the ban. Michigan had 15 Counties where a larger portion of voters voted against the ban. Clarke County (with 48%) was the only other county in Georgia to see more than 40% of the voters vote against the ban.

Know anything in relation to how Arizona voted? I'm hoping some kind of information like that will help me steer my bf into living somewhere else (i.e. Michigan), instead of there.

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Arizona hasn't yet voted on a constitutional ban for same-sex marriage, though it does have state laws that ban them. The only difference is that Michigan courts can't say its laws banning gay-marriage are unconstitutional (Massachusetts-style), while Arizona courts still can. Granted, Arizona courts are NOT going to be doing that any time soon... And even more, state constitutions are trumped by the federal constituion, so eventually this may all be moot one way or the other. Overall, I'd say Michigan is more gay-friendly than Arizona, but I don't know any specifics to back that up... In general hispanics tend to vote against gay-marriage on religious grounds, and Arizona does have a large hispanic population, though looking at exit polls in 2004, more hispanics tended to vote against the bans. In fact, in Ohio, 56% of hispanics voted against the ban. So maybe, Arizona's large hispanic population would benefit the pro-gay marriage side.

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Arizona hasn't yet voted on a constitutional ban for same-sex marriage, though it does have state laws that ban them. The only difference is that Michigan courts can't say its laws banning gay-marriage are unconstitutional (Massachusetts-style), while Arizona courts still can. Granted, Arizona courts are NOT going to be doing that any time soon... And even more, state constitutions are trumped by the federal constituion, so eventually this may all be moot one way or the other.

Knowing both states fairly well, which would be the more logical choice for someone who still wants to be on the east side and close to home (Georgia) who would rather have a cold winter than a hot summer, with a boyfriend who moved to Georgia, hates it, and wants to move back to Arizona even though he loves Michigan, despite the snow in the winter? Suck it up and sacrifice good weather and liberal attitude for Arizona or convince him to go to Michigan. Forgive my run on sentence!

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In that case the obvious choice is Arizona! j/k ;)

Though I will say, you should worry more about getting a job than about weather and political climate. There are jobs in Michigan, but they are harder to find than in Georgia or Arizona.

Well, is that a statewide problem, or only in certain areas?

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It depends. The problem is that Michigan is losing manufacturing jobs like there is no tomorrow, and while engineering, medical, and other "white-collar" jobs are growing, they aren't growing enough to offset the loss in manufacturing jobs. There are jobs to be found, they are just harder to find. A college degree is a plus, but with so many people looking for a job, it won't guarantee you a position. (Michigan's unemployment rate is one of the highest in the nation, though nowhere near as bad as it was in the 80's.)

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It depends. The problem is that Michigan is losing manufacturing jobs like there is no tomorrow, and while engineering, medical, and other "white-collar" jobs are growing, they aren't growing enough to offset the loss in manufacturing jobs. There are jobs to be found, they are just harder to find. A college degree is a plus, but with so many people looking for a job, it won't guarantee you a position. (Michigan's unemployment rate is one of the highest in the nation, though nowhere near as bad as it was in the 80's.)

That's a shame, Michigan is a beautiful state and seems to have a lot to offer. People are super nice and things are well set up there...compared to Georgia

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