Which DC neighborhood is right for my growing family?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Been in CCDC almost 5 years, no british colony vibes. Then again, my DC's nanny who was an African immigrant, so maybe I was one of the "colonizers". LOL.

Seriously though, it is a wonderful place for kids to grow up. Tons of families, dogs. I like that we can walk 3 blocks to school and it is very safe. Neighbors are kind. People take care of their homes and yards.

Yeah that’s what I meant, especially if you also have a Hispanic yard crew. There’s obviously nothing wrong with having an immigrant nanny or a Hispanic yard crew but it’s hard not to notice and think about all the stuff in play.

Is this just an internet trope or does it exist in real life - people who make decisions like housing based on the optics of racial equity and virtue signaling? No one I have ever met in real life thinks and acts like this : hmm I can afford to live in a beautiful safe neighborhood with good schools, but gosh because of the underlying structural issues that led to this neighborhood being so nice (and thereby frequently not very diverse), let me prioritize feeling virtuous over the needs of my family and instead buy or live in a more diverse neighborhood!

Does anyone know a real person from real life, not an internet poster, who behaved this way?

Sure--anyone who picked mt pleasant could live in Barnaby woods and chose not to.

Yeah I wouldn't call it virtue signaling, but there are lots of relatively more expensive neighborhoods that people choose to live in over CCDC or Palisades or whatever - Cap Hill and Mount Pleasant are top examples. Denser parts of Ward 3 are also generally more expensive than CC (Woodley Park, Cleveland Park, Tenley, etc). People make housing decisions based on a lot of factors beyond "safe neighborhood with good schools" or square footage.

We’re probably going to use private school since the grandparents have offered to pay tuition so I see the neighborhood we pick as kind of a balancing force, maybe?

Do you know which private? I would look at ease of getting to school as a factor. Certainly, it is much quicker and easier to get to GDS or Sidwell (or even STA/NCS/Beauvoir) from AU Park.

I know parents appreciate their kids able to walk on their own by 5th/6th grade.

No and this is a factor in not being sure where to move (I’m not the op). One of us went to GDS but doesn’t want our kid to go there. I have no evidence that our kid is so extraordinary that they need a really elite school for academic reasons and I think the social climate in those schools is problematic.

[Anonymous]

Ward 8 for you

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I’m shocked by how many people are talking about moving to CCMD or CCDC and then using the public schools. I think some of you are delusional and will end up using private schools anyway. That’s why most of the private schools are clustered in the same areas as the “good” public schools.

Private schools are correlated to wealth…but probably 65% of CCDC and I would argue the same in CC MD, send their kids to public.

I have a JR graduate and neighbors have JR students…yes, a bunch at Walls…then probably 35% at Sidwell, GDS, SJC (and a smaller number at Gonzaga and STA/NCS).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If metro access isn’t important to you, we love living in the Palisades. Key is a super sweet school and there is a big community vibe. We walk or ride bikes to the farmers market on the weekends and down to the rec center park that is always filled with tons of kids.

If you do need metro access, it’s a pain. But the bus is easy and we use it a lot.

Key is great. I don’t mind having no grocery store. But the planes!✈️ It’s a hard miss

[Anonymous]

I'm not sure where this uninformed idea that CCDC isn't Metro-accessible is coming from. Yes, the areas surrounding Lafayette are extremely car-dependent. But we live in CCDC and are a 15-minute walk from two different Metro stops (Tenley and Friendship Heights) and a 20-minute walk from Van Ness, and that's on the high end. The bus makes those trips even shorter, and there are parts of CCDC that are way more Metro accessible than that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm not sure where this uninformed idea that CCDC isn't Metro-accessible is coming from. Yes, the areas surrounding Lafayette are extremely car-dependent. But we live in CCDC and are a 15-minute walk from two different Metro stops (Tenley and Friendship Heights) and a 20-minute walk from Van Ness, and that's on the high end. The bus makes those trips even shorter, and there are parts of CCDC that are way more Metro accessible than that.

I don’t care about metro accessibility if I’m living in CCDC. You drive everywhere. If I want to take the metro, I just park at friendship heights.

[Anonymous]

Have you considered Colonial Village or Crestwood which border Rock Creek Park?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm not sure where this uninformed idea that CCDC isn't Metro-accessible is coming from. Yes, the areas surrounding Lafayette are extremely car-dependent. But we live in CCDC and are a 15-minute walk from two different Metro stops (Tenley and Friendship Heights) and a 20-minute walk from Van Ness, and that's on the high end. The bus makes those trips even shorter, and there are parts of CCDC that are way more Metro accessible than that.

It's coming from the map showing that most of CCDC is not metro accessible. I posted earlier and was very specific about the FH adjacent part of CCDC - it's pretty distinct from Barnaby Woods etc.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm not sure where this uninformed idea that CCDC isn't Metro-accessible is coming from. Yes, the areas surrounding Lafayette are extremely car-dependent. But we live in CCDC and are a 15-minute walk from two different Metro stops (Tenley and Friendship Heights) and a 20-minute walk from Van Ness, and that's on the high end. The bus makes those trips even shorter, and there are parts of CCDC that are way more Metro accessible than that.

It's coming from the map showing that most of CCDC is not metro accessible. I posted earlier and was very specific about the FH adjacent part of CCDC - it's pretty distinct from Barnaby Woods etc.

This is just patently untrue. Parts of it are (Barnaby Woods, Pinehurst, etc). Much of it is within reasonable distance of a Metro station. I live in CCDC and have a 10-minute walk to the Metro.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm not sure where this uninformed idea that CCDC isn't Metro-accessible is coming from. Yes, the areas surrounding Lafayette are extremely car-dependent. But we live in CCDC and are a 15-minute walk from two different Metro stops (Tenley and Friendship Heights) and a 20-minute walk from Van Ness, and that's on the high end. The bus makes those trips even shorter, and there are parts of CCDC that are way more Metro accessible than that.

It's coming from the map showing that most of CCDC is not metro accessible. I posted earlier and was very specific about the FH adjacent part of CCDC - it's pretty distinct from Barnaby Woods etc.

This is just patently untrue. Parts of it are (Barnaby Woods, Pinehurst, etc). Much of it is within reasonable distance of a Metro station. I live in CCDC and have a 10-minute walk to the Metro.

Not sure why you're digging your heels in on this, but pretty much any house east of Connecticut Ave in CC is not Metro accessible - not enough to use for daily errands, commuting, etc. And even some of those spots are pushing it - like Politics and Prose is a solid 1 mile walk to the FH Metro, which is fine for a commute but I'm not going to walk with my toddler to go to a museum on the weekends. I have a few friends near the Child's Play strip and they use their cars for everything - they were optimistic about public transit use when they moved there, but gave up pretty quickly. The neighborhood by the CC Rec Center is nice and denser, but that's only a few blocks and not many houses come on the market there. We eliminated CC from our search pretty quickly as we were not looking for a "suburb in the city" vibe with car-dependence.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm not sure where this uninformed idea that CCDC isn't Metro-accessible is coming from. Yes, the areas surrounding Lafayette are extremely car-dependent. But we live in CCDC and are a 15-minute walk from two different Metro stops (Tenley and Friendship Heights) and a 20-minute walk from Van Ness, and that's on the high end. The bus makes those trips even shorter, and there are parts of CCDC that are way more Metro accessible than that.

It's coming from the map showing that most of CCDC is not metro accessible. I posted earlier and was very specific about the FH adjacent part of CCDC - it's pretty distinct from Barnaby Woods etc.

This is just patently untrue. Parts of it are (Barnaby Woods, Pinehurst, etc). Much of it is within reasonable distance of a Metro station. I live in CCDC and have a 10-minute walk to the Metro.

Anything longer than a 2 minute walk to the metro is too long.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm not sure where this uninformed idea that CCDC isn't Metro-accessible is coming from. Yes, the areas surrounding Lafayette are extremely car-dependent. But we live in CCDC and are a 15-minute walk from two different Metro stops (Tenley and Friendship Heights) and a 20-minute walk from Van Ness, and that's on the high end. The bus makes those trips even shorter, and there are parts of CCDC that are way more Metro accessible than that.

It's coming from the map showing that most of CCDC is not metro accessible. I posted earlier and was very specific about the FH adjacent part of CCDC - it's pretty distinct from Barnaby Woods etc.

This is just patently untrue. Parts of it are (Barnaby Woods, Pinehurst, etc). Much of it is within reasonable distance of a Metro station. I live in CCDC and have a 10-minute walk to the Metro.

Not sure why you're digging your heels in on this, but pretty much any house east of Connecticut Ave in CC is not Metro accessible - not enough to use for daily errands, commuting, etc. And even some of those spots are pushing it - like Politics and Prose is a solid 1 mile walk to the FH Metro, which is fine for a commute but I'm not going to walk with my toddler to go to a museum on the weekends. I have a few friends near the Child's Play strip and they use their cars for everything - they were optimistic about public transit use when they moved there, but gave up pretty quickly. The neighborhood by the CC Rec Center is nice and denser, but that's only a few blocks and not many houses come on the market there. We eliminated CC from our search pretty quickly as we were not looking for a "suburb in the city" vibe with car-dependence.

Politics & Prose isn't CC DC anymore. More Forest Hills (BTW, Van Ness metro would be closer).

The problem for a family of 4 is that it is cheaper to drive, especially if you are parking on the street on a Sunday when it is free.

However, my teen kids use it all the time, and when us adults are traveling on our own downtown we use it. We live in the area West of CT Avenue, so it is about 4/10 of a mile walk?

[Anonymous]

We moved to CCDC and loved the elementary school but be prepared to go to private for middle school or do what we did which was move to Bethesda.

[Anonymous]

If you're a multi-racial family Colonial village and Shepherd Park are wonderful places to grow up. It's nice to see multiracial and wealthy black families walking around the neighborhood. Living in Colonial Village also means living close to the mayor, which brings extra police presence.
The only downside is the local elementary which is the weakest elementary in the Deal/JR cluster, but your mileage may vary (white kids are achieving at the same level as white kids in the other elementaries).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We moved to CCDC and loved the elementary school but be prepared to go to private for middle school or do what we did which was move to Bethesda.

I never understand these “be prepared to go to private” for middle school when so many parents opt to send their kids to Deal. Not everyone (majority) opts for private or moves to Bethesda.