Reply to Capitol Hill families - If you moved to NW or burbs for school, do you have any regrets?

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Reply to "Capitol Hill families - If you moved to NW or burbs for school, do you have any regrets?"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]The parents moving from the Hill to NW or the burbs for school aren't nearly that committed. They aren't going to go the extra mile to stay by building basement apartments. They want lottery luck. They plan on getting it until they....don't.[/quote]

Or they can’t afford a row house with a basement?

Kind of hard to put a rental unit in your condo.

I don’t know why it’s hard for some of you to understand that the main factor in being able to stay on the Hill long term without relying on lottery luck is money/resources. You’re very attached to the idea that you are able to stay because others “failed to plan.” You can plan all you want but if you don’t have the money or resources to make certain real estate choices or establish alternative forms of income, it won’t matter.

Like I’m happy for you that you have a solution that works for you, but refusing to get that your solution is out of reach for many people just makes you sound like a jackass. Of course not everyone can fund private school with a rental income unit! Come on.[/quote]

If they can’t afford a rowhouse with a basement, how are they going to afford a condo in NW or the burbs? [/quote]

They can't, that' the whole point. If you currently live in a condo on the Hill, like your elementary but feel iffy about your IB middle school and downright bad about your IB high school, you are in a difficult position. You can't simply rent out your basement to get cash for private school. Your mortgage on your condo is probably higher than the mortgages some of your neighbors who bought pre-2012 or so pay for a 3 bedroom row house, so it's hard to save extra or alter your spending in order to give yourself more options. Meanwhile, you can't just go buy a house in one of the really desirable school boundaries, whether in NW or the burbs. So you lottery and hope for the best, and when you are disappointed, your smug neighbor who is paying $1500/mo for a row house with a basement income unit and sending their kids to Gonzaga doesn't want to hear it because you "failed to plan."

So far, the best suggestion is probably to look at the Eastern parts of Silver Spring and consider if schools like Einstein, Blair, or maybe Wheaton (and their MS feeds) could be a reasonable upgrade over your current options of trying SH/EH/JA for middle and hoping for a spot at Walls, Banneker, or a few other high schools in DC that are at least doing better than Eastern is at the moment. I think some people decide that move is worth it and some don't. Some discover that their IB middle school is actually perfectly decent, and that makes them decide to roll the dice a bit for high school. Everyone has a different risk tolerance. You also have to spend time in those neighborhoods in SS. Some of them have some walkability to metro and other services, but most don't. Some are nicer areas, some are not so nice. A lot of the areas in those catchments have the exact same crime issues that we see on Capitol Hill, so it's not like that's an obvious upgrade. Moving to those areas might mean having to buy a car, or even two, for a lot of Hill families, so you have to factor in spending another 30-60k in order to move. It's not a slam dunk.

It's exhausting to have to explain this because if you live on the Hill, or have recently, you should understand these considerations. But for some reason this thread is full of people who are oblivious, smug, or just ignorant, and who keep trying to gaslight people by telling them "just move" or "you should have planned better." Also a weird number of people who do not and have never lived on the Hill and who want to bicker about whether Hill East "counts" or what the precise boundaries of Capitol Hill are, a conversation that is meaningless because we're talking about schools and community, both of which adhere to much broader definitions of Capitol Hill.[/quote]

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