Anonymous wrote:Has OP chimed in? I'm wondering what School she is sending her kids too and how old they are.

CH and petworth are great for YOUNG kids. If you just got married... are thinking about having a kid, are pregnant or just had a kid... move on in. By the time your oldest kids 7 you will move on out. It's the DC migration pattern --- live downtown in your lower 20s, move uptown when you are ready for a fam, move west of the park or the burbs once your kid hits 2nd grade.

Chrime is an issue, but the real challenge isn't the chrime is that your kids have aged out of kiddie pools in your tiny yard and playgrounds and have moved on to playdates, travel soccer and bike riding.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I moved to DC from NYC and lived in CoHi for a handful of years (moved in with then-bf, now-DH, who lived there a handful more). It started sliding downhill around the time we left in 2015, and is noticeably worse now. The homeless/shiftless contingent at the plaza and around the Metro went from "kind of there" to "aggressively catcalling" to now "frequent shootouts." We moved north to Brightwood and our parks are way better than Columbia Heights' parks. Walkable brunch places? Not so much.

This was us as well- I landed in DC by moving in with my bf; we too left in 2015 to the Kalorama Triangle for a few years before also moving up to Brightwood in 2018. We left in part because we noticed the decline in quality of life, and it wasn't balanced out by the neighborhood being particularly cheap.

We love Brightwood as DINKS with a dog, and honestly would probably be even more enthralled with kids. I would say that the one caveat is that we always had a car when living in DC; if we were used to or trying to do car-free living I might have chosen a different location to buy a house as it's possible, but not easy like closer-in areas. On the brunch topic...Thankfully we're fast walkers and are on the 16th street side of the neighborhood, so at least we've got Morelands!

Brightwood still has a lot of crime; but less than Columbia heights.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I moved to DC from NYC and lived in CoHi for a handful of years (moved in with then-bf, now-DH, who lived there a handful more). It started sliding downhill around the time we left in 2015, and is noticeably worse now. The homeless/shiftless contingent at the plaza and around the Metro went from "kind of there" to "aggressively catcalling" to now "frequent shootouts." We moved north to Brightwood and our parks are way better than Columbia Heights' parks. Walkable brunch places? Not so much.

This was us as well- I landed in DC by moving in with my bf; we too left in 2015 to the Kalorama Triangle for a few years before also moving up to Brightwood in 2018. We left in part because we noticed the decline in quality of life, and it wasn't balanced out by the neighborhood being particularly cheap.

We love Brightwood as DINKS with a dog, and honestly would probably be even more enthralled with kids. I would say that the one caveat is that we always had a car when living in DC; if we were used to or trying to do car-free living I might have chosen a different location to buy a house as it's possible, but not easy like closer-in areas. On the brunch topic...Thankfully we're fast walkers and are on the 16th street side of the neighborhood, so at least we've got Morelands!

Anonymous wrote:I moved to DC from NYC and lived in CoHi for a handful of years (moved in with then-bf, now-DH, who lived there a handful more). It started sliding downhill around the time we left in 2015, and is noticeably worse now. The homeless/shiftless contingent at the plaza and around the Metro went from "kind of there" to "aggressively catcalling" to now "frequent shootouts." We moved north to Brightwood and our parks are way better than Columbia Heights' parks. Walkable brunch places? Not so much.