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Is Belltown safe TODAY?

radycardiaradycardia
edited June 2010 in Seattle Real Estate
Hi,

We are moving to Seattle this summer and we are looking for a place to live. I need to be close to Harborview and to UW for work.

We have found a place in Belltown that we really like (Western and Vine) but we have just learned that Belltown doesn't have the best reputation safety wise.

I know the area has been gentrified recently, but am I still going to get hassled by the homeless or asked to buy crack? Will I feel safe walking alone at 11pm? Can I feel safe allowing my wife to walk alone at 11pm? Will I see drug dealers with regularity? Will I hear gun shots?

Most of the stories that I have heard are from pre 2008, but is it safe TODAY. I don't care that 20 years ago it was dangerous, what is it like today?

I would be nice to be able to walk to the sculpture garden, pikes place market, or the downtown area, but I don't want to feel threatened.

Thanks

Comments

  • jillaynejillayne
    Do your due diligence.

    Walk the neighborhood at all different times of the day and night.

    Talk to the local people who live and work in the neighborhood.

    Google "belltown seattle crime" and take a look at all the data in just that one search.
  • ira sira s
    I agree with Jillayne. Not everyone is going to react the same way to a place. There are plenty of upper middle class folks who live happily in Belltown, so go on various days at various spots to see how it feels.
    But I wouldn't live there. Just a little too stark. Maybe up the hell at the easterm edge of Belltown would feel safer to me, but Western and 1st have a little too much reality for me to feel comfortable, like homeless mfolks and open drug dealing. Lower Queen Anne is nearby and feels nicer to me.
  • Dave0Dave0
    I like to look at http://spotcrime.com/wa/seattle for a general idea on current neighborhood safety. Looking at that website, while Belltown isn't the most dangerous area of the city, I wouldn't call it a safe neighborhood either.

    In Belltown's small area (between Denny Way, Pine St. I-5 & the water) there have been 2 robberies and an assault in the past 2 months. Head a little NW to Queen Anne and there is nothing. I would personally rather live on Queen Anne than Belltown. However, Belltown is better than the Broadway area of Capitol Hill (between Roy St, Denny Wy, I-5 & 15th AVE NE) where there have been 3 shootings, 4 assaults, 2 robberies & 2 thefts in a smaller area.

    Keep in mind however that this website doesn't take into account population density. Belltown is very dense with residents and employers, where as areas such as Queen Anne are not as dense.
  • dlsdls
    Radycardia,

    I don't know if you are simply completely ignorant of Seattle and the Belltown area, or just a troll. I'll assume the former. Belltown is no place for decent people. When it was 'gentrified; some years ago the drunks, dopers, and general scum didn't go anywhere else because there was no place for them to go. Street trash, crime, etc is very prevalent in the area. If you're wife wants to be out at 11pm at night then I suggest a Glock, preferably 40S&W or larger. You may seriously want to consider Wallingford or Capital Hill, both areas have their own problems (as do all areas of Seattle) but they are are more decent than Belltown. Also, unless you like major construction, on the order of Boston's 'Big Dig', you may find Belltown noisy for the next several years as the viaduct gets replaced with a (unnecessary) tunnel.
  • Civil ServantCivil Servant
    In addition to the physical-safety factor (regarding which I agree with others who have commented here), Belltown also has a discomfort factor -- it has a high concentration of social-services agencies that serve populations with drug and/or psychiatric problems. Outside these agencies there tend to be clusters of clients smoking, panhandling, fighting, nodding off, or harassing passers-by/those waiting at nearby bus stops. So I don't feel in physical danger from them, but I don't like having things yelled at me either, and I tend to avoid Belltown mostly for this reason.

    As to your question about whether you will feel OK about your wife walking home at 11pm, I can tell you that my boyfriend does not like to hear that I've walked through Belltown alone after the dinner hour.

    Why not consider Lower Queen Anne? From there you can still walk to all of the attractions you name, but I think you and your wife will both feel safer and sleep easier.
  • SeattleMooseSeattleMoose
    I know people who bought there (now laid off WAMU employees) and they have told me that things seem to be getting worse, not better in Belltown. Not only are they sorry they bought at the peak of the bubble and are now trapped financaily, they are sorry they bought into the whole "hip" thing regarding Belltown.

    Seattle has lots of alternatives to Belltown...so good luck.
  • radycardiaradycardia
    Thanks for the replies.

    I am just curious how the place can be so terrible yet so many new expensive buildings/condos have been built.

    How did these units sell for $500,000+ dollars if the area is so bad?

    Why would so many developers want to build in such a terrible location?

    If Belltown was so bad, why develope it in the first place? Did they hope the crack heads would leave?
  • ira sira s
    You can live in a high rise in Belltown with an underground parking garage and be pretty much oblivious to what's going on in the street a few feet away. It's an odd dichotomy that's also seen in other cities, where there are expensive high rises with homeless folks and junkies just a few feet away. I wouldn't want to live there, but plenty of people value the convenience factor, the many good restaurants and clubs, etc., and are willing to overlook a lot.
  • dlsdls
    I pretty much agree with Ira S, if you're isolated in your hi-rise you tend to 'overlook' the 'issues' with the neighborhood. When Belltown was gentrified (late 1990s/early 2000s I think), the 'locals', the (decent) low income, the dopers/bums/drunks/etc, were pushed to the edges of the area, but not 'out', because there really wasn't anywhere else for them to go. The area north of Belltown got remade into the Olympic Sculpture Park, Queen Anne is 'off limits', as is most of Downtown and Capital Hill. The result is many of the original Belltown inhabitants have moved back so to speak because they don't have anywhere else to go.
  • WestSideBillyWestSideBilly
    radycardia wrote:
    How did these units sell for $500,000+ dollars if the area is so bad?

    Because it's not that bad.

    In all the times I've been in Belltown, I've never seen anything that you wouldn't see in any other metropolitan area. Never been harassed by a drug dealer, a homeless guy, or been assaulted or murdered. There are night clubs in Belltown, so there will be an occasional Friday night fight and a couple shootings from time to time. There are a lot more on Capitol Hill, Pioneer Square, and Beacon Hill for that matter. And any of those areas are nicer than comparable areas in San Francisco, Chicago, or New York.

    The OP is much more likely to have problems near their place of employment (UW campus and Harborview) than in Belltown.
  • Civil ServantCivil Servant
    I think the units sold partly because people figured that prices would continue to go up so they were a good investment and partly because those buying them were -- at the time anyway -- fairly young with a lot of disposable income. That is the case with the people I knew who bought or considered buying in Belltown. They could get to work by bus easily no matter where work was and they liked the bars and restaurants and clubs and arty stuff in Belltown, as well as the cachet of being able to say "I live in Belltown" and to think of themselves as rough-hewn gritty urban types. But things can change -- you lose your job and have to take another one that pays less, or you get married and suddenly a yard sounds like a better value proposition than a three-block walk to the Crocodile, and the pricey Belltown condo is no longer so appealing.

    Also, I am sure that men's perspective on how much harrassment one can expect in Belltown is different from women's (I am the latter, in case that's not clear).
  • WestSideBillyWestSideBilly
    Civil Servant wrote:
    Also, I am sure that men's perspective on how much harrassment one can expect in Belltown is different from women's (I am the latter, in case that's not clear).

    That's not unique to Belltown.
  • Civil ServantCivil Servant
    That is true and I'm sorry, I didn't mean to imply that it was. I guess I find Belltown harrassment-of-ladies a bit in a class of its own because it comes much more often from a crazy (hence unpredictable) person than just a garden-variety jack*ss. That's what I was trying to get across.
  • ira sira s
    Today's Seattle Times has an article on the plans for a grand boulevard with green space and play equipment on Bell Street.
    http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/l ... wn09m.html

    I wish I didn't have such a bad attitude. Is this going to get rid of crazy, unpredictable, smelly, nasty, potentially dangerous people? Doubt it. It's going to provide them with more bushes to pass out in, and more playgrounds to hang out in. If you were a parent of young children, would you move to Belltown because they built a playground?
  • WestSideBillyWestSideBilly
    I'm pretty cynical of that plan, too. I don't see it changing anything really.

    I can't see Belltown ever being a destination for families.
  • s.datas.data
    Isn't it funny how so many people have such strong opinions about a neighborhood they clearly don't live in, let alone visit on a regular basis.

    I've lived in Belltown for almost ten years. I don't live here because it's cool or hip. I live here because I enjoy my neighborhood...the people, places and all that it offers. I value walking to work, a social life without drinking and driving, and a dog-friendy, walkable community.

    As for safety and homeless folks...yes, you will have to be aware of these things. It's part of living in a city! Belltown is not for everyone, but neither is Bellevue.

    BTW, it's not smart for anyone to walk alone late night in any city.
  • fasterfaster
    http://www.seattlepi.com/local/422139_belltown22.html

    Violence, drugs ... nothing new in Belltown
    Police to address issue at Tuesday community forum

    It was about 3:45 a.m. when a white Camaro rolled down the 500 block of Wall Street. A passenger pulled a .38 silver revolver and fired, hitting one man in the neck. He was rushed to Harborview Medical Center, his life in question.

    Nearly an hour earlier, a man had been knocked unconscious in the 2300 block of First Avenue after he and three others made cat calls at the suspect's girlfriend.

    The incidents on Sunday -- two weeks after a 21-year-old was shot to death and another man was wounded in Belltown ....
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