[blparent] Baby on the Way! Now, Where to Live?

Mon Jul 27 19:16:19 UTC 2015

Strangely enough, our town of about 44 thousand has a bus that picks up everyone, disabled or not, door to door.  One calls in the day before by 2 PM.  Once our populations hits 50 thousand though, we will lose our rural transit funding and go to urban, a whole different ballgame.  Than we should be seeing fixed route as well as supplemental transit.  I know both are in the plans, as my husband and I are on the planning committee.

We also have, believe it or not, about 5 cab companies, and our bus transit is more consistent than that of Boise.

Judy

-----Original Message-----
From: blparent [mailto:blparent-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Jody Ianuzzi via blparent
Sent: Monday, July 27, 2015 1:12 PM
To: Blind Parents Mailing List
Cc: Jody Ianuzzi
Subject: Re: [blparent] Baby on the Way! Now, Where to Live?

When we moved we went into a small locally owned restaurant and started up a conversation with the waitress. We asked her what it was like to live there and what it was like to raise children there it was really a perfect way to find out what place is really like. 

At the same time we have been places where the servers have been honest and said that they did not recommend an area. 

You do have to be specific with the realtor. I remember telling your realtor we wanted to live near town and she was showing us houses 5 to 10 miles outside of town. When I explained to her again that I did not drive and I wanted to live within walking distance which would be closer to a half a mile to a mile she then finally understood. 

The town we lived in was keen New Hampshire. The irony is that overtime what was once a walkable community has now spread out. Schools were billed out of town where there was more land and shopping centers have been billed on the bypass where they used to be closer in town. 

I think there is a website called walkable communities where you can find out the ratings of various places and how walkable they are 

I am curious what places have good public transportation. I didn't think they existed except in large cities. 

JODY 🐺
thunderwalker321 at gmail.com

"There's no point in being grown up if you can't be childish sometimes."  DOCTOR WHO (Tom Baker)

> On Jul 27, 2015, at 1:11 PM, Star Gazer via blparent <blparent at nfbnet.org> wrote:
> 
>                    Hi. 
> First, realize that realtors only get paid if they close a deal. That 
> is their goal and that's all they do. If you tell them you like pink 
> elephants, they will tell you pink elephants visit the house once a 
> week in hopes that this will make you close on the house.
> My approach for house hunting is to look for kids and dogs. People 
> take care of their children and their pets. If you don't see children 
> or dogs it's not a place you want to be, even if it's a place other people like.
> Talk to people. If they don't want to talk, you don't want to live there.
> They should have the social skills to engage with you. If they do not, 
> odds are it has to do with the neighborhood and you don't want to live there.
> Listen to what people say and don't discount based on age or anything. 
> If the sweet little old lady you talk to tells you that "kids fly 
> through the intersection" listen to her. If the teenager you talk to 
> says she doesn't like the local school, listen to that. If the 
> elementary schooler asks if your kid will be joining science club, pay attention.
> Don't ever think "I can live with this" or "We can make this work". 
> It's like being infatuated with a guy, when you see the house you 
> want, you'll know.
> Realize that you know more about all this then you think. You like 
> where you are now, and you seem to like the apartment you just rented. 
> When the time is right, if it is right, you will apply those skills to buying a house.
> That house you saw last weekend combined with everything else you've 
> written tell me that buying a house at this time in your life isn't right for you.
> Listen to that. 
> 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: blparent [mailto:blparent-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of 
> Allison via blparent
> Sent: Sunday, July 26, 2015 9:17 PM
> To: 'Blind Parents Mailing List' <blparent at nfbnet.org>
> Cc: Allison <allison82 at cox.net>
> Subject: Re: [blparent] Baby on the Way! Now, Where to Live?
> 
> Hi Everyone,
> 
> Thank you very much for all your feedback! 
> 
> We think we've decided to rent an apartment in the city where we live now.
> It is a bit expensive, but the lease will be a year and we can 
> reassess our priorities after baby is here and is several months old. 
> While we realize we could probably make it work in a more suburban 
> area with fewer transit options, we think that the city we're in now 
> is the best idea for us at least in the shorter term. In addition to 
> apartment hunting, we looked at house rentals, but the bidding wars in 
> this town are just unbelievable! I had no idea it was this bad. We 
> honestly weren't finding any house rentals we liked as well as the 
> apartments we looked at, and the apts have the advantage of being 
> lower maintenance. Still the decision process has been interesting to be sure.
> 
> Judy's story about nearly buying a house in a location that she later 
> found to be unwalkable is very similar to our own unfortunately. 
> Thankfully, we realized the issue before making an offer, but it was a 
> close call. I'm wondering how other blind parents have approached 
> house buying? How do you research the walk and transit options in a 
> new area? We thought we had done our research, and we had asked the 
> opinions of both our realtor and my dad, and gave them specifics for 
> what to look for, and still... it was only ever sort of helpful. We 
> found that explaining walking and transit accessibility to sighted 
> people to be very challenging. Not impossible, just more complicated 
> than we'd imagined. In the end, we actually found one of our most 
> helpful techniques for determining public transit proximity was using 
> an iOS app called Transit Times. We used it to virtually plan routs 
> from the house and apt locations we would be visiting before we 
> visited. That gave us at least a basic idea of how close each location was to the nearest transit stops. That, combined with a site called walkscore.com, were fairly helpful.
> Even then, we've still consulted the opinions of various sighted 
> people like my dad and various realtors/apartment finders along the 
> way. Basically we used a variety of techniques, which I suspect most 
> of you can relate to. I feel we have been about as successful with the 
> house/apartment finding process as we could be, and even so, it was a fairly inefficient process.
> So I'd love to know what techniques have worked for others in the past. 
> 
> Thank you all though for your parenting perspectives on the living 
> place decision process. I read everyone's posts with enjoyment and 
> appreciation. I love the collective wisdom and experience in this group.
> 
> Best,
> Allison
> 
> 
> 
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