Camden, NJ

[jiacinto]

Is it still bad?

[soupkitchen]

1. Well if you're a fish

it now has a nice acquarium to live in.

[jiacinto]

2. Okay

thansks

[Sagatious8]

3. Moved to NJ last year

and I've been through Camden several times. Parts of it seem pretty scary, the decent housing complexes I've seen downtown are surrounded by high fences and there are real quality of life issues.

But I still sense something in the air... There is potential there. It's filled with beautiful old brownstones that have great architectural elements. The neighborhoods and houses would need a great deal of investment and elbow grease but you could get them for a song. The new aquarium (terrific btw), Tweeter Music Center on the river, battleship New Jersey, ferry to downtown Philly, farmers market, new loft housing downtown, all point to the potential that Camden has if investors made a concerted effort.

And it's so hard to find someplace in NJ to live where you can actually walk to anything, everyone seems to live in McMansions on half a acre each. There is a market for someplace more urban to live in NJ. We were shocked and disappointed to find NOT ONE SINGLE urban area in all of New Jersey that was in good enough shape, for various reasons, to move a family into.

[FlaGranny]

5. Well, small town NJ is an entirely different story.

Try a small town on a bus route. There are many, many beautiful small towns in NJ that are served by busses. At least there used to be. But urban areas. There aren't any that I know of that I'd want to live in. When I was a kid, Camden was a nice city. It isn't any more.

[Sagatious8]

9. Thanks, that's what we finally found

but coming from Boston it's just not the same. I love being able to walk to the post office and library, but the sidewalk ends a half mile in all directions. I miss being able to walk everywhere and all day and still not seeing everything. :(

Mind you I'm not trying to put down NJ... It's lovely for people who like small town living. I just think that NJ would benefit so much from gentrifying at least one of it's urban centers. Let's have some pride instead of being just a bedroom community for New York and Philly.

[TreasonousBastard]

14. Hoboken,

Jersey City, Morristown, Kearney, Westfield, Princeton, Hackensack... there's a bunch of small cities that aren't bad places to live-- if you can afford it.

I feel the same way about the McMansions, having lived in NYC, but you're not gonna get Boston anywhere here in Joisey.

There's been a lot of work done to get Newark, Camden, Elizabeth and a few other places back on track, but there are powerful social and economic forces slowing or stopping it. Too bad, because I find it very convenient living in Elizabeth, but there's no "here" here.

[FlaGranny]

16. Ya must be in the country!

Are you in N. or S. Jersey? If you're near Philly, you've got Maple Shade, Moorestown, any number of towns on the White Horse Pike, all solid sidewalks for miles and miles, even from one town to the next. Lots of nice neighborhoods within walking distance of shopping, libraries, and post offices.

[Sagatious8]

18. Right smack dab in the middle of NJ!

But not quite independently wealthy enough to afford Princeton. :) We're taking a chance on a more affordable *cough-urban decayed* town, Hightstown, because we see the potential. But we've toyed with the idea of selling to get a condo in New Brunswick, which is close to hubby's office. New Brunswick's got culture and urban flare, but I've heard the schools are horrid.



Editted: more detail

[NewJerseyDem]

6. Jersey City

That is quickly becoming the best urban area in New Jersey. Tons of commuters to NYC are living there and it is getting heavily developed along the Hudson River where there is easy access to ferries to NYC and views of the skyline. Basically, all parts of Hudson County are getting better including Hoboken and Bayonne. They are still largely focused towards young singles but I think that in the future they would be acceptable to families in some areas.

As I understand it Camden is quite bad. I think they have made some improvements and are hoping that it will get developed like Hudson County due to Camden's proximity to Philadelphia. But, I find that unlikely.

[soupkitchen]

13. I live in Jersey City, what are you talking about?

I think it's a terribly planned and a terribly managed City.
Is there expansion on the waterfront? Yes
Is it a convenient locale from which to commute to NYC, Yes
Is it a place to raise a family? I don't think so.
There's a few nice neighborhoods, but for the most part it is a garbage all over the streets inner city.

[patcox2]

4. Completely dysfunctional disaster, its not a city, its lost

It has almost no tax rateables, the overwhelming majority of properties don't even pay their real estate taxes, something like 75%, it exists on life support, 80 to 90% of the city budget is subsidized by the state. It has no private sector economy whatsoever, there is a hospital and government and thats it for employment. Yes the New Jersey is magnificent in an awful way and the aquarium and Tweeter center are nice, but they are small bandaids on a large festering wound.

My wife was born there and lived there for her first 10 years, her father was an episcopal priest there and a community activist, they nmoved out after they came home one night to find a burglar carrying their TV out the front door of the rectory. We went back to see where she grew up recently and its worse, scary, there are no little local businesses, nothing, but derelicts and drug addicts hanging on corners, a horror, considering that in her father's lifetime it was a commercial center, people came to its downtown to shop, it actually has a subway system, the shipyards there built some of the largest aricraft carriers, and campbell soup's factory ensured that the streets smelled like tomato soup.

Walt Whitman is there, I always used to look at his tomb, just down the street from my law school, and wonder what he'd think. he was so optimstic, could his optimism see a good end for the city?

[jiacinto]

7. Camden has a subway system?

Does it still work?

[Sagatious8]

12. Yup

Drove by the other day and saw a modern looking light rail going through downtown Camden.

http://www.camdennj.com/
www.njtransit.com

[ChrisNYC]

8. I went to college in Philly

And Camden is right across the river. I graduated in 2000, but can say that it was an absolute disaster. The E-Center is there (outdoor concert venue) so we would go over for concerts, but it was just a really sad depressed area. And as it wasn't part of Philly, it got no support whatsoever. Similar to the situation in East St. Louis. The only businesses in Camden were the string of strip clubs and liquor stores just over the Ben Franklin bridge that people from Philly would drive over for. The first time I was over there was a day the liquor stores in Philly were all closed. (All state owned in PA, so they just randomly closed sometimes) It was about 3 in the afternoon, and 2 different prostitutes approached us in 5 minutes in Camden -- and this was on the "MAIN" Street!

Of course, 3 miles away in Cherry Hill, things are great.

Edited for spelling.

[jiacinto]

10. Yeah

I hear Cherry Hill is nice.

[TheBigGuy]

11. first East St Louis, now Camden?

Carlos, you seem to have developed an interest in urban decay and "basket case citys".

I think Campbells Soup is still there. It used to have a big RCA factory. And there is some employment in hospitals and such. So maybe not as far gone as East Stl Louis.

However:
"Almost 82% of the City's population is dependent upon some form of public assistance, and 69% of the City's households receive Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC). More than 12% of Camden's housing units are vacant, "

Theres also a very early example of public housing in Camden...Yorkship Villiage. It was build to house shipyard workers during & just after WWI

Heres some good linke to Camden
http://www.eticomm.net/~kelta/camden.html

And if you can find it, there are some good pix of Camdens decline in "The New American Ghetto"...theres a sequence showing a street of rowhouse progressively being abandoned and then demolished.

[jiacinto]

15. Ok

Thanks.

[goobergunch]

17. I'll be visiting this fall

My school is making us juniors go on this "Urban Challenge" thing where we have to stay at the Romero Center in Camden on Thursday night-Sunday...I think sometime in November. I'm not exactly looking forward to it, but I'll file a full report in GD. From what I've heard, it's the poorest city in the country.

LINK: http://www.rc.net/camden/stjoseph/page2.html (yes, I go to a Catholic school even though I'm nominally Jewish and really an atheist)

Population: 87,000
Median income, family of four: $19,000
http://www.rc.net/camden/stjoseph/page4.html

[mitchum]

19. I don't like to make snap judgements, but....

I spent 2 days there last year, and the whole city seemed to be a slum. I didn't even see any gentrified outlying areas. Baltimore looked good in comparison.