Not bad but not great..............
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6/22/2006
I've lived in Va. Beach since 1988. The cost of living-particularly housing- has skyrocketed-in the past couple of years. Our family makes over 150k per year and if required to buy our own home today, we could not afford it. There are no complaints about our neighborhood which is 5 minutes from the beach and is older and established with TREES. But in the 80's alot of cheap tract housing proliferated and now those areas are in serious decline, yet for middle income folks, the only way to afford to move to this region would be to purchase there.
Va. Beach never met a developer it didn't love. Developers rule here and that means rampant overbuilding, many of it poorly planned, overpriced and shoddily built (more so in the past). Ecological and aesthetic factors are routinely overruled in favor of more overpriced housing. Sprawl is another problem with the rural area of Va. Beach in serious trouble, the development line being moved further and further back in favor of the aformentioned developers. The sprawl has contributed to road clog particularly during rush hour and this will only get WORSE in the future because of poor planning and a reluctance to actually pay for more roads with taxes.
Crime is bad in many of those neighborhood pockets of poverty. Schools are seriously overcrowded and underfunded with only those high income schools showing good test scores. There is a lot of lip service to education but funding is grudgingly given if at all. In the last couple of years, there was a ridiculous anti-tax movement which succeeded in repealing a two cent phone tax that went to education!
Wages are low here compared to other cities its size. Recently they've begun to creep up a bit but NOT in comparison to the huge leap in property values and home sales.
The resort area of the Beach has been given a much needed facelift in recent years but the fact remains this is still a honky tonk beach scene with scores of tacky souvenir and tshirt shops and an unruly bar scene (actually the best part of the beach lol).
Unless you like a large dose of red-state myopia, Va. Beach is a bastion of Republicanism, and one of the few areas left where the current administration enjoys high ratings. As for religion, Pat Robertson's empire is headquartered here. Nuff said.
On the other hand, the climate is great with mild winters and a very enjoyable spring and fall. Summer can be brutal with high humidity but I've been in worse. There are many outdoor activities
kelly | Virginia Beach, VA