Kiddie had such luck with her Seattle thread that I decided to try one for S, who will be spending August - June near Tacoma, Washington (specifically Federal Way). He hopes to have at least 1 housemate to share a place. Better to go towards Seattle? towards Tacoma? other? They will be very tight on funds for housing, but S will have a car.
Home of Apolo Anton Ohno! We have been down there a bunch of times for in years past for sports, but the one friend who lived there recently sold his house and moved further north. He stopped playing soccer last year but I still see him once in a while and will ask.
It is a little more ethnically and economically diverse than Seattle, but a good crew of young people last time we went out down there. It has some nice middle and upper-middle class neighborhoods; it also has sketchy neighborhoods and significant drug and gang activity along the 99 corridor. No real reason not to look in Federal Way first, just be careful about the area.
Traffic around there stinks so commuting is an important consideration. For a young guy, I would look north to Des Moines or Burien rather than south to Tacoma or east to Auburn/Puyallup.
D goes to HS in FEderal Way. A N-S commute in the morning is definitely the way to go if you must commute, as it is against traffic. There are plenty of safe areas, but we actually don’t live down there so I can’t be specific. Several of the teachers at D’s school are quite young and single and live in Kent, which is just slightly north and is full of apartment complexes that are safe and close to everything. Other teachers live in South Seattle right off the freeway, as we do. It may not be necessary to use a car much-there is a large park and ride for bus service in FW, plus any number of routes that head both north and south as well as around town. Just up the road in Kent is a station for the Sounder train that goes both north and south for commuters with wifi cars. There IS a sketchy area, but the city itself is not a vast wasteland or anything. Look at complexes near I-5 and in Kent, near Hwy 167.
Federal Way is quite a distance from Tacoma! I think 10-15 miles. Your son will be better off living north of Federal Way, as many here said. Is he interning at Weyerhaeuser, by any chance?
No, BB, he will be volunteering with Americorps in the Federal Way school system, probably assisting in HS classrooms. (Hence the tight finances :).)
They should give him the contact info of the other volunteers, they often share housing.
I also think Kent would be much closer & nicer.
OP, if you want to PM me which school he’ll be working at, if you know, I can give you an idea of the area and what the school itself is like. The HS’s are very different from one another and some have a specific focus, like D’s. FW isn’t all that big, but the HS are pretty spread out.
sseamom, I will see what he knows about that. Perhaps it will not be something he finds out until he gets there or there may be more than one. emeraldkity, I think they have given him info for some of them, so I’m hoping he will be able to connect with one or more before August!
D has friends at all of the HS in FW, some more than others, of course. If I can help, let me know!
I grew up in the area before Federal Way’s big growth. Family all still lives nearby. Yes, a few sketchy areas (mostly near HW 99 corridor). But, really no reason at all not to focus search in FW itself. If you want to expand search a bit and still keep commute to minimal I would suggest looking in Edgewood/Milton.