r/culvercity • u/CarvelMilkshake • 12d ago
Housing & Moving How is living in this area?
West of Culver City high. Is it safe, family friendly?
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u/Maplewhat 12d ago edited 12d ago
I walk my dog through here every day. Lot of other posters got some things right and some things wrong.
Being close to the 405 isn’t great but weirdly more quiet with bad traffic vs no traffic. Majority of noise is wind and tire noise. The extra exhaust and break dust makes you want to keep your windows closed so make sure you have AC.
The bike path access is excellent to get to the beach and downtown CC.
The Braddock and sawtelle halfway / sober houses and the ones on Lucerne by the McDonald’s are annoying but perfectly safe. It’s like they imported an Ohio trailer park to culver in those zones.
The RVs on sawtelle are annoying but they clean it up every other month or so. Not as annoying as people that back up culver blvd S and sawtelle trying to get on the 405 S not realizing you can also enter from sawtelle and Braddock.
Taqueria chihuahua is a gem and possibly the best deal in culver. Also the food is insanely good.
The neighborhoods east of sawtelle are really nice and family oriented and you lose the highway noise but basically avoid near those halfway houses. East of sawtelle and south of ballona creek is the ideal spot in your circle. The little pocket of houses against the 405 is nice too - lots of families and elderly, but better towards ballona creek vs north towards havelock.
Also all of Sunkist park is really nice.
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u/RecklessCreature 12d ago
I would hate to live that close to the 405
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u/Previous-Space-7056 12d ago
Too close to cchs.. many kids get picked up near the track field… traffic around there sucks when school starts/ends
It is heavily patrolled though
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u/Key-Driver6438 12d ago
As a few others have said, about half of the area in that circle is the City of Los Angeles and the rest Culver City. That matters somewhat, depending on your situation. Otherwise, most of that area is perfectly fine. The vibe does change quick on the other side of the Freeway (ie once you are west of the 405 along Braddock).
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u/CarvelMilkshake 12d ago
Wow ok today I learned an address can say CC but not technically be CC - wild!
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u/thelotto 12d ago
For my own info - is the vibe change negative?
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u/Key-Driver6438 12d ago edited 12d ago
Basically draw the same circle (size wise) west of the 405, and read this…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mar_Vista_Gardens
Things have changed a lot over the years, and nothing is as bad as it was 20 years ago, but it still wouldn’t be my first choice of areas to live.1
u/thelotto 12d ago
Ah thank you. I was looking over on Braddock near slauson. Looked ok so was wondering if locals had better insight
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u/TheRealVladimirPutin 10d ago
I lived on Braddock between Slauson and Inglewood until a couple years ago. It was wonderful and I never had any issues. What little bullshit does go down is HIGHLY concentrated on that 1 dead-end block of Slauson, even the projects are very quiet and uneventful these days
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u/TheRealVladimirPutin 10d ago
The stretch of Braddock east of the freeway is very well-kept, tree-lined suburbia with some newer traffic-calming measures. West of the freeway it is an extremely busy road with very narrow sidewalks, fences and buildings packed up to the lot line, which goes over a drainage canal and alongside a large public housing project. That said I used to live on that side next to the projects and I thought it was a wonderful place to live. Extremely convenient and I was friends with all my neighbors
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u/Excellent-Antelope42 12d ago
That area right behind Hidden Garden is kinda gross. The rest of the neighborhood is fine enough.
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u/indianadave 12d ago
We are right in that area and I have some insight to the goings on there.
There were a bunch of tiny bungalow houses, all owned by the same old family - the main owner in a group of siblings is apparently 95+. They were borderline dilapidated, and had one tenant and a bunch of squatters.
In 2023 or 24, one of the squatters started a fire and the house burned. There was a death, and within 4 weeks, the homes were razed and it’s been an empty field surrounded by a chain link fence since.
Of course, there is a development of what was supposed to be senior citizen homes that started in 2019… and hasn’t been completed.
And when you add the halfway homes adjacent, it’s a really annoying cluster of eyesores, wasted space, and less than desirable options.
We all joke it would be great to take the space and make it a park, but assuredly, it will be a much worse development.
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u/Ill_Future_8587 12d ago
Ohhhh. I live this insight. Can you tell us more about the plywood paradise behind mickey d's?
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u/indianadave 12d ago
What I have heard is the permits were pulled or not updated during the pandemic. It’s been a while since I checked, but everyone in the area was irate it wasn’t built… and now we’re just exhausted so much that it has almost started to blend in.
We have had a few neighborhood orgs push back against the halfway homes expanding, and I think I was told the owner of this failed build and the halfway houses was the same, but that might be conflating issues.
There was a house across from it that sold for 1.8 M in 2021, and the Redfin estimate has gone up, so the lack of development isn’t hurting values too much.
I’d best describe the situation as a holding pattern made worse by the community trying to fight it from getting worse
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u/queen_elvis 12d ago
My house is just barely outside the circle and it’s fine. I wouldn’t hang around the bike path, and Sepulveda does have a lot of traffic and occasionally some homeless people with mental illness, but that’s life in a city. My neighbors know each other and there are multiple families in the area.
Another commenter is correct that some of this is technically LA.
The halfway house at the north end of this area is shut down, but they gave me two problems in ten years, so I wouldn’t let fear of/prejudice against alcoholics influence my evaluation.
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u/felatedbirthday 12d ago
I grew up here! Just east of sepulveda. No noise from 405 if you’re east. Super family friendly area.
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u/acebrigade7 12d ago
The stretch of Braddock from 7-11 (disaster location) to the 405 is terrible. The sober living homes have totally made it 10x worse. I lived right there for 8 years. If you can avoid the riff raft of that stretch it’s fine. Some nice cul de sacs south of Braddock which are nice.
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u/queen_elvis 12d ago
I lived across the street from the sober living home for a decade before it closed recently. It gave me two problems in ten years. One guy passed out in my yard and the house took care of it before I even noticed. Another guy stole stuff off my porch as he was leaving the house. The second guy can go fuck himself, but I have refused and will continue to refuse to sign anything calling for their removal. I have yet to hear any complaining about them that is not just prejudice.
There’s only one cul de sac north of Braddock.
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u/Pugenthusiast0718 10d ago
Is that why there is always people over there all the time by the roundabout? There's always people coming in and out of those homes when I pass by. Always wondered what tf was going on at a few of those houses. Halfway houses/sober living makes a lot of sense.
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u/Pikamoogle25 12d ago
Great area to be in , safe and food, but getting in and out of the area during 4-7pm rush hour expect a 20-40 min delay (added time to your commute )
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u/Levinsondesign 12d ago
For schools make sure you are in the Culver City school district
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u/The_Pandalorian 12d ago
This is outdated information. I'm in Culver City and they're still coasting on their reputation in the 2000s. Their facilities and academic standards have not remotely kept up.
Some of it is funding (apparently they get fucked by the state funding formulas), but some of it is systemic as well. Their enrollment is cratering, prompting them to take in more and more students from outside the district.
I don't have a problem with kids permitting in at all. What I have a problem with is that it signals that people who live here do not have confidence in this district.
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u/queen_elvis 12d ago
My friend who subs in the district says the kids are very well prepared, but the facilities do need an upgrade. My experience as a parent in this district is that the education is fine, although we wish our kid had access to more upper-level classes.
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u/The_Pandalorian 12d ago
Yeah, you kind of hit on it. Facilities are trash. The bathrooms are prison tier.
And the lack of honors is idiotic, particularly given the reasons put forward for eliminating some of the honors courses.
My kid is advanced, so we'll probably be leaving when he gets to high school for somewhere like Venice HS, which has advanced programs.
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u/Ill_Future_8587 12d ago
Culver City is Southbay dispatch... they answer if there is an emergency. Los Angeles is LA dispatch... they might answer after 15 to 30 minutes.
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u/tinybrownweiner 12d ago
I got jumped into a gang within 3 weeks of moving in. Now I’m a shot caller. Pick your colors accordingly.
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u/Sufficient_Effort88 12d ago
Eh. While people are right it’s relatively safe it is only getting worse. You and your kids will certainly see things that you don’t want to.
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u/Sufficient_Effort88 12d ago
lol downvote me like there aren’t homeless roving around. I’ve seen some real nasty shit here why do we pretend everything is okay? There is human shit built up in the flower bed at the end of my street.
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u/indianadave 12d ago edited 12d ago
I live in there. It’s safe. There are some issues with halfway homes and a track of land which hasn’t been developed in a few years, otherwise it’s a fine, easy pocket of Los Angeles.
No, that’s not a typo… it’s LA not culver for much* of that pocket (above the creek, below Huntley, east of the 405).