Quote:
Originally Posted by OldMama
Manayunk happens to have an excellent public school already. Dobson can hold its own next to the Center City publics. The school already has a number of children with professional parents and there is a waiting list of people outside the area trying to get in.
Perhaps one of the biggest reasons young professionals leave Manayunk when they start a family is that they've bought into the kids=big house/big yard/one bathroom per family member mentality. I know people in four bedroom/1.5 or 2 bath rowhomes in Manayunk who don't feel that their house is "big enough" for a family. I laugh at that because I grew up the oldest of 6 in a 2.5 bedroom, 1 bath house in Germantown (the .5 bedroom fit a set of bunkbeds and nothing else). Generations of Manayunkers have raised kids in those houses but the current generation sees them as too small. Not to mention that intolerable lack of a "master suite"...
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A good elementary school is nice, but then you have to deal with the overall issues of Philly schools as you go up the education change. And competing with CC schools is not necessarily enough - they need to hold their own against the suburban schools because that's where the competition is. Young professionals can't necessarily afford a place in CC but they CAN probably afford something in KOP or Media or Lower Merion where the school districts are better than Philly. Could they buy there? maybe, maybe not, but even renters get to send their kids to the local schools.
As for the size issue, I agree that people nowadays totally expect too much in terms of house. It will be interesting to see if the price of gas keeps at this level or goes even higher whether folks will begin coming back into the cities to reduce the amount of driving they have to do.