Just southish of Vancouver, I’m told to avoid Surrey at all costs as a place to live. Right now we have two houses lined up - the one in Surrey is being held for us until we visit on the weekend.
So what is it that makes everyone tell us to avoid Surrey? Is it all parts, just one area, what?
For a visual, both places we’re looking at are on this google map. The Surrey house in in this area, the other house is in New Wesminster by the river.
The maps seem a bit busted. Are you going to rent, or buy?
North and central Surrey are your basic blue collar communities-lots of box stores, lots of immigrants (particularily from India). It has a rep for some slummy areas (north of 100 ave and west of 144 ave primarily), and inherent in that, grow ops. OK, that all may be true, but given the choice of Surrey, or Maple Ridge across the river, I’d go with Surrey in a heartbeat. East and South Surrey are, respectively, nice suburban and pockets of really posh. New Westminster is similar-the areas with houses are quite nice, but there are pockets of areas that earned NW the title of ‘most police calls for domestic dusturbances in BC’ (mostly 'cause they are in apartments with crappy walls, so the neighbors hear all the fights). I liked NW better, because it had better restaurants. I’d live in either.
New West over Surrey, any day.
Surrey. Ugh.
On Friday, I was in a pub in New West (not far from where I work,) and the folks at the next table were celebrating one of their number moving out of Surrey. One of the fellas at our table spoke up and admitted that he used to have a Surrey address, and then congratulated himself for being able to use to past tense. Glasses were raised, and much cheering was heard. Me, I couldn’t even bring myself to speak of the time I did in Surrey.
Surrey is awful. It’s just a breeding ground for surley, bored children and the epicentre of property crime in the lower mainland.
New Westminster is quite nice, if a little dull. Good place to raise a family. Nice parks. Pretty.
Surrey is a huge area and the neighbourhoods vary widely. As Annie said, North Surrey can be a touch iffy, while South Surrey, particularly anywhere people feel they can get away with claiming they live in White Rock, is fairly nice, with a whole whack of areas that are still pretty rural in between.
That being said, I wouldn’t want to live anywhere in Surrey - too car-dependent, too many big box stores, just generally all the worst aspects of suburbia. I grew up in White Rock and my parents still live there, and anytime I go to visit them I do my best to stay the hell out of Surrey, especially anything around the new Southpoint development - it’s all just too much. Now, I love cities and I find Victoria a bit too small, so it’s not the development per se, but the way it’s been done just makes my skin crawl.
So what was the point of all this again? Oh yeah - New West all the way.
As a Calgarian, I really can’t understand the distain many Vancoverites have for Surrey.
It sounds very much like parts of Calgary (the north east, mainly) and you certainly wouldn’t be advised not to live there.
No doubt there are many more immigrants, and has a much more multi-cultural flair than other parts of Vancouver and the Lower Mainland.
Where are you moving from?
I was told that Surrey is a very high-crime area due to crack users.
See, that Southpoint retail melanoma, loathe it. Not because it’s in Surrey-it’s in the rich part of Surrey. The bleached-housewife-in-SUV set terrorizing the pedestrians trying to get into the Canadian Tire, ugggh. Too traumatic to dwell upon.
Thanks for the comments. So I take it Surrey is just sort of trashy.
I think we’ll spend a bit of extra time crusing around the neighbourhood of the one house if we decide we like the house itself.
Portland Oregon