Single lady considering move to Ulster County - not homesteading - just rural living. Any suggestions on towns for a female? Any info on the following towns (as far as comfort-zone for a single gal) - Ellenville, Wawarsing, Smallwood, Greenfield Park. Feel free to recommend other areas. Thank you. JJ
From another single - I thought before that I would need a "safe" location to live in the country, but I am finding that it's really not a big consideration. The specific neighborhood is more important than the town or county. Introduce yourself to the neighbors - find out what they are like. Find out if they have had problems with break ins. You can get good or bad situations in any place. Also locations where your place cannot be conveniently watched by the public is important to me. If the bad guys cannot easily tell if you are home or not they are likely to leave you alone. I put a gate up, but I put it far enough back so that people driving by cannot see if it's open or not. I moved from a "gated" community (I wanted to be safe) to my mini farm and the gated community was far more dangerous and I was constantly dealling with ill behaved kids, vandals and theives - they had trapped all the bad guys on the inside! Good luck - hope you find a great location!
Consider going farther north towards Kingston or east towards New Paltz. Town of Wawarsing includes the village of Ellenville. The local police have a weekly drug bust. One of the main sources of employment started layoffs 9 months ago. People with 35 years were escorted to the gate with absolutely no warning.The local hospital declared bankruptcy last year. Greenfield park is area about 5 miles west of Ellenville. It has a high concentration of religious camps during the summer. The only employment is the fire co., post office and one restaruant that has changed hands 5 times in 5 years. New Paltz is a college town. Housing is terrible but land is available. Mohonk House is an excellent place to work if you're into nature. Lots of waitress' jobs in the immediate area. Kingston,Ashokan,Olive Bridge are to the north west of Wawarsing. More jobs, people are more friendly,cheaper rents. There are several large data processing business' in that area. Lots of industrial plants. You'll have to go 3 to 4 hours north to find land bargains. Ulster and Sullivan counties are in the process of being inundated by the overflow from Westchester, Rockland and Orange counties. 4 years ago a 2 bedroom brick house on a lot with municipal water and sewer was $49,000 with $5000 yearly tax. Today same house is selling for $190,000 and taxes are $8000 to $10,000.
I am in Jefferson county ,I do not live alone but often am .I have no fear what so ever .I can shoot and having a couple dogs probally help .Land is fairly cheap and if you like uniforms Fort Drum is close by
WOW! Brings back the memories! It has been 17 years since we lived there when hubby was stationed with the NYSP in Ellenville. Housing was darned expensive then it seemed to us. Our apartment was so small the whole thing could fit in our current living room and the cost for that was the same as what we were paying for a mortgage on a real house a year later away from that part of NY. That said, it is kind of a cool area of NY if you are accustomed to city. It is close enough to a lot of stuff to do/see/shop/etc yet far enough out that it is pretty and you can get fresh air. We were accustomed to REAL country life so that area was way too built up for our taste. I am NOT into shopping at all but there are some things I saw in that area that I have never seen the likes of in this area. Even if I'm not into purchasing, I do enjoy looking After paying the rent down there we were never able to afford much of anything anyway! Our current area is considered "artsy" but nothing like that area. Thanks for a lovely trip down memory lane!
