I have been looking at the area for either a short term or long term move. I have not found many reviews on the area. Has anyone lived there or know about the area?

I live in the Tri-Cities, and have met several people from there who are glad they left.

You might want to try a short term stay, so see if it fits your needs.

What is tricot you area?

Oops hate autocorrect what is Tri City area?

I live in Eufala, just outside Longview, in sort of the country. It's redneck as can be, which is painful to an ex Bay Area girl. We go weeks without seeing any faces that aren't white, which feels strange. We keep having our house assessed higher and higher, which is rough on a fixed income, but that's all of Washington. All I can say is that my neighborhood is all woodsy and absolutely gorgeous.

Tri-Cities--Richland, Pasco and Kennewick. They all kind of butt up to one another over in Eastern Washington. Longview and Kelso are both fairly short on jobs as the area's economy is not exactly booming. Major industries are wood and paper. For full disclosure's sake, I live an hour or so north of the Kelso area.

GREAT recreation in (east & western) Washington!

I was recently considering moving to Longview for a job so I researched it, and from what can tell, it's a pretty horrible place. High crime, lots of drugs and a lot of white supremecists.

Western Washington, in general, is fantastic. If you work in Longview, I suggest living in Ridgefield or La Center. Those are both pretty nice.

Thanks for the input. I am retired and have mostly lost my vision. I cannot drive legally so living away from public transit is impossible. I did not know about the drugs and supremecists. Guess I will keep looking. Thanks all.

Bend, Oregon often makes the "nice place to retire" lists.

Maybe consider Bellingham Washington. I love that place.

Too bad we can combine this thread with the Mars thread.

When I was a kid, I loved reading the Sci/Fi of the day, including all the Robert A. Heinlein juvenile SF novels, and I really did think that space travel would be routine by the year 2000. The moon would be an easy-on-the-bones place for old folk to retire...

I enjoyed Aberdeen.

Personally, I still love Longview and Kelso because of all the happy memories there. It was my home of record for about 20 years. The area near the lake is still nice, and the greater area is beautiful. Easy access to Portland, particularly the airport and IKEA. It has definitely gone downhill, but not yet totally seedy. Recreation-wise it is wonderful.

I liked that there was easy access with Amtrak to portland and Seattle. Wash does not have an income tax,so I preferred it to oregon. I found a bus that goes to the coast a few times a day if I need a beach fix. But the cost of living was much lower than portland, vancouver, or Seattle. I will need to travel to possibly Portland but maybe Seattle for a retina surgeon. I will check around the lake. Thanks cludgie.

Just don't buy the house I'm planning to buy.

And yeah, I used to take Amtrak from Kelso to Bakersfield and Kelso to Spokane.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/08/2015 02:28PM by cludgie.

If you're looking for good public transport, you'll have to check the larger cities. I'm in Thurston county and unless you live and travel only in the city limits of Olympia/Lacey/Tumwater, you're out of luck for buses.

As for "white supremacists", you can find weird individuals any/everywhere. For organized groups of them, Seattle has four groups and even Vancouver(!) has one, at least according to the Southern Poverty Law Center - http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/hate-map#s=WA

I lived in Northern Idaho and got tired of people telling me there were white supremists there. I never saw any. I saw lot’s of California transfers. There was the Aryan Nations but that’s history. Northern Idaho is becoming a play destination for the rich.

I worked in Longview for a year. Hated it there. Super redneck Christian. Zero cultural activities. Nothing artistic about it at all. I lived in Kalama, which was better, IMHO.
I now live in Thurston Co, Olympia, which is a hell of a lot more liberal, but with that comes a lot of homelessness, which is a growing problem in West Coast cities. Price of housing has skyrocketed across the region.

The wasteland between Olympia and Vancouver, WA is a white supremacist stronghold. And it’s getting worse day by day. Never in my life did I think I’d see so many confederate flags being flown in WA, but now they’re common in SW WA.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/17/2021 11:56AM by schrodingerscat.

I don't live there, but used to regularly travel to Longview on business. It stuck me as a not a particularly remarkable town, with no major positives, nor major negatives save one: the weather is absolutely miserable in that part of the world if you don't like rain and prefer sunshine. (Obviously, if the reverse is true, you'll like it.)

Good luck!

A LONGGGGG time ago, our license plates ('tags' to some) had "WASH' on them, but people got FED UP with that, now it's spelled out...


You've Been Warned!

And you wanted what? WA?

The biggest news in the Longview area over the last decade was about a proposed fracking natural gas to methanol.

The locals wanted it for the jobs and economic benefits, the environmentalist have fought against because of the links to global warming.

Right now the project is dead.

https://tdn.com/news/local/opponents-linking-kalama-methanol-plant-to-fracking-controversy/article_94c46a7d-fefa-5401-aeb4-a68aae7f1141.html

Fortunately, that's off for now. But I'm sure someone will resurrect it at some point. They were also going to have an enormous coal pile either in or near Rainier, OR, or here in Longview, just across the river. It was supposed to allow coal cars to dump it there, and then they could easily load from the pile onto the ships for shipment to China--which happens to be going through an exercise in closing its coal mines and cleaning up the country. We're idiots, we are.

Meanwhile, this is the epicenter of loggers who are rabidly anti-environment. They are also against proposed things like growing hemp, which, if done, would drastically cut into the lumber industry. For the rest of us, Weyerhaeuser is enemy no. 1.