Forest Park

Forest Park is just a little four block stretch of a neighborhood with Harbour Way one end and the BART railroad tracks on the other. Kaiser Permanente (the hospital) and the Richmond BART Station are just to the south of this neighborhood, so it is a pretty busy spot.

Forrest Park is, like most neighborhoods in Richmond, an older neighborhood made up older homes and buildings. The tallest building in the neighborhood is a shabby looking 6 story building on the eastern end that looks more like something you would find on the East Coast than in California. It is just across the street from the clean red brick facilities of Kaiser Permanente—which only makes its weather worn tan look that much shabbier looking. (It also isn’t helped out by rugs and sheets that have been commandeered as makeshift shades—always a bad look signifying poverty in the East Bay.)

Most of the rest of Forest Park is made up of pre-WWII walk-up bungalows with a high enough use of bars on windows and doors to indicate that the crime rate in this neighborhood must be pretty high.

Homes here sell for just over $100 K.

Schools are also pretty bad, with API’s in the lower range.

Overall, except for the easy access to transportation and to the hospital, a pretty lousy place to live. It also doesn’t help that the Chevron Refinery less than a mile to the west.