Garden Acres

Okay so lets begin with the crime problem here in Garden Acres in southeastern Stockton. Crime in this neighborhood is actually pretty mild with only the occasional assault. The problem, though is that if you go just to west of here over Highway 99, you are suddenly in a very crime ridden area where there have been 2 homicides in the second half of last year and more than 2 assaults per month during the same period. So, if you are worried about living close to a crime ridden area you will not want to live here.

That said, however, Garden Acres itself, as far as I can tell from the handful of times that I have been here, actually seems like a fairly chill neighborhood with older Ranch homes and a sort of semi-rural suburban feel to it. (Though I would not really call this a rural area by any means--I only mean that it feels like the kind of neighborhood you would find in a small, 3000 person town like say Arbuckle.)

Probably because of the terrible economy and nearby crime, houses here are rock bottom in terms of prices. The median home price is less than $100,000. In fact, few homes here go over that amount and you can actually find homes here that sell for $35,000. Now these are not very nice homes. A 1960’s Ranch home here can look like it is a 100 years old because of poor maintenance, and realtors don’t seem to bother to try to fix them up for sale--probably expecting the ROI would not be high enough to justify it.

The school system doesn’t help matters either. Most of the schools around here are well below average--often with bottom basement API scores. Franklin High School is an exception with a solidly average score.

In a nutshell then, high nearby crime, rock bottom prices for run down homes, and bad schools add up to a pretty lousy neighborhood that I would not recommend for anyone.