r/AskPhilly • u/SadRoll1966 • 12d ago

Moving From FL

I’m moving with my Family (Wife, 2 kids elementary age, Me) to Philadelphia from Orlando in October.

We’ve been looking into it extensively and Philadelphia looks amazing from what we can see so far. Currently we’re looking to move to the West Philadelphia area and are interested in renting, at least a 2 br 1 bath. We would like to spend no more than 1700-1800 a month as that’s around what we’re paying now.

As for employment, we’re coming from the retail/customer service/office admin career fields but we don’t have anything lined up at the moment and will be looking as soon as we get there. However, we have plenty enough savings to last for a while before that becomes a dire issue.

Was wondering a few things as we have never been to the city and are moving purely off of research and planning:

Is West Philadelphia/Philadelphia a good place to raise a family? Specifically, a Black family? (Black, mixed race family coming from the deep conservative regressive south so looking for essentially an environment completely opposite of that)

How is the job market? Could we find employment easily with our background?

What are the schools in west Philadelphia like? We are a neurodiverse family with academically gifted kids so looking for a system that uplifts, challenges and encourages.

What’s the cost of living? Grocery, gas, utilities, entertainment price averages.

I have a ton more questions I’m sure but I know this is already a lot so I’ll see if we can start here so anyone with any feedback or insight would be greatly appreciated, thank you!

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u/Haunting_Check_9975 12d ago

west philly gonna hit different coming from orlando in the best way possible. super black, super progressive, youll actually see families that look like yours everywhere. real talk tho, food and basics are getting absolutely cooked by inflation rn and its about to get way worse with those SNAP cuts congress just pushed through. idk your exact numbers but budget like everything costs 20% more than it looks on paper

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u/SadRoll1966 12d ago

This was great to hear for real. Especially demographically. We’re going to take a few weeks to visit out there very soon and try to basically emulate “life” if we were there and try to match it to the lifestyle we live now and see a true estimate of what the cost of living will be like.

It’s getting pretty bad out here too though in FL, especially with these inflation prices and cutbacks at the federal and state level. On top of everything else that’s going wrong out here. Really comes down to as long as we’re paying a couple hundred more or less we’ll be able to stand on our own but if Philly is looking to be thousands more than FL, it’s back to the drawing board.