Consider this community as a whole, and take the "advice" of commentators with a huge fucking grain of salt. My experience has been that people don't like Kentwood because of minorities, hence monikers like "Kenthood" or "Rentwood." Kentwood has many rental clusters, as does any sufficiently large city. Caledonia has an astonishing number of renters as well, and that is a township.
I'd like to comment on a few things, rather childishly if I might: * At least one of the people hating on Kentwood lives with their parents in an upper middle class neighborhood; their life experience is likely shit
Traffic in Kentwood is easy; we actually have roads sufficient for our traffic patterns unlike, oh, say Caledonia (one lane each way that backs up for miles) or Eastown/adjacent
We lack the craziness of Eastown/downtown/etc., but that is a selling point to the families that live here in the quiet suburbs
Our schools aren't ranked as highly as others, but our programs are amazing nonetheless (many, many STEM programs at an early age) and we are ranked among some of the best in the state
Renters are primarily clustered together in their own complexes closer to the busier sections of 44th and 28th if you care to stay away from them
If having trailer parks makes us trashy, nobody tell the jackasses in this thread about all the trailer parks in Caledonia; there is nothing wrong with maintained trailer parks, and they very rarely grow in size so you don't like them just don't buy near them
Our library is fucking outstanding, and our city services are the same
Here's a biggie: crime. Kentwood reports all crime to crimemap data; many cities either don't report crime or don't report all crimes thus making Kentwood appear worse than it is. Check out what a lot of the crime actually is: drunk drivers on 28th street at 4AM
Historical data: you may want to check fucking Zillow, because historical data shows a housing boom and bust at the same time the other communities had it. Kentwood has million dollar homes. Kentwood has affordable single family homes. My home is outpacing the zipcode, Grand Rapids overall, and Caledonia on average
We have lots of community events, we just don't attach "festival" and install a beer tent at every one of them
Parks: Kentwood has a shit load of them, not sure what the other fellow was talking about. I have 3 within half a mile of my house, one of which has movies in the summer, and two of which has splash pads. Oh, yeah: Kentwood also has 56 fucking parks, but I'm sorry; there's not enough of them
A community in transition/great house in spotty neighborhood due to the poor: one reason might be the massive market crash that ruined most middle class markets in Michigan. It allowed people to buy foreclosed homes for five digits instead of mid-six digit figures. I have no problem with this as long as everyone maintains their homes. Luckily, Kentwood has a very prompt public service department that will investigate all claims if someone notifies them of problems (such as cars parked on the street/grass, lack of maintenance, etc).