Member-only story
HOUSING CRISIS
The Big Secret City People Don’t Know About Small Towns
I should probably keep this to myself
You city slickers think you know all about small-town folks. We are unsophisticated hicks. We have no sense of style. We think Red Lobster is a fancy place to eat. We ain’t got no education.
I definitely know people like that. But you know what else is true of small-town folks? We can afford to buy a damned house.
Whenever somebody online moans about having to pay thousands of dollars a month to rent a small apartment, I often pop in and mention that they could buy an enormous luxury home for the same amount of money here in central Illinois. And the answer is always some variation of “But who would want to live there?”
And then they go on to say that despite the obvious advantage of affordable housing, there are no jobs, no culture and nothing to do in small towns.
None of these things are true.
Nearly everyone of working age in my town of about 35,000 has a job. I’ve been working for myself for a while, but the previous traditional jobs I’ve had while living here were editor of the daily newspaper and copywriter at an ad agency.
