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Comment by adventured | Hacker News Reader

Small to mid-size college towns are among the best places to live in the US, and there are a lot of them to choose from coast to coast.

They have an economic base - and often tax support - that keeps them from eroding as other small towns without colleges tend to. Their infrastructure tends to be reasonably maintained, whereas most non-college towns always struggle to upkeep even basic infrastructure. Crime and murder rates are typically between very low and moderate (and almost universally below what you see in large cities). Housing is extremely affordable. Connectivity is usually solid, another perk of the town having more resources and consistent economic activity.

Pikeville, KY is too small imo at just 7,000 people, however you can find a lot of other college towns / cities at more like 15,000 to 30,000 that have better lifestyle amenities.

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> Housing is extremely affordable.

Is there data for this? I spent a good chunk of my life in a mid-sized college town in the south, and last I checked the average home values there are eclipsing $400K.

Just some data points, pulling median home values in some college towns across the US off the top of my head:

Davis, CA: $641,500

Charlottesville, VA: $412,700

Chapel Hill, NC: $449,980

State College, PA: $316,600

Williamsburg, VA: $303,400

Berkeley, CA: $1,281,900

Wellesley, MA: $1,267,600

Davidson, NC: $360,000

Ann Arbor, MI: $360,300

Some of these aren't too bad, but I don't think they fall into the category of extremely affordable. Professors and doctors and all the folks associated with Colleges and Universities make enough money to drive up home prices!

Amusing, in Burlington VT the housing costs have risen to the point where professors can't afford to live in Burlington, it's all the student money that drives things up, this is due in a large part to the fact that most students only dorm 2 years of their degree and senior year housing isn't actually guaranteed by the university, it's a lottery of whatever units are left over after allocating the more junior years.

Boston actually has a similar issue with students inflating housing, but it's diffused over a much larger population so it's less directly impactful. I think a large part of this is that since, as a parent, you're mortgaging your house to send your child to university anyways a few extra thousand for a nice apartment for them isn't too bad.

About half (the expensive ones) of those listed are suburbs or exurbs of major cities, not really what the article is talking about, and they are all pretty large.

It’s probably fair to say that university towns see prices go up relative to their surrounding towns, but fundamentally almost any piece of real estate in rural Kansas is cheaper than coastal California.

Among all the middle sized cities you could choose, you included Berkeley? One of the most expensive cities in the whole US. Since Berkeley is a college town, most people (i.e. students) are ok living in very, very shitty conditions. When I lived in Berkeley as a student my rent was something like $700 plus utilities and I was sharing a tiny house with 5 other people and my room was a triple. Living comfortably (i.e. single with acceptable personal space) costs you >$1300. I'm living in Boston currently and my rent is $900 for a large single. Am I crazy to guess that Berkeley housing market is even more expensive than Boston? There are definitely better places to live in US than Berkeley, ime most people who live there are either students or engineers working in the Valley making 6 figures. So imho GP comment can still be right if you exclude edge cases.

I’ve lived in two “college towns,” one with 2 small liberal arts colleges an a community college; and the other with an R1 university, a small liberal arts college, and a community college. All of the liberal arts colleges are private and expensive. Both towns were and are shitholes. The only source of culture, and the main source of jobs in both cases was the schools. That doesn’t work well for people past college age.

Granted, this is merely anecdata, but I think it’s at least enough to challenge you to present actual data.

Sort of, but if you live in one of these towns and something expensive that the university can opt out of is wrong then the city can end up subsidizing the university as the local populace is held hostage by monied interests. Assume that the city water quality is poor and there are 5k students and 7k residents, if the residents can be sated safely off of wells but to support 12k people the city would need a desalination plant then will the university shoulder that full cost? What portion should they be on the hook for?

It's a complicated question but in today's world likely the answer is that the university will threaten to remove all their tax paying and the city will shoulder the burden entirely themselves.

How often have you known a (non-diploma mill) college or university to just pick up and move? Or, how else would they “remove all their tax paying “?

For middle america I'm a bit out of my depth here, but on the east coast a lot of universities pay taxes voluntarily so they can just cease paying taxes altogether, it's pretty terrible and much of their payments end up being less obligations and more good will expressions... https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2017/08/18/city-asks-for-p...

Factories do this all the time. The paper companies are all lining up for state subsidies in Wisconsin.

Land-grant colleges on the east coast tend to be a bit of a raw deal for their communities, since they don't pay taxes and require additional services and policing.

UNH is particularly bad.

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