Is Sioux City really that bad??

[9voltLisa]

It depends what you're looking for. I've lived in Sioux City 41 years. I moved to Moville, Iowa for a year, and lived on an acreage and then moved back to Sioux City. Small town schools are much better than they are here, in my opinion. There is alot more one on one with the children. I hated it when they started shutting down the smaller elementary schools and combining them with other schools. It's scary to see schools having to lock their doors, and you have to be buzzed in for any reason, but I see the reasoning for it. Kids now have to wear i.d. lariats around their necks at all times, so they can be identified. High schools have random drug checks with police dogs sniffing out lockers. Who would've thought? 20 years ago we didn't have anything like that in our high school, and I went to the roughest high school in town, and it wasn't bad. If you are looking to buy a house, it's alot more reasonable than some of the other parts of the country. Houses have been popping up for sale all over the place! There are lots of new companies, especially telemarketing and customer service/phone type jobs, but other businesses, like Gateway, have forced people to move. Sioux City does have packing houses that bring in alot of minorites and illegal aliens. I caught one shoplifting in my store one day and she did not even have a green card. The cop let her go and told me that it costs the city too much money to bring in INS. The city is right on the Missouri, and you can cross one bridge and be in Nebraska or travel 5 minutes further and take a different bridge to go to South Dakota. Gambling is big in this area, and Sioux City has their own riverboat casino, or you can drive across the bridge to North Sioux City, SD where there are slugs of casinos next to each other. The city has been doing things to beautify the town, such as putting in bike and walking paths all over, and having things such as Saturday in the park jazz festival outside which is a two day outside deal with an attached rose garden, Street jams with local bands downtown, and biker nights. Gang violence has been on the rise, but this isn't just here, it's everywhere, unless you live in a town of 500 people. I guess if you're going to move here, you need to experience it for yourself. Check out the neighborhoods, the schools, etc..

[jtv2011]

Originally Posted by pirate_lafitte

Wow! I think I don't want to move there now. I have never seen Sioux City, but I guess I don't know everything. Do you have any suggestions of places to move to in Iowa(or outside of Iowa, but preferably outside of the Southeast) for a person after one's graduation(which I will be graduating sometime in the next year or so)?

ever thought of sioux center? sioux center is roughly 20-30 miles north of sioux city. it has a booming and very fast growing economy. you'll find nice people every where you go. check it out!

[melkreeves]

Okay, I never lived in Sioux City but all of my mom's family lives around there and my sister went to college at Morningside so I did spend a lot of summers and other vacations there. I agree completely that it is a dirty town and it always gave me a very unfriendly, small-town feeling. My friends there who have had problems with their children and the schools... like somebody mentioned, a very high teenage pregnancy rate and very clique-ish. While the Morningside neighborhood where my aunt lives and my sister lived during college is very pretty, it seems that people with the average, run-of-the-mill jobs available can't afford to live there. And the streets are very bad, and extremely confusing. I figure I have probably spent almost a quarter of my life there and still get lost.
That being said.... there are areas around SC that I absolutely love. If you don't mind small towns and living in the country, Kingsley and Moville are both very nice. My grandmother lived in Kingsley for as long as I can remember and I was there this past June for her funeral... it will be sad not to have a connection to this quaint little town anymore. It was so nice to go and see 20-30 kids playing at the town park and not a parent in sight... it's that safe. The schools are small but good (from everything I've seen and heard) and the people are incredibly friendly and helpful. Kingsley has a true sense of community that you don't find most places.