Is Hays Kansas a good place to live for a single Dad (Salina: real estate)

[mjcten]

I'm a single dad of 2 boys looking for a better place to raise them.I currently live in Michigan where things are not good.I would like to know about rent,schools,crime,daycare,people etc.Anything you want to tell me about Hays.Thanks

[BuckeyeBroad]

I'm sure you'll get better answers, but I drove past Hays this spring. It looked prosperous. I went to college there eons ago and liked the town then. Be advised that the wind blows and blows and blows. You really have to learn to compensate when you're playing tennis!

[Yokomo]

It's a "nice" place but you're kind of out there by yourself. I mean you can't just cruise to this town or that to "get away".
Small town feel, no crime to speak of, not slummy, etc

[W350]

Like the others said, a nice place. Loads of history, a rural trade center and county seat. Right on Interstate 70 and your last chance for a quality stop going west for a long time! Same for going east for that matter, 100 miles to Salina. It is windy and fairly dry there, like all of western Kansas, water is a premium commodity. Glen

[iskerbibel]

I lived there for four years (see my other post on the "questions about Hays" board.). It was one of the better places that I've lived... a nice little town overall, but lacking in opportunity for my purposes. But be advised that as an outsider, you're likely to remain a SINGLE dad. Hays is pretty isolated- to get to a larger town, you'll have to drive 90 miles east or 350 miles west. Like any small town, everybody knows everybody (and their business) and has since birth... unless you've married into the clan (like I did... sortof), you'll likely remain an outsider.

To give you an example... I have a damn good resume and lots of experience in my line of work. But after I'd worked at my employer in Hays for two years, my boss (a damn good guy) commented to me that he never would've hired me had I not been married to a local girl. He said that, considering all the places I've lived (lived in several fairly large cities), he would've guessed that I was just looking for "traveling money".

[CountryGirl2017]

Unless you want to be a bar rat every weekend, and you’re looking for a female that drinks like a fish, you’ll stay single. There’s nothing else to do there. I don’t drink, so stayed pretty isolated. The school system is bad. Bullying runs rampant and unchecked, especially the children of the local well to do beating down on anyone they feel beneath their standards. I lived near the middle school. I’ve seen it happen and it’s horribly sad. Rentals are either near-unaffordable without a roommate or falling down around your head. Buying a home on a single parent’s budget won’t be possible due to inflated real estate prices and high property taxes. Those property taxes are horribly misappropriated by the local government. I lived there for 20 years, both as a renter and a home owner. I moved a year ago out of my two bedroom duplex rental. I live in a five bedroom, two car garage house now for the same price, and this time I didn’t have to pay a $1200 pet “deposit” for my 10 pound dog on top of first and last month’s rent (which I didn’t ever see again).

[empires228]

Originally Posted by CountryGirl2017

Unless you want to be a bar rat every weekend, and you’re looking for a female that drinks like a fish, you’ll stay single. There’s nothing else to do there. I don’t drink, so stayed pretty isolated. The school system is bad. Bullying runs rampant and unchecked, especially the children of the local well to do beating down on anyone they feel beneath their standards. I lived near the middle school. I’ve seen it happen and it’s horribly sad. Rentals are either near-unaffordable without a roommate or falling down around your head. Buying a home on a single parent’s budget won’t be possible due to inflated real estate prices and high property taxes. Those property taxes are horribly misappropriated by the local government. I lived there for 20 years, both as a renter and a home owner. I moved a year ago out of my two bedroom duplex rental. I live in a five bedroom, two car garage house now for the same price, and this time I didn’t have to pay a $1200 pet “deposit” for my 10 pound dog on top of first and last month’s rent (which I didn’t ever see again).

As another current resident, this is pretty spot on. Rentals are either full of roaches, mice, and mold, or out of a decent price range unless you can find a place where you have like five roommates. The roads are bad, the sidewalks are bad, parks are rundown and not maintained, the school district is a mess and the buildings are derelict because the district lacks trust with the community from past misspending, so the voters won't pass even a small bond to fix anything. It doesn't help that half the town sends their kids to the local private school and vote no to anything to help Hays Public Schools since they can put their kids in Catholic School K-12 now. The only things to do in this town are drink, bowl, if you can find a night where they don't have the whole place leased out to the drunks or the bowling leagues, attend sporadic events at the college, and risk getting hit in the head with a Frisbee thrown by a drunk college student at the towns one almost good park, which the city doesn't even own and leases from the state! Our local history museum is one of few in the state to charge admission to see almost nothing, and Sternberg is pretty cool once, but it's literally 99% unchanged from how it was when my parents first took us in 2001 to see Sue the T-Rex when she was there.