Moving to Hastings Nebraska (Grand Island, Scottsbluff: apartments, rental, home)

[DJO22]

My wife recently got a job at the college in Hastings so we're packing up from a very small town in Oklahoma to move within two weeks. Been finding difficulty finding places to rent, but it looks like there's more places in Juniata and Grand Island. The thing I worry about is I hear you guys have some really heavy winters, so I'd be worried about commuting...I would rather live in Hastings close to the college, it's just hard finding places, and so far 95% of the people I call from listings online and just driving around the town calling the numbers on the signs are not answering their phones or calling back (both with and without us having left voicemail messages). Doesn't help we have a dog- but we made a commitment when we rescued her and I will not be abandoning her just to have an easier chance of finding a place to live. We're just trying to find a place with a yard and that allows pets. We've lived in, for lack of a better term, an absolute ****hole in our current town in Oklahoma for the past five years, and have not had a yard the whole time (since our place of work was a 2-minute walk from our duplex it was okay, we could come home to take her to potty at lunch breaks; not sure we'll be as lucky this time around finding a place); it would be so nice to finally get a nicer place.

Does anyone have any recommendations? If we did HAVE to commute from Grand Island, is that a terrible idea when it comes to winters? I've lived in Oklahoma my whole life, my wife is from England, neither of us has much experience at all in that department (sure we get snow in Oklahoma but nothing like it is here apparently). Also, are there any "bad areas" in Hastings to avoid?

Thank you in advance for any help, I really appreciate it!

[Aredhel]

The drive from Grand Island to Hastings isn’t bad, and winters here in Nebraska have been getting milder. Having to commute shouldn’t be a deal-breaker, if you can’t find an acceptable place to rent in Hastings.

Hastings is too small to really have much in the way of “bad areas” (though a bad neighbor is of course always a possibility).

[Curly Q. Bobalink]

I don't have current info on Hastings, but can tell you that when I went there as a young man to work on an addition to "Hastings Bowl", I had a great time, it was really a nice little town. In fact, I remember saying to myself at the time, "This would be a nice place to move to one day". One Saturday afternoon, I took a drive east of town on Route 6, and saw hundreds of "Hobbit Hills" in the farm fields. When I inquired about them later on, I was told that they were ammunition bunkers, the NAD (Naval Ammunition Depot) was constructed in Hastings in WWII, it produced something like half of all the ordinance used in the Pacific conflict and employed thousands of people. There was apparently an accident at one of them in the 1960's that blew out a lot of windows in the area, even though it was miles out in the country.

I looked it up a few years ago, the main administration buildings were taken over by the college in Hastings, and there is a memorial set up there to the facility. Many of the ammunition bunkers were taken over by local agriculture and industry, I believe there are a few than can be visited today. There is more than one YouTube video on it. "Kool Aid" was invented in Hastings; I thought that was interesting, because I worked for some months in the Kool Aid plant on the south side of Chicago in the late 70's.

There are many other things to do in town, they have (had?) a museum there that focused heavily on Pioneer life in the plains, and there are numerous public pools in town. I remember another guy on the crew mentioning that "Grand Island is where young people go on the weekends". Nebraska's taxes are not on the "shy" side, so the dollars must be going somewhere; public works seemed to be where at the time. Hastings is located east of the "dry line" that transitions between humid and dry areas of Nebraska, it's not nearly as humid as Iowa or Illinois, but not as arid as areas further west (like Scottsbluff), so I imagine the winter snowfall there is still significant (I was there in the summer, LOL). I would expect there will be at least some days in the winter when travel is inadvisable due to blowing snow, much like it is in SE Wyoming.

[HollyhockGarden]

Hello DJO22 --

I am not from Hastings, but have visited there. It was easy enough to pull up some pet-friendly apartments and a rental home from this website -
https://www.apartmentguide.com/apart...-friendly-4lh/

I would also have your wife inquire through the HR office and possibly through the person who hired her. Word of mouth is often useful in a smaller community, especially when they know the person will be employed.

Good luck to you and your wife!