Affordable apartments for retirees? (Cookeville: section 8, rentals, condo)

[QUEMQUAHT]

Cookeville and the Cumberland plateau area is being toted on a large number of prepper and survivalist forums as being one of the premier continental destinations to settle in for living off the grid in preparation for expected global cataclysms of one sort or another..
I am a retiree who would love to settle there but I have not found any decent apartments there yet that are not student housing, and that would be quiet and affordable, suitable for retirees on a limited budget, with excellant high speed internet available, for who wish to be able to support themselves over the rest of their lives long term in in the Cookeville area. The new apartment complexes with all the fancy bells and whistles that are being built in the big cities now raise their rents faster than the income from a limited retirement account can keep up with, especially for those of us planning to possibly live and suppoort ourselves for another 30 years. As they raise the interest rates and things keep getting more expensive, we are looking at possibly dire circumstances for many who must retire soon.
I have been searching through the towns throughout Tennessee for a nice place to live (there are certainly lots of those!) but also for one that has a handle on controlling the gangland crime waves being documented as occurring in the larger cities now (very few seem to want to take advantage of all the US governments offered assistance on accomplishing that).
The developers of these new apartments and retirement living communities seem to labor under the false assumption that all retirees are millionaires with a 2 million $ mansion in the Berkshires to trade in for a "smaller" $300-600,000 "retirement home" in a planned rustic retirement community out in the country on a lake somewhere.
If one looks at the stats on how much a large number of those near retirement now have saved up to live on, it reveals how greedy and shortsighted these developers are by their catering only to the 1%ers, and leaving the majority of the "commoner" retirees who just need or want a simple, healthy, affordable retirement housing situation--one that is not a roach motel room stuffed away in a large central city crime ridden Section 8 ghetto complex--to happily live out their lives. Sucha choice for a retiree on a limited budget seems impossible to find nowadays. A regular retirement apartment community will cost one up to $4000 rent, a month, Plus fees added on, and that is before one needs to move from "active retiree" status to "assisted living" status. Again, how many retirees--especially single ones without a family fortune underwriting them--have that?

[JMT]

There are several apartment complexes in Cookeville that don't cater to the college crowd. As a general rules, the farther away from campus you get, the fewer college students.

What do you consider to be expensive? Saxony, located within walking distance of downtown, has 1BR units that start at $485. I have a friend at church who retired to Cookeville from California, and she lives in a 2BR apartment with a garage outside of town for $450. I think it's a Soard property. I know Nelson Properties has apartments scattered around town that start at $600, but that also includes utilities including high-speed internet.

[QUEMQUAHT]

Thanks, JMT. Those are the rent levels I am looking for. If I can start out renting at a low level, as time goes on, my retirement income has a chance to grow into the levels I will need as the rent raises occur in the future. Those types of properties don't always make it into the internet "apartment seekers" city lists, which seem to be more geared toward publishing the most upscale rentals.
The best places can often be found if one knows the independent landlords in the area and often these aren't advertised widely except by those who know them.
I now live in a town in Virginia where most singles like myself rent a single room in a townhouse or condo, and these nice rooms are now running $800.00 and up (just for the room!) with kitchen privileges utilities etc shared among the other room mates. I have been spending the last couple of years trying to narrow down a nice place to retire--as a UT grad, and having spent 25 years living in Tennessee) I want to--no, HAVE TO return to the mountains, (but this time I do not wish to live there under the same spartan conditions I lived in as a young struggling student!)