Jacksonville vs Orlando....or just leave FL? (apartment, rent)

[tlb75]

I recently left the Orlando area after living there for almost 2 years. I spent the better part of my time there homeless. Although I worked, I couldn't find an apartment I could afford. Most landlords want you to make 3 and 4 times the rent which is usually around $800-1000 a month. That's hard to do at $9.00 an hour. I was told that Jacksonville was better job-wise and rent-wise, but I would like for someone to tell me if this true. Whats the average price of a 3 bedroom apt?....How is the crime rate?...How are the schools?....What about medical facilities?

[JacksonvilleNative]

Almost anywhere is going to be difficult on $9 an hour. No disrespect meant, just facts. Unless you have a friend or partner with a second income, things are going to be hard.

That being said, You can find housing for less that $800 a month. And you could find them pretty much all over the city. Some places are safer than others. The areas surrounding downtown known as the Urban Core could have what you are looking for. I know of some 1 br apts that go for around $500. They woudl be close to bus lines if you need public transportation to get around.

There are numerous medical facilities in the city, scattered from the Urban Core to the suburbs. There are good schools and bad schools.

Jacksonville has a lot to offer but you do have to do a little research to find where you need to go.

Good Luck.

[tlb75]

Thanks so much for the info!!!

[Zaba]

Very little frosts my ass more than the increasing, painful reality in this country of a man who works full time still goes homeless because of stupid, completely outdated mantras about 'trickle down economics' and other economic fallacies.

Unfortunately, due to the 'Sunshine Tax' (a euphemism for wage disequilibrium caused by huge numbers of people wanting to live in Florida thus driving down the wages), union-busting and the broader economic picture at the state level, Florida is not a good state to live in as a lower earning worker.

You might consider moving elsewhere.

[sport69]

Originally Posted by Zaba

Very little frosts my ass more than the increasing, painful reality in this country of a man who works full time still goes homeless because of stupid, completely outdated mantras about 'trickle down economics' and other economic fallacies.

Unfortunately, due to the 'Sunshine Tax' (a euphemism for wage disequilibrium caused by huge numbers of people wanting to live in Florida thus driving down the wages), union-busting and the broader economic picture at the state level, Florida is not a good state to live in as a lower earning worker.

You might consider moving elsewhere.

Which state would you recommend?

[sport69]

As a low wage worker you need two pay checks to make it in Florida.

[Zaba]

Originally Posted by sport69

Which state would you recommend?

If I were forced to try and make it on a minimum wage job, I'd move somewhere where the cost of living was reasonable and the prospects bright.

The internet is your friend but places like Des Moines, IA, various places in the Dakotas have very low unemployment and excluding a few freak 'boom town' cases in the Dakotas, offer very reasonable cost of living. If your answer to that is "BUT I WANT TO LIVE IN HAWAII OR FLORIDA! WHO WANTS TO LIVE IN SOUTH DAKOTA?" then its your own problem. Enjoy homelessness.

Florida is a *terrible* place to try and make a go of it on a single, bottom-end income. Terrible.
Your only hope here would be to try and find a job somewhere in Central Florida and live as cheaply as possible. Otherwise, rents are high and the pay is low. It's place you retire to after selling a house you've spent 30 years paying off, or a fine place if you have a secure white collar job. Terrible, terrible place to try and carve out a living in low wage jobs. On one low wage income? Forget it.

[WupTeeDo]

Crime is a wee bit of a problem here. Jacksonville is the homicide capital of Florida, not everyday mind you, but enough to make you worry if you live in the low-end of the economic spectrum.

[hindsight2020]

Originally Posted by Zaba

If I were forced to try and make it on a minimum wage job, I'd move somewhere where the cost of living was reasonable and the prospects bright.

The internet is your friend but places like Des Moines, IA, various places in the Dakotas have very low unemployment and excluding a few freak 'boom town' cases in the Dakotas, offer very reasonable cost of living. If your answer to that is "BUT I WANT TO LIVE IN HAWAII OR FLORIDA! WHO WANTS TO LIVE IN SOUTH DAKOTA?" then its your own problem. Enjoy homelessness.

Florida is a *terrible* place to try and make a go of it on a single, bottom-end income. Terrible.
Your only hope here would be to try and find a job somewhere in Central Florida and live as cheaply as possible. Otherwise, rents are high and the pay is low. It's place you retire to after selling a house you've spent 30 years paying off, or a fine place if you have a secure white collar job. Terrible, terrible place to try and carve out a living in low wage jobs. On one low wage income? Forget it.

Excellent synopsis on the labor realities of Florida. What's worse, think about the level of [lack] community buy-in when everybody has their income sourced externally to Florida. It's a recipe for apathy. We know job nomadism is a fact of American life these days, but I don't find the proposition of a state where "nobody's from here" particularly positive. Frankly I find the level of foreign national investment in Florida too widespread for my taste in the future of our National Sovereignty. Nothing personal against Canadians and all.

People attempting to make a median living domestically in such a construct are hosed from a cost/QOL perspective. But you are correct, it is ultimately a choice to accept such an opportunity cost. Which is why it's a state full of rudderless 20-somethings who become escaping 30-somethings when the children arrive, or my retired parents thinking about moving there part-time because they're culturally too old to move far from the Caribbean (Puerto Rico) but otherwise can afford it. Florida labor dynamics remind me of Puerto Rico quite a bit actually. One of the more formative lessons from growing up in the Caribbean is the false economy that such euphemisms like 'sunshine tax' really is. Most people who meet me eventually gravitate to the visceral desire to ask me "when are you moving back" as if to suggest the happenstance of being born and raised in a tropical setting was some sort of lottery winning and a permanent vacation one would be foolish to move away from. When they hear the sheer happiness of mine in emigrating to an area of less desirable climate comfort and otherwise my choice to never return to that place, they often seem puzzled. Florida often takes the stateside equivalent of that conversation and it's equally fallacious.

A rational economic player shouldn't exercise such geographic inelasticity in the face of an inability to afford it. In debating these merits with others who didn't grow up in such a place but root for it religiously, I always tell them: if it was that great of place, why do snowbirds exist in the first place? Such a construct should be absent if the sunshine tax was in fact worthwhile. The fact such migratory lifestyle does indeed exist is self-evidence to the poor ROI of such a tax. To each their own of course.