After almost 23 years in the area, I'm moving away (Mexico: 2014, for rent)

[heavymind]

Originally Posted by comfortably_numb

I see the writing on the wall. The KC metro is going the way of Denver. It'll take a few more years, but we'll get there.

It sucks. I'm living it too and honestly there's not much you can do about it other than starting fires.

I give my small town about five more years until it's unliveable to anyone without a million dollar bank account. Once it comes to that, I will no longer be interested in being a member of the community.

[comfortably_numb]

Originally Posted by heavymind

It sucks. I'm living it too and honestly there's not much you can do about it other than starting fires.

I give my small town about five more years until it's unliveable to anyone without a million dollar bank account. Once it comes to that, I will no longer be interested in being a member of the community.

Well if you want to live in Drexel I can probably convince my landlords to rent you my place for $650 a month once I move out. I pay $550, but I'm grandfathered in and have no lease.

Let me know if you would like contact info. The ONLY affordable areas left in this metro are Adrian, Archie and Drexel. You can get also get an affordable place in Warrensburg but that's a LONG way from KC.

[heavymind]

Not sure what you're getting at or if it's a joke, but the numbers you posted are exactly why people are flooding into places like Kansas City. And it won't last long once demand supersedes supply.

In my small town locals are living in barns and RVs because small, dinky apartments or trailers start at around $1300/month, if you can find one. Most of the stock of rental housing has been converted into 'luxury' short terms (AirBnb, etc).

If you think what you're experiencing is expensive, or that moving to Albuquerque is cheaper, you should probably do some research first. (Which you are, here on CD, that's what it's for)

[comfortably_numb]

Originally Posted by heavymind

Not sure what you're getting at or if it's a joke

Uh- no I am not joking. I was trying to help you.

I don't appreciate ******* attitudes from people I try to help.

[MarketStEl]

Originally Posted by comfortably_numb

Interesting tidbit I discovered recently- did you know that the duplexes on Meyer Blvd. in Brookside, near St. Peter's Catholic Church, were built to temporarily house the folks whose homes were being built in Prairie Village?

I appreciate your historical knowledge of our metropolitan area. Ever since I moved here I've tried to educate myself and become knowledgeable about how the various neighborhoods and suburbs took shape. Talking to lifetime residents I learned so much. However, this sprawling, spread out metro is so large that I know I'll never know all the history.

It's not lost on me that I moved here from somewhere else, but I tried to become a "Kansas Citian" and assimilate, not impose my Ohioan sensibilities on KC. Maybe it was easier for me because both places are the Midwest, I don't know.

PS- JC Nicholas wasn't the only local developer who was racist. The people who developed Lake Winnebago touted it as a "white exclusive community." I've seen the brochures.

1) No, I didn't know that about those Brookside duplexes. I thought they were like most other duplexes in the city. But that also shows that Nichols went further than the Levitts did in accommodating prospective buyers.

2) I straddled the Troost Wall growing up: I lived east of it and went to school west of it. I think that gives me a depth of knowledge of KC even many Kansas Citians now lack. My side of town (I grew up in Oak Park — this neighborhood developed after World War I, well before the identically named one in OP did; the park of the same name in its southern reaches had a great sledding hill) tends not to register in the west-of-Troost consciousness unless there's a crime story.

(True story: I returned here in 2011 to attend my 35th high school reunion with a journalist friend of mine who worked for McClatchy, by then The Star's parent, in tow (we both had been at a journalists' convention in Chicago and took the "Chicago-Kansas City Expressway" [IL/MO 110] to KC). My journalist friend had been to the city on numerous occasions, but I took him around my side of town; he thanked me for showing him a side of the city he never knew.)

3) Oh, I'm well aware that it wasn't just Nichols. I lived here during the fight over the 1964 public-accommodations-law referendum, in which city voters narrowly approved an ordinance prohibiting discrimination on the basis of race in public accommodations. A lake in the southern part of the city that was open to whites only tried to become a private club after it passed, and the Kernodle Lake controversy made headlines for some months. (Edited to add: I also remember a valiant but ultimately unsuccessful effort by residents of the area bounded on the north by 49th Street, on the south by 63d, on the east by The Paseo and on the west by Troost to keep that neighborhood integrated after Blacks began moving into it. Would that the "49-63 Neighborhood Coalition" succeeded; KC would then have had a desirable integrated neighborhood along the lines of Mount Airy here in Philadelphia, whefre a similar effort succeeded.)

The organization that represented and advocated for real estate agents nationwide began to promote racially restrictive covenants that ran with the land beginning in the 1920s, after the US Supreme Court struck down a racial zoning ordinance in Louisville, Ky.

[NORTY FLATZ]

Originally Posted by comfortably_numb

So am I.

To add insult to injury, coastal refugees are transforming neighborhoods like Prairie Village by buying up ranch houses and bungalows, knocking them down, then building $3 million mini-mansions on the lots. They're deliberately ignoring the charm and character these neighborhoods had and are imposing their own. Very unfortunate. These people aren't assimilating into KC, they're taking it over.

Sorry Californians, but everywhere you go you're fundamentally changing our metros and I for one do not like it one bit.

You can rest assured, that "we" Californians don't like it anymore than you do.
The one thing that is different? For the most part, the Californians that are invading Missouri (or Kansas) are US citizens, and they speak/read/write English as a first language.

The people that are "invading" California have English wayyy down on their list of languages. And they're bringing their trunks full of gold and uranium over the border....

[comfortably_numb]

Originally Posted by NORTY FLATZ

You can rest assured, that "we" Californians don't like it anymore than you do.
The one thing that is different? For the most part, the Californians that are invading Missouri (or Kansas) are US citizens, and they speak/read/write English as a first language.

The people that are "invading" California have English wayyy down on their list of languages. And they're bringing their trunks full of gold and uranium over the border....

You make valid points. Apologies if I offended.

[MarketStEl]

If it matters any, I contend that half of Southern California has relatives in the Kansas City area. Don't forget what railroad connected KC with LA and San Diego.

My first visit to LA was in 1966, to visit both friends of my grandparents who lived in Willowbrook and a great-aunt in Altadena. (Great-uncle worked at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory nearby.)

By the time my mother moved to LA in 1980 to take an assignment at VA Brentwood, that great aunt had moved to Baldwin Hills, and I attended a Christmas party at her place there; besides her pushing me into an overstuffed chair and gushing about how proud everyone was that I was going to Harvard, the other thing I remember was that Greg Morris of "Mission Impossible" (the TV series of the 1960s/70s) was one of the guests.

Another thing I remember was noting how California license plates became almost as numerous as Missouri and Kansas plates on the local thoroughfares in the summer. (I picked up my public transit habits early; I would take buses from my East Side home to Pem-Day, my bowling league on the Country Club Plaza and my grandparents' house in that Black section of southeast KC. I did a lot of license-plate counting while waiting for my buses.)

Something tells me that the Californians now tearing down houses in JoCo don't have relatives here. Or maybe they do.

[comfortably_numb]

Originally Posted by MarketStEl

Something tells me that the Californians now tearing down houses in JoCo don't have relatives here. Or maybe they do.

I partially blame all the HGTV shows glorifying that sort of thing.. even my mom watches them!

[Marv95]

860K? LOL in a similar Twin Cities suburb a similar build would cost about the same despite being a higher COL area.

Don't blame you for leaving. I was thinking about moving there but the wages aren't worth it. Some of these rents for a studio let alone a 1BR aren't worth it. And I like KC.