Considering Hays, Kansas...the good, the bad, the ugly (Wichita: apartments, rentals)

[elkotronics]

Dodge has its old house areas and new house areas, and, even some of the "older town Dodge" areas are not too bad. But it has many, many nice houses and the owners do not like to rent to people who own animals. Hays seems to have 4 or 5 right on Craigslist that say they'll take animals. We have 4 animals - we sometimes have trouble finding rentals. Here in KC I looked on Craigslist and I found this Grandview home that is a 2BR, 1BA house with a basement and attached garage renting for only $750 a month. That is a one-year lease, of course, which complicates our situation a bit. We need out of this lease if I get a job out of town. But this house was not hard to find - I picked it out carefully.


Dodge City landlords like outside all-the-time pets or no pets at all. We had to rent an old roach-ridden apartment there when we first arrived in late July of 2015. Only housing we could find, and I gave it a good effort for weeks, too. We moved in December to a house in south Dodge and stayed there until we moved to KC in August of 2016. Unfortunately this Allied Healthcare job did not work out, and we must either find something else here in the KC Metro or move. The Quinter job may or may not be what I want or I may not be what they want. But housing is as much key to making this thing work as the fit of the job is. Colby has nothing on Craigslist, but that's only a partial search, though. More searching is required. For now, lunch on a sunny KC afternoon is in order!

[sheena12]

Originally Posted by shorman

No matter what the topic is you always seem to manage to work something into your posts disparaging immigrants. Absolutely pathetic, it must suck to live your life so filled with hate.

I have noticed this too. Sad.


A friend of mine is going out to a "Fort" Hays College or university for a possible job as a professor. She happens to have a Hispanic surname and her children are half Mexican. Will she encounter any trouble?

[Mattks]

Originally Posted by sheena12

I have noticed this too. Sad.


A friend of mine is going out to a "Fort" Hays College or university for a possible job as a professor. She happens to have a Hispanic surname and her children are half Mexican. Will she encounter any trouble?

I don't think she will have any problems. I have a few Mexican friends (in Topeka) and they don't have issues. My wife is Chinese (who lived in Hays for 5 years) and we haven't had any problems with that either. There are many people of Mexican descent in southwestern Kansas and at the meat packing towns around the state. The Mexican population has been here a long time.

[elkotronics]

I might add that the Hispanic population in Dodge City is well grounded and exists along with Caucasians and everyone else there. I might add that I had some fine Hispanic friends at our church while we lived in Dodge. I don't think your friend is going to have a hard time in western Kansas at all.

[elkotronics]

Well, I took the site tour yesterday and, not so long story cut even shorter: I am not going to be able ta work the job at Gove County Hospital. The job would require me to work every other Sunday, and, I will miss every other Sunday service at church. The Boss was nice and I think we'd work well with each other. But that schedule will not jibe with our spiritual schedule and life. So the search will go on. I'm up early at our Motel 6 room in Hays unable ta sleep!

I think I'm gonna walk four rooms down to the lobby and score me some free Motel 6 marginal coffee and plan out the Mrs. and I's future. It's kind of cool when you've just got three more months ta pay on your KC rental house lease and you could go wherever that next job might be.

I know it would be too scary for a lot of folks, too. I do understand why they feel that way.

[empires228]

Originally Posted by sheena12

I have noticed this too. Sad.


A friend of mine is going out to a "Fort" Hays College or university for a possible job as a professor. She happens to have a Hispanic surname and her children are half Mexican. Will she encounter any trouble?

98.99% of the time she will have no trouble. The other 1.01% of the time will come from older Caucasian residents and high school/college students with confederate flags and make America Great stickers decorating their trucks. One of my former co workers did have to deal with instances where people would approach her at work and tell her that they couldn't wait for trump to deport her kind, but that was the wurst of what I witnessed and the worst of what she reported to others. Hays has been seeing a noticeable increase in the Hispanic population, which is fine with me!

[empires228]

Originally Posted by elkotronics

Well, I took the site tour yesterday and, not so long story cut even shorter: I am not going to be able ta work the job at Gove County Hospital. The job would require me to work every other Sunday, and, I will miss every other Sunday service at church. The Boss was nice and I think we'd work well with each other. But that schedule will not jibe with our spiritual schedule and life. So the search will go on. I'm up early at our Motel 6 room in Hays unable ta sleep!

I think I'm gonna walk four rooms down to the lobby and score me some free Motel 6 marginal coffee and plan out the Mrs. and I's future. It's kind of cool when you've just got three more months ta pay on your KC rental house lease and you could go wherever that next job might be.

I know it would be too scary for a lot of folks, too. I do understand why they feel that way.

I hope you have/had time to check our Sternberg, campus, or the reconstruction of the old Fort Hays before you leave! I also recommended checking out the small town of Wilson on the way back. It has a very old and fairly nice downtown and some good food.

[elkotronics]

I hope you have/had time to check our Sternberg, campus, or the reconstruction of the old Fort Hays before you leave! I also recommended checking out the small town of Wilson on the way back. It has a very old and fairly nice downtown and some good food.

Oh, I'll have to catch those another time. We left Hays and decided to exit I-70 and head over to Manhattan the scenic route. We did that and stayed on Highway 24 all the way into Kansas City. Then took Highway 7 south to Olathe and then over to 135th east to Martin City.

[CountryGirl2017]

Do. Not. Move. To. Hays. The cost of living is outrageous. Grown up jobs are near impossible to find unless you work in the medical field. The cost of living is ridiculous. Property taxes are sky high, and that’s only if you are lucky enough to find a house under 200k, and that house will be guaranteed to be over 35 years old. Rent? Don’t even think about it. A decent two-bed duplex will run around $900+ a month, and you better not have a pet. The school system is poor at best. I lived there for 20 years. Scraped to pay the property taxes and fix up a 100 year old house, because that’s all a two person median-income family could afford. I moved out a year ago, and have never been happier.

[mshultz]

I have to agree about the cost of housing in Hays. Here are the 2016 mean detached house costs in my area:
Wooster: $158,000
Ashland: $127,000
Alliance: $158,000

And here is Hays: $190,000. It seems to me that Hays increased by at least $30,000 in just the past few years. All of these are similar sized cities.