A great city to live in for a single mom?

[CrazyCatLady]

I have the opportunity to go anywhere. So does anyone have any great suggestions? All I need is cheap enough housing. AP/NFL friendly would also be a plus. I can work almost anywhere, so that's not an issue. Anyone got a place that they recommend?

[Lisa Lubner]

count me in... i'm in the same exact situation.

try findyourspot.com

[CrazyCatLady]

Find your spot always gives me amazing sounding places. But they're usually towns with maybe 3,000 people at the most and little to no great work opportunities for me. I hope someone chips in some great ideas. Also, I don't need a place with great social services or anything like that either. I'm lucky enough to usually get some decent benefits from work.

[Cassafrass]

How big of a city do you think you'd like? San Diego pops in my mind, the area has different sub areas around it but you have a tradeoff: traffic vs sunshine. *Bonus: really hot guys to look at!

[CrazyCatLady]

I grew up close to San Diego, and you are right about the men. I might actually just go back to LA. But I want to keep my options open. That's why I'm here bugging you all for ideas.

[Bad Mama Jama]

Moving sounds really nice right about now.

[boobybunny]

I will plug the city I live in.

Eugene Oregon. Big enough to have a university, and a great CC. There are a couple of Xian colleges here too. There is a GREAT public transportation system, a fantastic bike path system and a great running trail. There are TWO club soccer orgs, tennis courts that are owned by the city, and are lit up at night. (free) There is "Birth to Three", the relief nursery, and the U of O's phd students that give no/low cost counseling. There is a GREAT parks and Rec dept. A fabulous outdoor pool for summer, complete with slides, and water park, AND an indoor one in the winter with slide and wave pool. The new library is beautiful beyond belief, and a joy to get to on public transportation.

Then the schools are not as great as they once were, BUT, still some of the best in the country. We have school options, language immersion (Spanish, french and Japanese) art immersion (magnet arts) we have a Waldorf based PUBLIC school, (family school) and across the river in Springfield there is a new arts and performances high school. The Eugene high schools have a international option, and the sports teams are well backed, but not the only thing that has money.

There is a Jr symphony, Jr orchestra, several performing arts groups, and a nice performance hall (Hult center)

To top it all off,

You are an hour away from the ski slopes, an hour away from the ocean, and surrounded by five lakes, all very good for waterskiing/wake boarding. There is even a natural water slide that is made of super smooth rocks, and moss.

There are two major malls, at least four REALLY good crunchy markets, the most crunchy being Sundance, we are getting a whole foods soon. And there is a Saturday market, with local artisans, and a Tuesday and Saturday farmers market. (quite large, about two full blocks worth of vender's) We are surrounded by farm land, and have MANY options for "local foods."


The bad part, the median home price in 230K, the rain, not so much the rain, but the gloomy days. Here, you go out and buy outdoor gear to stay outside. REI is the main fashion statement.

We make it comfortably on 55K a year. with a 1300sft home, a hybrid, a new truck, and an a new competition ski boat. When I was a single mom, I made it with an income of 14K a year,(no new cars or a boat) ALL of the parks and req, soccer clubs, sports, community things have sliding scale fees, scholarships. This is a REALLY nice place to raise kids, I went to school in LA. (CSLB) and lived in Orange county, so I understand the draw of warmth. For me, EUGENE is the ONLY place to raise a family. A healthy, active, in tune with the planet around you, family.

[Holland73]

Boobybunny...we are really close to each other. I am in Medford.

I also really enjoy Eugene, albeit my heart lies in Portland. DS and I spent an entire summer in Springfield/Eugene while I participated in the OR Summer Linguistics Institute. It was nice.

I have been looking at teaching positions up there, but teacher salaries are about $4000 less than anywhere else in the state, in regards to city regions.

Regardless...Oregon rocks and I love it here! I never truly appreciated this state, as I grew up here, until I lived in the Netherlands for 4 years and had a child.

[**guest**]

I'm hoping to move back to the Providence (RI) area.

[boobybunny]

Originally Posted by Holland73

Boobybunny...we are really close to each other. I am in Medford.

I also really enjoy Eugene, albeit my heart lies in Portland. DS and I spent an entire summer in Springfield/Eugene while I participated in the OR Summer Linguistics Institute. It was nice.

I have been looking at teaching positions up there, but teacher salaries are about $4000 less than anywhere else in the state, in regards to city regions.

Regardless...Oregon rocks and I love it here! I never truly appreciated this state, as I grew up here, until I lived in the Netherlands for 4 years and had a child.

Downtown Portland, or the real "Portland" is really nice. When you get outside the actual city limits and into the outlaying communities, you might as well be Southern Cal, with rain. There is no charactor, no pizzaz, no charm, just ugly boxes, big box stores...

As for appreciating Oregon, if you grew up here, and never left... you have no idea how good we really have it.
:

[Holland73]

Originally Posted by boobybunny

When you get outside the actual city limits and into the outlaying communities, you might as well be Southern Cal, with rain. There is no charactor, no pizzaz, no charm, just ugly boxes, big box stores...

There are definitely some icky places, as there are in any bigger city.

But, there are some fabulous communities outside downtown PDX. I know of quite a few beautiful communities in SE and NE Portland (I lived there for 5 years). Sellwood and East Moreland are wonderful too.

[MountainMama]

The place I would recommend is Boulder, but the housing is not affordable - the only downfall. Otherwise Boulder would be the absolute best. You should look into it and see what you think.

[Dar]

Okay, I'm got it - y'all should move here to the midwest, to Lawrence, Kansas. Really. Houses are really cheap - you can get a house for 100K. We rent a two bedroom house with a big fenced yard for $600 a month. It does not feel like the midwest. It definitely does not feel like Kansas. It's a pedestrain and bike friendly town of 80K with a large university, a natural foods coop, a definite democratic slant, lots of lovely lakes and wooded areas, museums, kid activities, parks, unschooling group, LLL... The town dates from pre-Civil War and has a lot of character - a few of the streets are old red brick and over 100 years ago, and there's tons of local history. We're also home to a Haskell Indian Nations College, which is over 100 years old and current has students from a whole bunch of different tribes, and they do lots of neat activities there.

Really, I cannot believe how much I like it here. We moved out from California (the bay area and then the Davis area) and lived in the Kansas City area for a year, and din't like it. This is only about 40 minutes away (so if you want a large metropolitan area, there's one in easy driving distance) but such a different world. I've found a lot of west coast folks who have settled here...

dar

[CrazyCatLady]

Ok Dar, your post moved me. I've always yearned for the midwest, but my husband always dreamed of living in the pnw. So here we are in WA.

So, how bad is the weather there? And how many of them crazy tornados do you see?

[fek&fuzz]

My boyfriend's daughter's mother lives in Nashville. She seems to be thriving there, and is very involved with the local art community.

[Dar]

Originally Posted by Melaya

Ok Dar, your post moved me. I've always yearned for the midwest, but my husband always dreamed of living in the pnw. So here we are in WA.

So, how bad is the weather there? And how many of them crazy tornados do you see?

Oh, do I win????

We've only been in the area for 18 months... during that time, Lawrence had the worst tornado-day in 50 years, or something like that... some buildings got damaged, the power was out for almost a day, etc. No one got hurt, though. There are sirens then go off when a tornado is spotted, and you go somewhere safe. We have a basement, as do most people, but there are also public tornado shelters. I think that was only one tornado warning in 18 months, anyway.

Last winter we had two snowstorms, one pretty bad one where the schools closed for a couple of days, and one milder one. The summers get kind of hot and muggy at times. Someone told me when we moved here that you get a total of two weeks of miserably hot weather a year and two weeks of miserably cold weather a year - not all in a row, but if you put all the days together. I think that's been about right, although last year it was more like 3 weeks of heat and one of cold... so that's 48 weeks of decent weather. It's been in the sixties during the day for the past week or so, going down to the thirties or forties at night. We turn the heat on for an hour or so in the mornging and evening, that's it. The weather tends to change a lot, too... we had a couple of overnight freezes in October (down to the high twenties), but then 4 days later the daytime temps were in the eighties.

There are at least 3 MDC mamas here in Lawrence, too, if that helps!

We're off the the Bizarre Bazaar at the Arts Center today, cool handmade artsy stuff... and we'll probably walk there, cause it's only a mile away. We would have gone to the farmer's market, which we have three days a week from April through November, but it just closed. We might stop at the cool thrift store on the way - it's been in business for over 100 years.


Dar

[luellamaeve]

Chicago.

So many little towns in one huge city. The lake, the four seasons, the people and the culture! There is always something to do. The education system is far better here than in California/Florida(only places I can compare to) and you can live in a lake front condo in a relatively safe neighborhood for under $200,000-two bed two bath.

[fuller2]

Any Northeast suggestions? I like New England a lot, but Boston is no place for a single mom unless she's a stockbroker...blah. (I'm looking to move in the next year or two also...)

[MommytoB]

Montana -billings - biggest city in montana, Section 8 houses are available for a 'rental price do have some houses in the double digit thousands like even sometimes lower than 95,000 for a nice size house . The down fall is the 'malls are not too big ' and we only have one theater opened for matinee's during the week when it's school time.

We do have 'really noisy thunderstorms- every other year we get a 'really cold winter w/ alot of snow - which last year we had warm winter with 2 -3 snow falls never got lower than the 20's but right now we are nearly hitting on our 5 th snow fall and expecting single digits this week. No Sales Tax here.

This summer was way hot.

[aywilkes]

Originally Posted by luellamaeve

Chicago.

So many little towns in one huge city. The lake, the four seasons, the people and the culture! There is always something to do. The education system is far better here than in California/Florida(only places I can compare to) and you can live in a lake front condo in a relatively safe neighborhood for under $200,000-two bed two bath.

I would have to disagree with Chicago. I grew up in NW Indiana, my DS' dad is from Chicago and I worked there one summer and had to drive around. While there are great things about the city - the schools are absolutely terrible, and the neighborhoods are pretty segregated. The weather is also terrible too - IMO. chicago has some really nice north, northwest, and west suburbs though. I really want to put a plug in for the DC area but the housing prices are out of control so I won't make up any lies.