New York, Los Angeles, Olathe? Rent’s Bite Is Big in Kansas, Too

By SUSAN SAULNY
Published: October 23, 2006

OLATHE, Kan. — New census data shows that people are paying more of their income for housing in almost every part of the country. And it is hardly surprising that places like Southern California and Manhattan are high on the list.

But Olathe? In northeast Kansas?

Olathe (pronounced oh-LAY-thuh), 20 miles southwest of Kansas City, showed the biggest jump in the percentage of people paying at least 30 percent of their income on rent, as well as in those paying at least 50 percent on rent.

In a largely rural state not known for growth or overwhelming prosperity, here is a minimetropolis of manmade neighborhood waterfalls, of seemingly endless construction of shopping malls and office parks. Executives and immigrant workers, retirees and young families have all been drawn to its abundance of jobs, parks and high-performing public schools.

“It’s basically been a supernova in terms of its growth,” said Arthur P. Hall, the executive director of the Center for Applied Economics at the University of Kansas School of Business. “It’s a major suburb of Kansas City and for whatever reason has become the place to go. And that I can’t explain.”

Ever since Olathe’s days as a stagecoach stop on the Santa Fe Trail there have been newcomers at the crossroads here, usually to take a rest and to move on. But as this prairie town and former bedroom community of close to 120,000 looks back to celebrate its 150th birthday, it is clear what has changed: people come to stay. And they pay a lot to do it.

(rest of article @ link below)

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/23/us/23olathe.html?pagewanted=1&ei=5094&en=10604d8bd401d7d6&hp&ex=1161576000&partner=homepage

I try to avoid it at all costs. The land of strip malls.

It is awful to try to navigate.

Edit because I am an idiot!

I student taught in Olathe 30 years ago when there were only 25,000 people living there. It was a red state hell bastion of rednecks then and it sure doesn't seem to have changed much since then.

Maybe someone who lives in Olathe can enlighten me. What is so appealing about it?

To be fair, southern OP doesn't appeal to me either and neither does Lee's Summitt. I have lived most of my life in NE Johnson County (we call it the poor part of Jo Co) and I think it is the best place in the county to live.

Doesn't really matter other than just curious.

and Republicans :)

Also way too far away.

They've built up the rest of Johnson County so I think they are going to the "former bedroom" communities to build. I moved to Baldwin a little over ten years ago. When I moved there the city had one grocery store, one pizza restaurant, one liquor store and one bar. Within five years it was a different city. The change started slowly and then seemed to snowball. When I first moved there I could go to the grocery store and never run into anyone I knew. After a couple of years I started seeing people from Lawrence there. They were moving south to Baldwin because they could buy a bigger house for the same money they would spend in Lawrence buying a house. It started with people who recently retired. They would sell their house in Lawrence and move to the Baldwin area.

After I had been there about three years I noticed that a huge grassy field a few blocks from me was subdivided into a two blocs of new housing. By the end of that summer there was another new subdivision going in several blocks south of us. Around the same time I started noticing a younger generation relocating from Lawrence to Baldwin. I was running into people that met at KU fifteen years earlier. A number of them had families and were looking for affordable housing in the Lawrence area and they were moving to Baldwin.

After four years we got a notice of that someone was planning to put in an apartment complex up the block. The developers moved in and new housing subdivisions started springing up north of town. By the time I left there were 200-300K houses and a new "retirement village" type thing going in up north of town. Meanwhile we went from a couple of small restaurants and one corporate submarine shop to having a new Sonic, a new Pizza Hut, a new Taco Bell, a new McDonald's/gas station, a new hotel, a new liquor store, a new grocery store, some new banks and a new shopping mall.

All of sudden it wasn't the quiet sleepy little town that existed just a few years prior. It did some advantages. For one thing I didn't have to pay long-distance to connect to the internet when the town finally got a local ISP but there were real growing pangs. Our water pressure dropped as the number of subdivisions increased and never fully came back despite upgrades and repairs. We went from brownouts on the nights when Baker University had a dance (we figured out the brownouts were the result of an increased number of blow dryers and curling irons) or the first few days of hot weather (people coming home and turning on air conditioners) to an increasing number of brownouts and blackouts throughout the year. When I lived there the cable was total crap and out of Missouri that catered to small markets and the local newspaper came out once a week. I got a satellite to get most of my channels. I subscribed to the minimum cable package so I could keep up with the local news but I only got KC stations so I ended up using an old fashioned antenna to get the Topeka channels.

The street I lived on was a quiet little street that turned into a country dirt road. If I went three blocks west I was in the country. By the time I left, three blocks east was in the process of being divved up into a new subdivision. My quiet street turned into an ad hoc arterial road from the newer subdivisions to the downtown area. I went from tending the flowers that bordered the front of the property once in a while to daily trash pick-up. I eventually just took out the flowers after people kept running over them. My driveway was often mistaken for a shortcut to a nearby park and my parked car got rear-ended a few times in the middle of the night by some tipsy college students taking the "shortcut".

Anyway, here's how I figure it. People move to the outlying areas because it is cheaper but still close enough to wherever it is they just came from and/or need to be for employment. Then those newbies tell their friends who then move to the outlying area. Then they start coming en masse. Then area is no longer an outlying area but has been upgraded to "bedroom community" status. Then more people come. The second round of newcomers build McMansions because the land cheap. Then more of the McMansion crowd moves in. This ends up driving up property values in some areas but not as much in others. This creates the various neighborhoods of vastly different types of houses. Finally they fuck up the "bedroom community" by making it look like the places they just moved from. There's the subsequent housing and development boom as locusts move in and devour the city. Meantime, some people who can no longer afford to live in the new bedroom community start to look to the new outlying areas/existing towns and the cycle starts all over again.

It's especially unfortunate for the people who take those big-box retail jobs and get locked into paying more rent than they can afford.

People who have lived in a community for years and have retired suddenly find themselves with higher property taxes to pay for all the newcomers. The higher taxes pay for increased infrastructure costs. They have to pay for more police, extending water lines, and electrical lines. Some of these costs should be offset by developers but they aren't always. Developers try to keep the prices of houses in their new subdivisions down to attract buyers as a result the impact costs (water lines, electricity, cable, etc.) aren't always covered. New costs start showing up on the local utility bills by the utility companies to help offset their new costs - extended routes mean more gas, more maintenance costs, more employees and equipment. As new people move into the community the school populations grow so new teachers and other support staff are needed. If the population increases enough the town will need to build new schools. As traffic increases the town needs to put in new stop signs or traffic lights. So, as new higher priced housing starts cropping up the property values for surrounding areas go up. So, if a retired couple is living on a fixed income they are hit with higher utility costs and higher property taxes.

In addition, as the communites begin to grow new businesses (corporate businesses like McDonald's, specialty stores, etc.) come into town. This drives up retail costs which in turn jacks up prices. Eventually the small town businesses are driven out of business.

I keep envisioning locusts who come into an area and consume everything before they move onto greener pastures.

housing was cheaper (even though it meant a longer commute). There are a lot of new, relatively cheap subdivisions there. The downside is that the cheap houses are, well, cheap, and aren't really built to last.

But with housing prices going up, I'm not sure why the boom is continuing. We looked (briefly) at houses in Olathe when we moved into this area, and decided we'd much rather buy an older house in another town. Better construction, bigger trees, and not quite as many Republicans. :)

do they build houses to last anymore?

pay for upgrades to better materials, you will probably have better luck. Unfortunately, many people who buy those new houses can't afford those extra costs. I'm not sure what it costs now to get a really well-constructed house with decent plumbing fixtures, etc. I do know a couple of people with $300K houses who have problems, so it's more than that...