(11-13-2023 10:10 AM)Dukes_Royals Wrote:  

(11-13-2023 09:57 AM)Polish Hammer Wrote:  

(11-13-2023 09:53 AM)Dukes_Royals Wrote:  

(11-13-2023 09:48 AM)hburg Wrote:  Definitely older Gen x and older will probably stay away if not going to the game. But younger Gen x and younger would definitely be there.

Sent from my SM-G988U using Tapatalk

It is my millennial and Gen X friends who are saying that too. I think people on this forum forget the disdain for JMU in town if you didn't go there or enjoy collegiate sports. Favor is changing, but not that quick.

Honestly, this is off topic for the Gameday thread, but JMU should work on an affordable housing initiative ($1-2 million in funds) with our local Habitat and it would go a very long way to building community support. JMU is the reason a lot of locals can't find affordable housing.

Really? I thought the housing was quite reasonable, especially compared to other college towns that I’m familiar with. And that also works both ways, if the values shoot up those local owners saw their properties go much higher than they should be.

Small (1400 sqft) homes are going for roughly $300k currently which is roughly a $2,100 mortgage payment (added $150 for insurance and taxes) so you would need at least $82k to have an affordable house payment. Our median household income is $51k.

Harrisonburg, Charlottesville and Richmond are the three hottest markets right now in the state.

Our vacancy rate for rentals is around 3% whereas 5-10% is considered healthy. So rents are also crazy high now compared to income.

That's actually not that bad compared to other municipalities with median household incomes maybe 40% higher but housing more than 2x the $300k you stated. Sounds to me like the housing problem is that builders are not building enough to keep up with demand, partially an issue of Rocktown's own making. City leaders need to step up their game and approve some density downtown and stop massive sprawl by building more density in the closer neighborhoods. Plenty of dead malls (Roses anyone) where you coupld put 100s of townhomes or 1000s of condos/rentals and alleviate the issue.