Hey, I'm in a city that sits either on the tail end of 2nd tier or the high end of 3rd, I suppose, so I sincerely don't mean to dig at Omaha
too hard, and I have no problem whatsoever with Nebraska (it's not the kind of basket-case on public policy that certain other states are—hell, mine's probably worse, as far as that goes). I actually find cities about Omaha's size more pleasant than larger (or smaller) ones. I've just noticed
in looking into moving to some cities about that size (including Omaha, specifically, in fact) certain patterns—but, yes, there exist better jobs than the stereotype I mentioned, in Omaha, and, in fact, jobs that bad exist here, too, which I know because I've accidentally interviewed for them a couple times, but higher-paying ones are in
much better supply, too.
The housing thing's just a kind of indicator for a certain kind of situation, which is that, pretty much by definition, either upper-quintile earners are very rare in a city, or the house happens to be somewhere (as in, a specific region of the city) that kinda sucks for, usually, multiple reasons. Or both.
Typically, you hit up Zillow and start getting excited about the abundance of crazy-cheap, gorgeous, giant houses in a smallish city... it's time to check the city's household income curve, and look into the schools where all these great houses are.
> In fact, one of the most common things heard when you inquire about private schools is "Sure, but why pay twice for the same education?"
On that topic specifically, I think it's an under-appreciated fact that most private schools are kind of bad. How can that be, even when you exclude the ones that exist mainly to teach the kids creationism instead of evolution? Fuck if I know. You'd think the market would put them out of business in a hurry, but, nope. I mean, the best schools in an area are also not-uncommonly (but far from always) private schools, but lots of them are, at best, on par with the public schools nearby.