Retirement dream
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8/1/2021
I've lived here for over 30 years. If you're near retirement age or retiring this is the place for you. Beautifully 55 + communities with fantastic curb appeal and landscape. Pensions, SSI aren't taxed for the most part. Cheap places for downsizing. Great place to bring grandkids to see cactus and javalinas. Never gets very cold and it's a dry heat. Another nice thing is that there's no natural disasters you have to worry about. No tornadoes, no fires or floods, no hurricanes. If your pool is heated you could swim 8 months out of the year. 6-8 hours from Vegas. 45 minutes from Mexico. Lots of trails. Very bike friendly but a couple die every year from being hit by drivers. College basketball and football games at the U of A. Tour de Tucson.
If you're anyone else then you're treated like garbage second class citizens. Lots of poverty. There's a new homeless person at the street corner every day. Most of the city lives in poverty. K-12 Schools are terrible. They can't find enough teachers and some teachers don't even have a background in education. Most of the jobs are deadend call center or retail jobs. Think of Tucson as domestic offshoring. Everyone who works is worn down and under paid. The population is getting alot older. The recent board of education over the colleges reports negative growth for K-12. Housing like the rest of the country is poor. It's worse here because new home buyers are competing against elderly looking to downsize with cash offers. New houses and houses built within the last 10-15 years are built extremely poorly. 6 months out of the year it is over 100. The sun is really hard on everything. Kids toys break down from the sun. Most plants die from the harsh sun. If you don't have a pool it's unbearable during the summer. Think of the sun like -20 degrees below. Landscaping consists of rock pebbles that's it. No one goes out during the summer. Traffic is poor because too many grandpa's on the road. And no, we don't have a real street car. The street car goes probably half a mile. The public transportation is not reliable or an option for 99% of us. It's really hard to find specialty doctors. Most of the doctors are near retirement age. One of the pluses is the community college is dirt cheap even including books. Everyone is friendly. Big city small town feel. Unless you're retiring I wouldn't move here.
Ed | Casas Adobes, AZ