Charles City ranked 5th most affordable Iowa city

By Bob Steenson, bsteenson@charlescitypress.com 

Charles City is the fifth most affordable city to live in, in Iowa. At least that’s what homesnacks.net says.

The ranking is based on the prices of necessities such as housing, food, gas, health insurance, utilities and transportation, according to the website.

Mark Wicks, the Charles City community development director, laughed when asked about the ranking.

“You’ve got to love Top 10 lists,” he said, saying he hadn’t seen this one yet.

“Polls are fun, and it’s a compliment,” he said. “We always like to see our name up there in a positive manner. Not knowing where they got their data from I can’t comment too much other than I would obviously agree that Charles City is a great, affordable place.”

Homesnacks isn’t a delivery service for Oreos and Pringles. The website says it combines recent data from the census, FBI, online maps and dozens of other sources “into bite-sized studies to help you understand what it’s like to live in different communities across the country.”

Talking about polls and rankings in general, Wicks said, “They’re not meaningless. It means somebody thinks highly of us. We always appreciate that.

“It’s like constructive criticism,” he said. “We do pay attention because they can indicate what people are thinking or how people see Charles City, and what are the areas that we need to work on and what are the areas that we think we’re doing pretty good on.”

Homesnacks.net says it ranks cities, neighborhoods, counties and states in 52 categories, including best and worst places, safest and most dangerous places, most expensive and least expensive places, etc.

It’s in that last category that the website ranked Charles City the fifth cheapest city in Iowa for cities over 5,000 population.

Ranking above Charles City in the affordability category are Perry at No. 4, Iowa Falls at No. 3, Webster City at No. 2 and Fort Dodge as the No. 1 cheapest place to live in the state.

Just for the record, the top five most expensive cities, from first to fifth, are Bettendorf, Eldridge, Spencer, Coralville and Iowa City, the website said.

The website also assigns a “SnackAbility” rating to communities. Charles City’s overall “SnackAbility” is 7 out of 10. Here’s how it rates in individual categories on 10-point scale:

• Commute — 9
• Affordability — 8.5.
• Jobs — 8.
• Amenities — 8
• Safety — 6.
• Education — 6.
• Diversity — 6.
• Housing — 4.

Wicks said he would agree with the high ratings in commute time, affordability, jobs and amenities. The low rating in housing didn’t surprise him either, he said.

“Housing has been identified by a lot of entities as a priority,” he said.

“I see a lot of different polls and a lot of different top 10 lists,” Wicks said. “I always like to read them, and you always love to see your name up there. Occasionally we do, and occasionally I will disagree with the ones they have there.”