It's well-known that Austin is becoming an ever-younger city, a millennial city, an unfettered and fancy-free city. Or something like that.
That hasn't always made it the best place for young families. In fact, according to Apartment List's data-gathering "Rentonomics" enterprise, last year Austin kind of sucked at attracting and retaining families that still have children at home. According to Apartment List's Andrew Woo, last year Austin scored a C, to use an appropriate schoolhouse metaphor, placing 376th on a list of 500 cities studied.
This year's study shows Austin to be a substantially improved student, raising its grade to B-minus, moving up to 242 in the rankings. The group's methodology focuses on four areas: safety, housing cost, school quality, and child friendliness (how many kids already live in the community, basically). Kind of unbelievably, our best score was for housing cost (69%), while our child-friendliness score (28%) needs improvement. According to Woo, an increase in high-school graduation rates and a decrease in crime helped boost Austin grade up from last year's.
As for who came in first in the study, it was the one, the only Allen, Texas. Huh.