There are a lot of mining ghost towns in the west too. The world changes. Before the days of government assistance, when your town’s economy dried up, you moved away.
Now, people hang around, sealing the fate of their children.
I moved from Seattle to rural KY. I’ve been to a lot of these towns. I’d love to live near some of them, but I’m at retirement age. I would never, EVER consider raising a family in one unless someone chained me to the concrete and my wife was already pregnant.
And subsist by cooking or consuming meth.