Earlier this week UP conducted a focus group in a small town in Virginia that has several data centers. We confronted a lot of opposition – which only confirmed that Americans across the country have turned against building of more data centers in their county.

The question is why?

The chart below shows what we’ve been saying over and over: counties hosting large data centers have tended to experienced faster housing growth, rising home values, lower unemployment, and stronger job creation compared with the U.S. overall. The orange bar denotes cities with data centers already operational.

Data centers are often springboards for economic development, jobs, and more city services.

We understand people are mixed in their opinions about data centers – due to noise, water issues, higher utility bills, etc. Some of these are myths, and we think tech companies should avoid putting these facilities in communities that don’t want them.

But people need to know the facts and the advantages of having more jobs, more tax revenues, and higher home values, to name a few.