I'll just say this and take my downvotes[1]: It's impossible to read a piece like this in the modern world, about two white middle class families leaving large, coastal multiethnic metropolises for suburban homes in (what a quick google tells me is) the sixth whitest state in the union, without a racial lens.

These workers "fleeing" big cities simply don't seem likely to be a uniformly sampled demographic, and for the article not to at least nod to that seems like pretty questionable journalism.

But maybe that's just a step too woke.

[1] Edit: heh, two minutes before the first accusation of racism. Pretty much what I expected.