Where are you (and these others you mention) moving to?
The 11 minute drive from our house into town (capital of Washington state) is ironically shorter than a drive to the nearest Safeway in Mountain View at certain times of the day.
My wife and I daily appreciate the fortune of having the luxury of working full time remote. Most people don't have that.
We very much enjoyed our time in the SF Bay Area. It's a beautiful place full of excellent people. "things" just got too out of balance over the past decade plus.
Our electricity is almost all hydro, and so very green. Our only vehicle is a Tesla which we charge at home.
Our home is relatively close to the Puget sound but we're nearly 100 feet above it, which will make us proof against 21st century sea level rise, hurricanes (currently impossible here) and tsunamis. At the same time, the very large amount of water near us strongly moderates our temperature fluctuations, similar to but stronger than the same effect on the peninsula in the SF Bay Area.
There's no state income taxes. Property tax is slightly higher than in the SF Bay Area. Sales tax is about the same.
Finally, this is my current view: https://www.realms.org/pics/woods-outside.jpg
https://www.climate.washington.edu/stormking/mainindex.html
Above, I specifically called out something you can't generally build for, which is flooding. Flooding comes either from water running down hill or from below, due to rising bodies of water. Our house is at the top of a very shallow rise/'hill', so we don't have to worry about the former. That we're more than 100 feet above any relevant body of water protects us from the latter.
The other items are generally about high winds, and this house is pretty much proof against that. It was massively over-built.
The only thing it could not withstand is a direct hit from a powerful tornado.
On the other hand, we're planning on the 70 year time horizon, which is basically reasonable MAX_AGE for our teenage son, so looking many decades back was appropriate for us as well.
Further, as more and more energy ends up captured in the atmosphere, we expect rare atmospheric events to become a lot less rare.
> it's fairly isolated from inclement weather phenomenon.
Indeed, we're loving it, especially given that we generally like cool, wet weather as a baseline.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001_Nisqually_earthquake [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_earthquakes_in_Washing...
That could cause a large to very large tsunami.
The place we selected is proof against any Tsunami, and massively over-built to handle large earthquakes.
I'll keep working remote from flyover country, thanks (lots of beautiful places here too if you don't mind the snow!)
This is such a huge thing when it comes to quality of life. The traffic in the bay area is completely absurd. There is no rush hour. There's a small window around 10:00am-11:30am where you can just get in the car and run somewhere real quick without sitting in it. Otherwise it turns a quick trip to the grocery store into an hour long affair. I can remember working in Oakland, and living in Pleasant Hill, and if there was an accident at the tunnel, you're literally just sitting at the office until 8-9pm because the entire route is a parking lot. It's the number one thing I am thankful for since moving away.
Bicycling around takes time, but I considered it worth while since it doubled as good, low impact cardio.
We also stayed primarily in Mountain View because of the schools.
But yeah, from 2009-2020, traffic went from somewhat manageable to batshit crazy.
The perception of this, at least, is so widespread that you'll see quite a lot on community social media spaces, telling the "immigrants" that they're welcome, but please stop voting for the kinds of policies that you're trying to escape.
Most of Texas has been dealing with CA transplants since last housing crisis, or before, so 12+ years now. Austin area in particular is where the liberals usually land. And they tend to be very liberal even by traditional Austin standards and especially by Texas standards in general. Some of the recent things in Austin, particularly around tolerance of homeless, are not popular with Texans. We are generous people but not to the level of letting homeless sleep in our suburban yards. We're told we're not compassionate. But we feel these people are mostly, homeless by choice. If you take the time to watch them, it's a lifestyle for a high percentage and yes there are some who did not chose it due to drugs, PTSD, etc, and we'd support getting those people help, housing, food, etc. But not putting up tents and port-a-potties for them at the underpass. [1]
I just came back from Austin. I haven't lived there since 2007/8. Homeless there has always been a problem. As it is in almost any liberal US city. The last few years, it's gotten so much worse and letting it bleed into the suburbs makes no sense IMO. The local leaders are enabling thus inviting more homeless, etc. as happens in almost any liberal US city.
[1] As an example of something no Texan understands. My aunt told me, a lady on her Nextdoor ostracized the neighborhood for giving the homeless things they didn't need. Like food when they had food. Or food they did not like. So, she met with and created an Amazon Wish List for each person living under/near a nearby bridge freeway intersection. When my aunt clicked on it out of curiosity, it was mostly gift cards, phone minutes, electronics, etc. In my mind, things that are easily converted to cash.
Also the idea that Californians moving are responsible for pushing Austin in a more liberal direction I find untrue and a bit at odds with reality both from data presented on metro-to-metro movements [1, 2] and also with my own anecdotal experience here. I find many of the people I know who moved here from California think they’re getting away from what they consider an overtly liberal area by doing so, and in part move specifically because they believe Austin (by being in Texas) will be more conservative. From my experience having lived in Austin and in Texas (over twice as long as I’ve lived in California, which I first moved to from Austin), it is and has been more progressive than even most of the Bay Area has seemed to me (excluding Santa Cruz and Berkeley which I find comparable).
As far as what might be making it more liberal, it was a large part of the 60s and 70s counter-culture movement (Whole Foods and Wheatsville, Janis Joplin and the 13th Floor Elevators, Mother’s Cafe, etc.) the founders and artists of which were not from California, and in the case of Whole Foods and Janis actually were Austin exports to California. And also being widely more known for being a college town with large music festivals and a huge DIY scene. Austin feels more like San Jose to me these days, but it’s politics, especially when discussed with those I’ve known who were born and raised here, feel more akin to what I see and hear being discussed in places like Portland and Berkeley than what I saw and heard from those I knew in Palo Alto and Mountain View.
This is not due to Californians moving in, as even to this day the majority of Austinites are either born and raised or migrated from other parts of Texas. Even the initiative against keeping public homelessness from being criminalized was widely supported in council and by the mayor (of which I’m not aware of a single party being from California, Greg Casar who is pushing for a lot of the more progressive policies is actually from Houston and Adler went to UT and is from Washington DC).
Basically just trying to say, I disagree with the “liberal by Austin standards” idea, I think if anything you’re just seeing the city as it always was but with more political clout due to recent changes in how city council works and with a very energized mayor. The transplants from California if anything, in my anecdotal experience at least, are fairly conservative by Austin standards. But our experiences are our own.
[1] https://www.census.gov/data/tables/2018/demo/geographic-mobi... [2] https://austonia.com/austin-growth
That sounds more like the South Bay. Try East.