How long before all the Californians make Austin the exact same place they fled from?
Go to Wyoming or Idaho and people feel the same way. California has unfortunately been exporting its ridiculous cost of living and lifestyle to the American west for decades, Austin is just the latest to feel it.
Somewhat related, Austinites used to also have a fairly common saying "Don't Dallas my Austin" (also related: "Keep Austin Weird"), referring to wanting to keep the "corporate" feel of Dallas out of Austin. The ship's sailed on that one too, though.
The Californians, after years of having higher salary, more savings, and a job that lets them move, goes to Texas and offers $400k for that same house. The Californian thinks it's a great deal, because they get the same size house they previously lived in for only half the price! And the seller thinks it's great, because he now suddenly gets a huge premium on his previously-valued-at-$250k-house. All of the real estate responds in kind, expecting to get $400k+ from all the Cali transplants. However, the average Texan, who doesn't have that high paying salary, gets priced out and can no longer afford a house in their city.
This has been happening en masse to the northern suburbs of Dallas, as well as many neighborhoods in Austin. It's gentrification, more or less, and it comes with all the same problems.
Nobody pays more for something just because they have more savings. They pay more because they might be getting outbid by someone.
I don't see the purpose of characterizing that as "California exporting higher costs of living".
People with more money outbid people with less money all over the world all the time. You can say "Americans are exporting higher cost of living" by purchasing avocados from Mexico, or factory capacity in China, etc. and depriving the locals who can't afford to pay the same.
I'm sure the people in the poorer neighborhoods of Dallas and Austin are complaining about the richer neighborhoods exporting a higher cost of living.
No, they pay more because they can afford it. When a bidding war starts between a Californian and a Texan for the same house, the Texan loses every time because they can't bid as high as the Californian.
It isn't just housing, either. When a new grocery store opens up in one of these neighborhoods, do you think they just sell their goods as cheap as they always have? Of course not. They want to make a profit, so they up their prices because they know the Californians are more than willing to pay for it. The Texan who now struggles to make ends meet because food is more expensive? They get pushed out.
> You can say "Americans are exporting higher cost of living" by purchasing avocados from Mexico, or factory capacity in China, etc. and depriving the locals who can't afford to pay the same.
Yes, that is exactly what is happening. Have you ever been to any of these countries where Americans-with-money swoop in and starting buying up goods or property? They hate it, just as much as Texans hate the Californians who are moving in.
E.g. Are CA's policies more conducive to wealth creation, and then are people taking advantage of arbitrage opportunities elsewhere to guard that wealth?
That makes no sense. If the housing prices in a market go up, it is because there is more demand without an increase in supply. Not because a certain group is paying almost double the market value for absolutely no reason.
And then there's the issue of property taxes. A Texan lives in his nice $250k house and pays $X/year in property taxes. Then someone comes in and buys the house next to them for $400k/yr. Suddenly this neighborhood is now appraised at a much higher value than before, and the Texan's property taxes are now twice as high, bordering on the edge of unaffordable. I've personally seen several people be priced out of an area due to this.
Ask a Californian about prop 13 ;-)
Texas won't become California, even if 100% of CA's population moves there, because they don't have the same pants on head dumb proposition system.
That seems like a Texas problem being blamed on Californians.
I'm sure a lot of Texans are very happy that their houses have shot way up in value.
I don't understand not caring about 6 figures of money. Is that really the outlook of the average California tech worker?
Another example is Trump's Tax Act, which capped "SALT" deductions (State and Local/Property Taxes). This impacts housing prices relative to rents because you can't deduct the full amount of your property tax in high value states like California.
These are two examples...
The caller was indignant: "It would be un-American not to try to get the highest possible price for your property"
The defense rests.
I see a similar defective thought process right here in Berkeley, CA. Everyone here blames housing demand on peninsula companies like Facebook, Apple, and Google but it's a fact that employment right here in the city of Berkeley has been allowed to double in the last 30 years while the city built zero net dwellings. We can try to blame it on distant villains but the gentrification, to borrow a meme, is coming from inside the house.
By contrast, the "Californication" period (say, 87-94) and the tech boom actually took place in the city itself. Keep in mind that in the 87-94 period, Boeing and UW were still the two largest employers in Puget Sound. Companies like Microsoft were "good" for the economy, but they weren't quite the behemoths that they became as the tech boom happened (and, coincidentally, as I left :)
https://www.nytimes.com/1992/06/28/business/microsoft-s-unli...
Were the MS people buying ships full of Porches with equity earnings or salary?
It seems like that but the actual phenomenon is simply the slow, increasing urbanization of the United States.
There are, of course, actual Californians moving into places like Austin and Bend and Colorado Springs but with or without them, the American expression of 21st century urbanism is what we're actually witnessing.
California the place just happens to be 15-20 years ahead of most of the rest of the country on that path to urbanization which is why it's so easy to mistake it for "Californication".
As evidence I would put forth Minneapolis: this is not a place that many Californians are moving to and yet they are experiencing the same kind of anti-zoning housing movement, they bemoan exploding housing prices and they aspire to the same cultural and societal progression that everyone in the Bay Area would recognize.
I maintain they are not experiencing "Californication" - they are experiencing urbanization.
California today is, for practical analytical purposes, a state with a fixed number of houses. This means we're currently operating in a regime where only the most successful and luckiest people can remain here. Unless we restart our housing production, this will continue.
Yes, that is what I was referring to when I spoke of an "anti-zoning housing movement". That is a political movement that, I believe, has its roots in California.
And yes, I agree with you that it has progressed further in Minneapolis than it has in, for instance, the Bay Area.
Both Northern California and Southern California on the other hand have hills/mountain terrain which constrains suburban development.
NIMBYism and desires for high-paying jobs cut across the American political spectrum.
(Existing property owners in Austin, however, may be ecstatic if their property is suddenly priced like SF value... but that doesn't mean they're gonna want to relax zoning and increase density and change the shape and character of their neighborhoods, like we're told is the answer for SF.)
(And of course, fleeing higher prices by nature means that *demand is overall higher in the place you're leaving. Which makes it hard to say it's been "ruined.")
The difference is Gov. Abbott will eventually drive those icky poor/homeless under the overpass out by taking over APD and busing them to CA. Progress. /s
If low service means that, then yes, sign me up. I don’t see much value in California “services.”
https://www.kxan.com/top-stories/cedar-pollen-reaches-highes...
June. 92° / 72°
July. 96° / 74°
August 96° / 74°
Average high/low temperatures in the summer for Cupertino are:
June. 75° / 55°
July. 76° / 58°
August 76° / 58°
Austin will never, ever be like Silicon Valley because of this. The freedom you get from cooler weather is great from an energy utilization stand point and for allowing safer and more desirable conditions outdoors. Not to mention you have much more beautiful choices of nature in Northern California. Think about whenever you travel to Austin for conferences, it's oppressively hot and you basically travel from one air conditioned building to the next. Now imagine 10 years time of increased global warming. California will still be coastal to one of the coldest waters in the world at this latitude, which is a natural air conditioner. To me this spells the end of Oracle's supremacy in anything other than selling smaller and smaller volumes of mainframes.
"Austin Makes Top 10 List Of U.S. Cities With The Greatest Increase In Hot Days" -> https://www.keranews.org/2019-08-22/austin-makes-top-10-list...
Wow, 0.1 degrees more, that will really tip the scales
I live around Oakland. The number of days, in the last decade where I wished I had AC went up 10x. I literally had days where I camped out in my basement. With a fan blowing on me. That never happened a decade or more ago. Ever.
That said, the pollen is terrible.
That’s almost as much as California this year. If you have that much hubris as to think another event won’t happen like that in Texas with increasing frequency, then I guess enjoy Austin?
You're making the mistake of assuming access to nature is a priority for everyone, which I think is a consequence of the cultural bubble that Silicon Valley is in. Most people who are part of the scene are into nature stuff, and they assume everyone is because they don't know anyone who isn't. I have definitely heard of people who moved to SV/SF for a job and then being looked down on and sometimes even bullied by coworkers for not having any interest in nature activities. There is very much an attitude that if you don't partake in the Standard Silicon Valley Hobbies then something must be wrong with you.
By contrast, I've lived in Texas all my life and I don't know many people who's really into going hiking and stuff all the time. A couple of people, sure, but most people I know are content to only do the kinds of activities you can do in an air-conditioned room.
I would imagine there are a lot of tech people who moved to NorCal for work but aren't comfortable with the culture there. They don't care about nature and would be happier if they got to socialize with coworkers who had similar interests, and so they might be much happier if their employers relocated to Texas or something. And while I can't really speak to Austin, my experience in Dallas is that the tech scene (which is thriving and active) is much more enterprisey and doesn't really attract people who would prefer a more SV-like culture.
Commentary from someone who only visits Texas in the summer is bound to be one-dimensional.
> To me this spells the end of Oracle's supremacy in anything other than selling smaller and smaller volumes of mainframes.
True because average regional temperature has always been a solid predictor of company success, which is why companies like 3M, Cirrus Logic, Dell, Indeed, National Instruments, and Silicon Labs all collapsed after establishing their headquarters in Austin due to talented employees leaving en masse for the beauty of other regions /s
Also just wait for Analog Devices to buy Cirrus and relocate them back to SV. (Totally kidding)
That is a concern.
But part of SF's problems is structural: transportation and new construction are constrained by water. That is much less of a concern in Austin.
At Austin's current rate of growth, by the time Project Connect makes any material progress, it'll already be obsolete and overburdened.
Austin TX wasn't rich 20 years ago, where was the money going to come from to build a nice transportation network? It's booming at present and will be very rich 20 years from now (most likely). It has a bad transportation network because it was underdeveloped for the prior decades as with much of Texas. The question going forward is what they'll do with their growth and rising affluence, how they'll utilize that (or not).
Just look at NIMBYISM in California, that's not the product of the newcomers, but of people that have been there for 40/50 years. So it takes time. Maybe in SF the turnover is faster, but not necessarily in the whole valley
or to put it like one of the folks here: "you peed in your pool and moved to ours, don't do that again"
It has a lot to do with economic success and the wealth produced thereby. The extent that has to do with the distinctive local politics of the state is another argument.
If anything you could argue that's an anti-liberal attitude. It's great the Bay Area is so tolerant of different folks. Except that doesn't help out the black transgender teenager from Mississippi who can't move there, because he's priced out of even the lowest-end apartment. All because some millionaire home owners don't want to see their property values appreciate at a slightly lower rate.
The book _Ishmael_ had an interesting perspective on that.
Also, if you saw big new house with a wall of glass facing the sunset, an Austinite would ask "Don't they realize how high the A/C bill will be? Who would buy such a place?" The answer" "Californians."
You could argue that it's the longtime locals in the Bay Area, those who bought homes cheaply in the 60s/70s, that are usually the NIMBYs voting for the policies that caused the current state of things.
Those same people are the least likely to be the ones leaving for Texas.
"It's cheap here in Texas but why don't you have ___thing that costs millions in tax dollars___"
There are two types of people moving from Cali to Austin: people who can't afford living there anymore, and people who can easily afford it but are tired of paying high taxes. The latter group tends to be on the more conservative side (essentially the FYGM section of the political spectrum) and their wealth does give them the ability to influence local politics.
So, if anything, Austin, one of the most liberal cities in America, is more likely to shift to the right as a result of these migrations from California and other blue states.
edit: downvotes by conservatives are laughable lol, keep them coming guys!
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iajyvVaeFS4&ab_channel=JRECl...