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This article and similar ones have been written at least a 1000 times for the last decade with a clear political tinge. The poster child is always around how people want to move to Florida and Texas. But somehow it forgets to include Washington and Seattle which has probably seen the biggest tech migration and grown into the second biggest tech hub in the country, far greater than Austin or Miami (hyped up constantly). I guess it doesn’t fit with the narrative ? My working hypothesis is that people in general want to live in California like places, if they can afford it.

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> My working hypothesis is that people in general want to live in California like places, if they can afford it.

This is my general thinking as well, and it happens to fit with my current life experience.

I'm unconvinced that there has been, generally speaking, a fundamental change in the preferred environment people wish to live in; instead it seems more likely that traditionally popular American urban areas are just too expensive and offer relatively little (compared to other parts of the world) in terms of services to justify living there... Even for those that might otherwise choose to.

There is a litany of social and governmental problems plaguing California, but I always stayed because it's the climate that feels the most natural to me. What finally drove me out was the seasonal firestorms and rain of ashes.

Indeed. Kids having "fire days" off school instead of "snow days"; the backyard looking like a blanket of snow, except it's gray.

The San Francisco Chronicle has done some analyses of the Bay Area exodus, and the majority are not moving to Texas but instead to places like San Joaquin and Madera county (counties that border the Bay Area). People want the bigger house, but they also want to be able to visit their friends and family.

This is accurate in my anecdotal experience. I'm from the Bay Area (5th generation or so) and so I have a lot of cousins, aunts, and uncles here and the general trend for friends/family has been to move to cheaper areas in the exurbs: Stockton, Tracey, Antioch, Fairfield, Vacaville, Modesto, etc. This is where the working class are getting pushed out to as they can no longer afford to live in the inner Bay Area.

It's not just working class — a corporate lawyer friend of mine did the same.

I'm typing this from Madera County. People are fleeing the Bay Area to move to the worst air quality in the country? My wife and I are figuring out how to move away (again) because the smog is really messing with her health. The air is so much worse here than when we were growing up. Heck, she wants to move to the cleaner air of Santa Clarita (north of L.A.--where we used to live).

It looks like FL and TX each had ~130k net migrants per the last reported data. [1] Washington had ~40k in the same year. There's a reason journalists talk more about migration to FL/TX, and it's because there are way more people moving there.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territ...

Texas has 4x the population of Washington state, has more urban centers and a much larger state. As a % of population, looks like WA has more migration compared to Texas given your numbers

Sure, and that would make it a very important story for WA residents. There have been stories that emphasize the impact on local communities, like those in ID and MT, that were sparsely populated and are experiencing an influx. But most of the nationwide stories are about the net flows in absolute terms, not considering the percentage of the local population.

Also, as others have pointed out, most of the TX influx has been in/around Austin, so it's not like people are moving from SF to the middle of nowhere in TX, and having no impact on the local communities. Real estate prices in Austin are skyrocketing, as would be expected, in the few areas where people are moving to.

I used to live in Florida and you couldn't pay me to move back. The weather is hot, sticky and humid, the politics are right wing, the religion is old timey and in your face and the (mostly) latent racism is unpleasant when you encounter it.

I moved to a larger city in the midwest and it's great. Yes, winter is a drag but that's about the only negative that bothers me. Tech salaries go a long way, public schools are high quality and plentiful, politics are generally more balanced (than Florida or Texas), religion isn't a constant presence, crime is low and people are mostly friendly.

It literally cites Ross Perot jr., it's like asking Gavin Newsome for his opinion on the competitive advantages of California.

People move to Seattle mostly because it is great. But if you are a certain political bent Texas and Florida offer a safe haven to be so. I have a (gladly) ex-worker that is on his way to FL or Montana but all that does is add 2 seemingly nice folks to the pile of racists already there.

For the most part that migration ended about 10 years ago. People are now moving away from there. Right now the hot spots are Idaho, Montana, Florida, Texas.

All of which are experiencing house prices in the last 5 years to shoot through the roof from what those people originally had. That said, Texas is huge so I'm really talking about Austin and 2 hour surrounding cities.

> But somehow it forgets to include Washington and Seattle

I prefer they keep “forgetting”.

> My working hypothesis is that people in general want to live in California like places, if they can afford it.

Of course prices (and price movements) will always be the objective measure of desirability across a large population.

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