Leaving California? A 2022 guide to what state is best to move to
ocregister.com
ocregister.com
I’m not pulling that from the article, but did I hit one of yours?
I knew I had begun to adapt to Florida weather when Atlanta winter had me paralyzed.
But whenever it snows in Atlanta I think "hey, I know how to drive in snow!" and start laughing at how people here don't. But I don't know how to drive in snow, because I didn't learn to drive until not long before I left for college, and I didn't have a car in college or grad school.
It's the PHP of states. Most people hate it because it's popular to hate, but once you get here, you find that there are some pretty nice things about it.
See, this is what I'm talking about! This I understand. It speaks volumes to me. So, Ohio == PHP of states. I live in Indiana, your neighbor state. imho, Indiana is the R of states. Its terse, unfathomable to the outsider, very cheap, fast enough & gets the job done.
Ohio is the PHP of states - that's awesome! Not sexy, not cool, just getting the job done with little fuss. That's Ohio!
Ohio is advertising all up and down California asking people to move there. Ohio is specifically targeting the folks who live just north of Berkeley, California, where they make the mold for the stereotype you purple staters love to hate.
Ohio is also advertising that same message in Redhook in Brooklyn, again, where you can find the folks whose pictures are basically meme templates that old Trump voters use on their Facebook groups about antifa and critical race theory.
Maybe you all actually just dislike rich, out of touch, Ivy League elitists who move into neighborhoods and ruin them for locals. If that's the case, going to a coastal college doesn't make a person coastal. Last I checked, the Ivy League recruits from every state in the union, including your purple states, and most Californian cities actively demonize those same people who are ruining California cities too.
Anyway, this weekend, I'll be headed up to NASCAR Spring Smash in Roseville, California, where I will no doubt run into the types of Californians who ACTUALLY move to your states. They have all of your cultural tastes, and they read the same stuff you do, and they share your distaste for the archetypal Californian.
Move to an Ohio city and you'll do better if you're an "archetypal" Californian but if you move to the rural areas you'll do better if you're an archetypal Trumper. The biggest thing that unites us all is football, and no, I'm not even joking. Football is the biggest reason we can coexist peacefully and Trump tried to screw that up!
Yikes. Sure, we don't have income tax or sales tax but be prepared to pay out the ass on property taxes. Oh, and be ready to pay for heat ten months out of the year.
NH has been a brain-drain state ever since people discovered the land is full of rocks and there are better opportunities elsewhere. The wages are low, the cost of living is high relative to wages, and land/real estate has always been expensive. It's a old state with most of it already being divvied up. For instance, my 3 bed, 1 bath home out in bumfuck has more than doubled in price since I bought just five years ago.
Texas has a higher total tax burden for poor and middle class than California, and a lot of that is hidden in the property tax
Someone concerned about tax burden can probably figure out that rent is higher in LA than in Houston.
Somehow, that level of informed commentary isn't forthcoming on genuinely useful topics like Leaving CA. Why is that ?
> As a result of these land conditions, there are approximately 52 people per square mile (19.9 per square kilometer) and that makes Colorado only the 37th biggest state in terms of population density.
Massachusetts has 800+ people per square mile, and Massachusetts isn't "full".
More problematic is we are all out of water. Water rights and laws here means you might own the land but not the water (nor anything else under the shitty topsoil), if there even is water. Lots of land for sale with no mention of water.
Winters here scare off a lot of lifelong Californians, but they will be a piece of cake for anyone coming from the northeast.
Chattanooga has a great tech and outdoor sports (rock climbing and whitewater) and the fastest municipal internet in the country.
https://epb.com/fi-speed-internet/
Knoxville - with Oak Ridge National Lab nearby has some amazing supercomputers
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summit_(supercomputer).
They are also in the process of rolling out municipal internet, with the Great Smoky Mountains National Park nearby.
If you’re not them - it’s not great. If you don’t love overcast weather - it’s not great. Again - it selects a certain personality. People who love rain, hate snow, and hate sun.
Source: lived there and now live in SF. Would not recommend Washington. (Or Portland or Oregon in general)
Truth is - if you’re wanting to leave CA because you want real change - probably move to the east coast. It’ll be quite different. Living in the PNW will be the same but more shitty weather. (If you’re a vampire - go for it…)
"Southern Living" I believe comes down to land, and building your dream house. And that's what people do, they build their own mini fiefdoms. Every neighbor alienated from each other in their private mini country club. With the desolation of cities, it seems inevitable here: the home becomes the sphere of convergence: school, work, church, theatre.
I like Nevada but it gets a lot of CA expats because it was "close enough" for many purposes.
"close enough" is starting to encompass longer distances.
I’m from the south, born and lived all my life in various states in the Southeast, and I can say Florida is too hot for me. Hot summers are one thing, hot 75%of the year is something else.
Housing is cheaper than some states for sure, but almost any bordering states can get you a better value for your money.
Also, for the third largest economy in the US, the job market sucks. I’d say even Atlanta is probably a better option m, or even the Raleigh are if you’re looking for a proper “tech city”. I guess with remote work this is less of an issue, but even then…
There’s politics, but then again, you have the entire southeast as well if that’s what you’re after.
One thing I will say is nice is no state income tax. A handful of other states have this as well though, and TX or WA just seen a better choice depending on what you’re looking for.
What happens if you remove "popularity"?
The "Where Should You Live?" quiz that the New York Times did [1] [2] is a much better design, IMO.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/11/23/opinion/sunda...
[2] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/11/23/opinion/sunda... (archived: https://archive.ph/oODZJ )
Was pretty interested, but then it seems that "Breaking Bad" is as much a documentary as a drama, so decided against it.
Socorro is the nearest proper town to the VLA, with about 9000 residents. It's home to New Mexico Tech. Albuquerque is about an hour's drive from Socorro.
I lived in Albuquerque for five years, and four of those years I lived about a mile away from the Breaking Bad car wash... by the time I left, the RV tours were finally starting to trickle off :) Frankly, I found it a pretty pleasant place to live and I'd pick it over the SF area any day. People joke about "the war zone" down by the fairgrounds, and yeah that's probably the roughest part of town, but it's a small region and it still feels less sketchy that many portions of the bay area (I sure as shit never saw anybody smoking fentanyl out on the sidewalks). Almost any part of town north of I-40 is a decent place to live, and big chunks of the city south of I-40 are quite nice too.
The natural beauty, and the accessibility of said beauty, is incredible. I lived in the middle of town and could be hiking up the Sandia mountains within 10 minutes. In California, if you want to even dream of camping somewhere, you better have 3 different permits applied for months in advance; in New Mexico, you just go, and maybe you have to drop $5 in the kiosk when you get there. Hunting was amazing; wildlife in general was amazing. One night I hiked up the side of a mountain, slung my hammock, and woke to elk bugling all around me.
On the other hand, the New York Times quiz can end up giving a list of random suburbs that don't have much of an identity fo their own. I think either counties or metro areas are the right level of granularity here. (You'd have to come up with some way to partition the non-metropolitan places.)
(I live just outside Atlanta. That is more meaningful, for someone relocating here, than saying that I live in Georgia or that I live in the particular town I live in.)
I do wonder if there's any real demand for customizable versions of this - allowing you to choose which variables matter to you - or if it's just something that people play with.
There is also Medicaid to think about which is also on a state level.
Why can't we find a way to get neighborhoods and housing areas to compete for residents and help people find the home that best suits them? Companies like Zillow are just 1990s Real Estate with a UI and better search. That's great, but if you don't know the area I'm not sure how you're really learning anything from Zillow.
A word to the wise: always poke around in how they measure attributes, how they weight the attributes, and how they combine them in a single score (or sub-score). In the 1970s, there was published a Places Rated Almanac for US cities, by a NYC-based publisher. NYC (in the era of the burning Bronx) was inexplicably rated in the top ten…maybe top five. I looked deeper and saw they took, say, the crime statistics and simply truncated them, uniquely, for NYC. NYC was actually, say, 13 for crime and they said, well that’s too high, we’ll count it as 5. No justification at all. The fix was in.
Find your querencia and you’ll be happy.
Everywhere good in California has been claimed :-(
But yeah, if you're looking for sun, water sports & nightlife in CA, it's going to be very expensive.
There's pretty nature everywhere in America. And the weather isn't that bad most places.
I can afford to live in California. I just don't want to. I spent 8 years in the Bay Area, love to visit, but ultimately I can have more freedom elsewhere.
I moved from Knoxville, TN which is experiencing a large housing crunch due to lots of speculative real estate investments. I've moved to a comparable sized city that is not the Bay area.
Honestly, with the Nimbyism and horrible inefficiencies in the public programs, California considering itself progressive is a joke.
- Overcrowded nature. This one personally bothered me a lot. Many trails in Southern California are almost always crowded. Beach access is long, difficult, expensive (if you use a parking lot) and exhausting if you live inland.
- Fires. Fires get worse every year, and will continue to get worse. The AQI is constantly above 100 in some areas for most of August/September. For people like me with autoimmune conditions, this is pretty dangerous for health.
- Increased summer temps. 120 degree days are getting more common in many ares of CA.
- Government corruption. High taxes, especially if you're "middle class".
- Earthquake risk.
I moved to Upstate, NY. Yeah, the weather sucks, but not always. Fall is lovely. Early winter is lovely. Spring is lovely when it's not raining. Summer is humid and gross, but it's an absolute joy in my town with all the festivals. The housing market is crazy, but no so crazy that I couldn't afford a home. The town I live in has decent local government, several lakes, and abundant state forests and hiking trails all around.
I miss the LA I grew up in, but it's just not the same any more. I'm trying to convince my mom to retire out here.
This is a huge one for me.
> I moved to Upstate, NY. Yeah, the weather sucks, but not always. Fall is lovely. Early winter is lovely. Spring is lovely when it's not raining. Summer is humid and gross, but it's an absolute joy in my town with all the festivals. The housing market is crazy, but no so crazy that I couldn't afford a home. The town I live in has decent local government, several lakes, and abundant state forests and hiking trails all around.
I went to school in Rochester and I really enjoyed it. Even though it may be described as a dying industrial town, I still found it a better place to live than booming SF.
That is not correct. Death Valley, one of the hottest places on the planet, may occasionally reach that temperature, but essentially no one lives there.[1]
Inland areas may get up to 100 degrees F. several times during the summer, but the humidity is low so it is not oppressive like the midwest or the south.
If it weren’t for that, I wouldn’t mind continuing to live in California. There’s a lot to love about it, but it’s just not conducive to my current set of goals unless I manage to land a senior position at Google or something (which comes with its own set of problems).
Besides,
"Growth is not a goal for most Californians: Asked to look ahead 10 years, 35 percent of respondents believe it would be better if the population decreases significantly and 46 percent want it to stay about the same. Only 19 percent of those surveyed said that the state would be better if its population increases."
"By nearly a 2-to-1 margin, Californians respond that they still believe in the “California Dream” (that it’s a great place to live and raise a family) but belief in that dream depends on demographics, economic status and partisan affiliation. Spanish speakers, Latinos, African Americans, Asian Americans and younger Californians are more optimistic, while middle-class Californians, white respondents, older residents and Republicans are more pessimistic."
source: https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/press-room/uc-studies...
Lots of outdoor activities at the lake and ski mountains.
Plus, no income tax.
And, Reno and Sacramento are within 1-2hrs depending on your location, for a mid-size airport.
Housing is still really expensive, but a couple steps below Silicon Valley.
We still love the area and would entertain the idea of moving there now that remote work is happening in more places, but housing prices went from outrageous pre-pandemic to oh-my-fucking-god post-pandemic so sadly it will probably remain a tourist destination for my family.
The NV side is pretty rugged and what buildable land there is is also shared with resorts / casinos. Otherwise, you pretty much have to go to the North Shore and Incline Village, but that's a tax haven with some real fancy homes driving up prices. From Zephyr Cove to Incline is really steep and large parts are State Parks or Forest Service land, so aren't buildable.
> but housing prices went from outrageous pre-pandemic to oh-my-fucking-god post-pandemic
Yes, everything is about 2x what is was 7 years ago. The most affordable family homes are in Zephyr Cove and up Kingsbury Grade in Stateline. The county also recently passed a restrictive vacation rental law, so many folks will see their short-term rental permits expire (or continue at reduced capacity) throughout this year, which might drive prices down, in addition to rising interest rates.
Also, NV houses are about 10-20% more expensive than the CA houses because of the tax benefits of Nevada.