Northern Nevada is siphoning Californians, their businesses | Hacker News Reader

Northern Nevada is siphoning Californians, their businesses

latimes.com

11 points609venezia5 comments

It's not your typical "people are leaving CA" story--we have colorful characters like Lance Gilman--a septuagenarian brothel owner spearheading the development, in the desert, of the world's largest industrial park

> The park’s co-developer and lead salesman, Lance Gilman, lives and works out of the famous bordello, a modest set of rust-colored buildings just outside the park’s gates. > > Gilman, 78, wields tremendous power in Storey County. Not only does he run the county’s main business development, but he also serves on the county commission that governs it. He won some of the country’s largest tax breaks for his tenants and also persuaded the state to reimburse him and his partner, Roger Norman, tens of millions of dollars to purchase and complete the USA Parkway, a large road that connects the industrial park to Interstate 80.

Interestingly, the industrial park served by USA Parkway contains a Google facility as well as Tesla’s Gigafactory and Redwood Materials’ campus. Good ROI on that road.

Pffffft. What a misleading title.

How about “Businesses flee onerous California laws; N. Nevada welcomes them”

Not surprising. If you can work remotely and are fed up with local/state/both parts of California government, why not move to the Tahoe/Reno area and enjoy zero income tax, lower sales tax, and potentially cheaper housing prices and the corresponding lower property taxes? I last lived in Northern Nevada in 2016 and the stream of California "refugees" was always a constant topic.

The primary reason why people leave CA is housing prices not "fed up with CA govt", that's a story that the right wing likes to tell, but it basically comes down to the fact that housing is unaffordable. CA ranks #11 in taxes (there's like 7-8 red states ahead of it https://wallethub.com/edu/best-worst-states-to-be-a-taxpayer...) for average households. People like to wax on about the top 13.3% rate, but very few people pay that, while at the same time, property taxes are atypically low.

The main reason comes down to this: Median home price in CA is >$700,000, 2x-3x the rest of the nation (except Hawaii). Now there are government reasons why housing construction is lower, but there's also reasons why demand is so high: people have flocked to CA during economic booms. During the 90s dot-com boom, a 2-bedroom apartment in the Bay Are went from $1200 to $3400. After the 2000 dot-com crash, it dropped back down. Then, after 2009, prices climbed again.

You have a large number of white collar professionals wanting to be in the area (yes, despite the 'California exodus' story that keeps getting told, CA still is a net brain drain on the rest of the nation for professionals according to government stats https://www.jec.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/republicans/2019...), and you have existing home owners voting NIMBY to make it harder to accommodate them, the result is prices spiking.

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