Affordable Housing Draws Middle Class to Inland Cities
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
IMO this is a reflection of a culture that's a little more traditional and a lot more conservative than the rest of the country (and I don't mean crazy-right-wing-extreme-conservatism, though we have that here, too). People live, work and start businesses in OKC because they want to be here — not because they want access to VC/talent/incentives/loopholes.
I've lived in OKC for 20 years and we've stayed because it's a great place to live. My kids aren't passing through metal detectors at school, I can drive anywhere in the city in 20 minutes, the other guy always lets you go first at a 4-way stop, and when I say "hi" to a total stranger on the street they smile and reply in kind.
You say this like it's a good thing...
But they do mean well :)
The folks who lived there were really down on their city, something you don't see all that often in Texas (how do you know someone's a Texan? Don't worry, they'll tell you). That was hard to deal with in conversation with them - they still had lots of advantages, but they wouldn't see them.
I never noticed this before, but I'm a Texan, and I do this.
http://www.npr.org/2012/01/19/145437581/oklahoma-city-avoids...
It's a pretty good example of why Republicans make good mayors, even when state and national level Republican politicians are insane.
1) Can tolerate daily encounters with racist and homophobic statements and words like nigger and faggot being thrown around by ~everybody. 2) Think it's funny when the local paper actually uses the word "Osamacare" in print. 3) Enjoy minor earthquakes.
If you're not a church goer or conservative, imho, it's not an enjoyable place. You will be outnumbered 90-1. And once you've lived in a community that has a vibrant artistic community (that you partake in), it becomes very difficult to enjoy a city that just doesn't respect that (and doesn't feed that part of your life).
And I say this as someone who loves Oklahoma. But it's problems far outweigh the positives for me to ever move back. I'll take NY or LA along with the expense over a cheaper growing "town".
<edit> And having lived thru the oil bust in the 80s, and how much OKC is married to the wealth and growth of Devon, Chesapeake and the oil/gas industry, another bust or even long periods of negative growth will kill the OK economy. The state leaders won't have the will to counteract that force with investments in tech and renewable energy.
Well that clinches it for me. There are very, very few viewpoints that I dismiss out of hand, but opposition to renewable energy is one of them (maybe the only one). Energy is one of the world's most important resources, and we know that we are using a source which is ultimately finite. Even if oil reserves were to last another 10,000 years (and the vast majority of experts do not think this is the case), what do we have to lose by moving our infrastructure towards a renewable source? Not doing so is cutting off the branch we are sitting on.
I can tolerate people who are apathetic about this issue...I understand the greed of people who enter the oil industry without regard for the environment...I can sympathize with people who say they're concerned with personal expense (e.g. buying solar panels for their house)...but being flat-out opposed to the idea of removing humanity's dependence upon a limited resource is just ludicrous. Or willfully ignorant. Or something. I don't even know.
Do you actually believe that alternative energy is not a good investment, or were you attempting to rationalize why one might be opposed?
I suspect Oklahoma's "hate" for renewable energy is the same. They're actually top 10 in non-hydro renewable electricity production (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_electric... ). From what I can tell, they actually have one of the healthier outlooks toward both renewable and non-renewable energy.
While I can say with absolute certainty that the weather is not nearly as nice (nor the scenery as beautiful) here in OKC as it was in the Bay Area, the people here are awesome, and the opportunities abound. It's hard to put into words the forward momentum that exists here, but everyone here in the local community feels it.
Regarding salary, you may make slightly less here - depending on the job you take - but your living costs are going to be so low, you will end up having a much better, less stressful life. To give you an idea, I work remotely (telecommute) on a very well paying full-time contract, and my mortgage on a 3bd/1.5ba. 1100 sq.ft. house is $640/mth with insurance and taxes included - far below even 10% of what I make. I could easily buy a much larger brand new house, but choose not to for now in order to maximize my savings. I have more freedom in this situation than I would making even 50% more on the coasts.
Also, while I am sure there are other low-cost places to live in the U.S., I don't feel like there are many other places positioned like OKC is right now. The people of Oklahoma City have made significant public investments in the area that have attracted significantly MORE private investment. The [MAPS Projects](http://www.okc.gov/maps/) - and the [MAPS3 Project](http://www.okc.gov/maps3/) that is currently underway have completely transformed downtown OKC and are having ripple effects all throughout the greater metro area. These public projects have paid off for OKC in spades, and will continue to pay dividends for decades to come.
In the relatively short time I have lived in the OKC area, I have seen a complete turn-around and transformation of an entire metro area unlike any other I have ever seen or heard of in my life. It makes me excited for the future, and glad that I am playing a part in it, however small.
https://www.google.com/maps/place/Oklahoma/@35.856529,-97.81... randomly grabbed from outside of Oklahoma City. Looks mind-numbingly boring.
Ft Collins in Colorado looks like a calmer, more affordable place than Boulder.
https://www.google.com/maps/@46.2468,-114.177067,3a,75y,254....
The view of the thousand foot granite cliffs a few miles up in the mountains is blocked by the trees growing along the blue ribbon trout stream.
West/N.West of OKC is very flat. The further you move east the more terrain you have including the Ouchita Mts (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geography_of_Oklahoma#mediaview...), the Arbuckle Mts (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arbuckle_Mountains#mediaviewer/...), and the Wichita Mountains (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wichita_Mountains#mediaviewer/F...).
Now none of these hold a candle to the spectacular geography of Western Colorado, but they offer nice reprieve from the office for nature lovers. And plenty of lakes for those that prefer swimming, sailing, etc.
I moved to the Missoula area from Seattle. Summer is hotter but drier, winter is colder but drier and sunnier and I can ski powder most weekends.
I've come to enjoy a 20 degree dry day more then a 40 degree and drizzling day like we would get lots of in Seattle.
I've been in a tornado warning probably 30 times in my life, and never once would anything bad have happened to me if I hadn't taken cover.
However, I had no idea there was any kind of developer community here. Any other events going on? Or at least a centralized place to find them?
We also maintain a meeting announcement mailing list for OKC.js (our largest group, 50-60+ people each meeting) here: http://okcjs.com/ (click on "Sign Up!" in the navbar).
So who do you recommend?
TV news is designed to inflame, not inform. In the limited time they have, they can't help but be biased in some way.
A good article with a nice summary of events is here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mick-cornett/oklahoma-city-map...
The move to SF has been worth it, though, for my career/finances. Net was a little bit lower than what I could have been making in Dallas, but my bonus actually, fully paid out and I've gotten actually significant raises. Also, since housing costs were so high I decided to experiment with alternative living styles and I'm now actually spending less money in SF than I was in Dallas.
Do you want to expand on this? Are you just living in a van now?
It's interesting seeing old films or pictures from San Francisco. The city has clearly had its ups and downs. If the 1906 earthquake had not happened I wonder how different it would be compared to today.
Googeling around for one I found this article which picks out the inland west as the fastest growing region in the nation: http://www.forbes.com/sites/joelkotkin/2013/09/04/a-map-of-a...
But one of the job hubs they mention, Boise, didn't make the NY times vis.
My own experience is that, when considering cost of living and quality of life, it is hard to beat the northern rockies.
Anyway, my point is, where-ever you move to, make sure you find that place that is home. That place you can truly say you love too. Don't just live somewhere to save some bucks for the sake of saving some bucks. Life is too short and you can't take your cash with you anyway.
What I do wonder: OKC has lots of issues with sprawl. How will this influx change things? Is it possible that the city will become more compact and urban, or will it continue the current trend of expanding the city so that every house is on at least a half-acre of land? I have no point of reference for which is more likely.
Developers in NW Houston are putting 3500 sq ft homes on 0.25 acre lots, and the sprawl shows no signs of stopping. (low interest rates, cheap land, willing commuters)
The peninsula can't sprawl much, but the east bay is puking the same hideous boxy track houses on tiny lots all over the hillsides of Fremont, Hayward, Dublin and far beyond.
Unfortunately if you take the entire Bay Area as a whole, proper urban structure with walkable mixed use takes up perhaps 1% or less of the developed area. Everything else is sprawl. Even in the city of SF itself less than 1/3rd of the built area (not counting parks and lakes and whatnot) is decent walk/bike territory with amenities nearby. And you only have to go as far as Concord or Antioch to find the real deal: all-out suburban sprawl with neighborhood streets wider than I-5 and nary a pedestrian in sight.
Now when you compare to Oklahoma City, the Antioch brand of sprawl looks like it might be Hong Kong compared to some of the developments that are within the OKC's limits. For example here is a typical scene where someone took a quarter section of some field or farm and said fuck it, let's put a subdivision here.
https://www.google.com/maps/place/Oklahoma+City,+OK/@35.6276...
Now that's just a shame. This article isn't talking about the far-flung farms that happen to be inside OKC's city limits, though. They're talking about areas like Heritage Hills where the original housing stock wasn't bulldozed to build freeways (yet). I remember before I bought my house in Oakland I looked at what I could get for the same price in that neighborhood. As I recall there was a huge-ass mansion with a separate building constituting servants' quarters.
I live in Europe and I feel pretty confident that American cities will become more like Paris, Rome, London and not less. That means the poor live on the periphery and the middle and upper class live close to the center.
People here will rattle off weather, jobs, activities (outdoors) -- but the reality of the situation is that there are plenty of incredible places to live in the US, where you can make within 10%-20% of your Bay Area wage with 30%-40% or more less housing costs.
Even a place like LA or San Diego, Seattle, Portland, Austin, Chicago, etc -- you won't believe the homes, apartments, lofts, flats, condos you can get. Absolutely stunning places, with great activities and schooling.
I don't see myself in the Bay Area in 15 years or so, unless there's a drastic change in the cost of housing.
That goes without saying that I find people in the bay area generally rather unfriendly/unapproachable vs. other major metros.
That said, we are leaving LA for Denver. West LA is 'gentrifying' pretty bad right now. We spec'd housing prices in Denver, and a 3 story house's mortgage can come in under our rent in LA. Yeah, there is give and take there, but the diff between LA and Denver housing is amazing. Denver, yes, does not have oceans, but otherwise is very similar to the Bay culturally.
Also, don't forget the reason that prices for homes in California are so distorted: Prop 13. The legislature needs to amend it. The longer we wait, the worse it gets.
In the Bay Area: - salaries seem to be 40-80+% higher, as well as significantly more chances to trade salary for equity (if that's your thing) - there are probably 50-100x more senior developer jobs in SF than Chicago, and at least that many more in the Valley - there are more specialized jobs available (by market, technology, growth stage, company size, etc) - housing prices for a family of 5, good schools, safe neighborhoods, fairly long commute, are probably 75% higher to buy, 50% higher to rent. - the SF tech jobs are better located for transit than the good Chicago ones (River North, Ravenswood, etc are miserable if you ride Metra)
Whenever I looked outside of tech hubs (Tampa, Atlanta, SLC, Research Triangle), I found housing prices within 10-20%, salaries lower by 25% or more, and much narrower job selection than Chicago. Austin was the only place that had more jobs, but salaries and housing prices were in line with those other cities.
My conclusion is that there are many cities where you can create a good job+housing situation, but once you make it work your options are very, very limited. The biggest benefit I feel from living in the Bay Area is the immense career flexibility and potential over the next 20+ years.
I keep in touch with a lot of people in tech from all around the country. Those in flyover country (Denver, OKC, Austin) make less money than those in comparable positions on the coast, but it might be 10% less. Meanwhile their housing costs are typically less than half.
For comparison purposes:
For the same price as this 800 square foot 1 bedroom condo in SF http://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-detail/452-Fell-St...
... you can get the most expensive home in my entire zip code. 2800 square feet, on a private lake: http://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-detail/4845-W-Warr...
The net result is that, on a developer salary in a place like Denver, KC, or Salt Lake, you can afford the same luxuries as on a developer salary in SF, and quite possibly more.
There's an understatement. This is a problem with recruitment to the coasts. I can't tolerate the hit in the quality of life that moving to Mountain View would require. They offered me like $50K more than I am currently getting, which sounds nice, but to live the same lifestyle with respect to house and school district would have taken at least $100K more per year probably more like $150K more as per my calculations. I just couldn't do that to my wife and kids and they aren't willing to pay enough and they responded with some ridiculous BS about the nobility of poverty which I wasn't buying.
There's also the cultural hit. Living where I am, I can afford to travel to and attend any cultural activity I want, even if the locals at my travel destination can't afford it. I went to Ireland a decade ago this year purely for the heck of it, because I can afford it, not living on the coasts. I can take a 90 minute train to downtown Chicago and afford anything there, especially stuff the locals can't afford. That really burns up an old school friend of mine who lives near-ish the stadium but can't ever afford to go given his mortgage payment vs mine. I'm not a big cultural activities guy I only go to symphony and museums like once a year, if that. But it would totally burn me up to move to a coast and be right next to something cool I'd never be able to afford to experience.
All I want is an acre of suburban land, a modest size house (not a mcmansion but not a shack), in a mostly crime free neighborhood, in a school district that regularly places highly at the nationals in the academic decathlon (I was on the team in '92 in the same district, and maybe my stupidity is why we only made 4th at state during my year LOL). And the city has 1080 acres of free city parks across about 6 square miles of city (mostly unbuildable river land, but still I googled to make sure). Then there are the county and state parks too. And the lakes with public access. What would a house like that cost in SV, maybe $5M or so? More? It cost me an eighth of a mil here before the housing bubble took off, and a paltry $50K/yr isn't going to make up the balance. I don't think my kids would be able to afford music lessons and tutoring in CA, thats for sure, we'd be lucky to afford a 2 bedroom rental at the income I was offered, despite it being about a 50% raise.
(edited to add, if it helps in comparison, my mortgage including prop tax and services is $1100/mo, so offering me an extra pre-tax $1K/week means it would be quite realistic for me to spend $2100/month in CA if I moved there.... I checked this padmapper site and that gets me a 1 bedroom apartment near Stanford? That's the best I can hope for? My whole family living in one bedroom and one bathroom? No thanks guys, I'm staying here on my "landed estate")
Jobs are hard to get around here, I admit. Most CS grads probably are pulling cable or at call centers. Pretty much everyone in WI is underemployed except the usual peter principle victims like politicians. But if you make it, you can do incredibly well, better than on the coasts.
Exactly.
I live in Huntsville, Alabama, and I live very, very well here. A 50+% pay raise to move to SF or SV looks nice until you really start to work the numbers and realize that you would actually come out worse off in many ways.
* A mortgage on a 3,500 square foot house, on a 1/3 acre lot in a very nice neighborhood runs me a hair over $1,200 a month. Including taxes and insurance. Everything except the HOA, and that's an extra $30 or so a month.
* I live in a nice family-oriented area with great schools. Don't have to worry about gang violence or anything. My biggest annoyance is the teen with the loud scooter.
* Utilities are dirt cheap thanks to TVA.
* Property taxes are dirt cheap. Income taxes are on the low side. Sales tax is a tad on the high side, but it's not bad.
* I have a 15 minute commute to and from the office every day, maybe 20 on a bad day. I'm home every night for dinner with my family.
And while Huntsville won't win any awards for high culture (although there is actually a surprisingly vibrant arts scene here considering its size, not really what I was expecting to find), Nashville and Birmingham are only 90 minutes away in either direction - great for a day trip. Atlanta or Memphis are weekend trips of a few hours away. And I can be on great beaches in a few hours as well.
With my extra income, I can afford to save and do fun things. After our daughter was born, we needed a larger car, so we bought one and paid cash for it. We go skiing in West Virginia during the holidays. We did two weeks in Hawaii for our honeymoon, a week in London a few years and a week in Jamaica a couple years ago. Just because we wanted to. We're currently planning to go all out and go to Tahiti in a few years to celebrate our 10th. Also saving for the inevitable trip to Disney World once our daughter is old enough. A lot of this is possible because my cost of living here is so low that it allows me a large amount of discretionary income.
Of course, it's not without its problems. We have a real problem with severe weather here in the Spring, and it can be kind of rough sometimes (fun fact, Alabama has had more F-5/EF-5 tornadoes than any other state). Our politicians are really idiotic and can be counted on to say very, very stupid things. We have some pretty backwards laws. And, unfortunately, there is some level of truth to the stereotypes people have of Alabama (although they are pretty uncommon here in Huntsville - it's more of a rural thing), but it's also nowhere near the level people think it is either.
But, on the whole, every time I go to look at the tradeoffs, the math always works for me to stay put here. No one has yet shown me that I can live the equivalent lifestyle in SF or SV that I live here on an average developer's salary.
Maybe slightly OT, but wtf do you do with an acre of land? Have horses or an orchard? 'An acre' seems like many people's ideal size, but 1/5th of an acre would already be too much work for me.
It does get kind of park like as per other responses. The kids can simultaneously set up the badminton court, the swing set, and the pool and still have space to run around.
It wouldn't be worth the money at $1500K/acre but at $15K/acre its pretty reasonable as an extra luxury. For the price of a couple nice gaming PC I can buy enough land to not be packed like sardine next to my neighbor, its worth it to me.
WRT maint we go low maintenance so its not bad. Perennials instead of annuals. Mulch so that it'll last and look good for five years at a time rather than fix it every year. You don't have to mow ornamental bushes and the slower growing ones only need to be pruned once or twice a year. "Stuff that grows slowly in general" requires less maint time. You don't mow herb gardens or vegetable gardens although veg gardens are a severe labor cost (like the whole rest of the yard put together scale of cost) There are old retired guys in the neighborhood who try to turn their yard into a golf course or something by working seemingly full time on gardening, I donno about those guys. If you go for a relaxed low maint design the yardwork is a decent workout, not a back breaker.
The group think is there is "a" culture or political outlook for each area. The reality is its more multicultural and the difference is in the ratios. For example the LGBT community in Milwaukee is healthy, according to my friends in it, but its much smaller than SFO. If you just want to live the suburban kid raising life there's a lot more of them here, than in Manhattan, but that doesn't mean there's no flannel wearing hipsters at all LOL.
To be fair, I used to think that way before I moved out of the Boston area into one of those "everything else" cities.
You have to remember that lot of inner Houston is funded by oil money, so people are willing and capable of spending quite a bit of money on housing/meals.
> Eventually you will run out of available, qualified coastal talent and you will need to hire someone from a non-coastal area.
I live in the bay area, but am from Utah originally. A couple examples from my home state:
http://www.adobe.com/careers/locations.html#lehi
http://blog.ebay.com/ebay-expands-in-utah-with-the-opening-o...
.
> I live in the bay area, but am from Utah originally
You just answered your own question.
From a broad climate change perspective, is it really so good that SF and New York are contributing to faster population growth in the South/Southwest, where water resources are more scarce? And cities are less dense, facilitating more driving and consumption of gas?
As opposed to the SF Bay area, which has convenient fresh water resources... dependent on dwindling snowpack in the Sierra Nevadas.
If we were smart, we'd drop the delta tunnel idea and start investing in desalinization plants, at the very least investing in some test sites using some of the newer desal technologies which are showing promise.
That said, the situation is far worse in the Southwest. They don't even have desalinization as a viable option.
More on the original topic, I am sensing an increase in entrepreneurial/tech activity in the Sacramento area. No idea if any of it has come from the bay, or if it's all home grown. Haven't found anything stating one or the other, curious though, as startup and living expenses are about half of what they are in the valley.
The surfer lobby has made desalinization plants a political impossibility. I'm only half-joking.
http://www.bizjournals.com/nashville/blog/2013/08/ubs-to-bri...
However, These things take time. It's a big risk to move your company to a different place. It's a even bigger risk if you can't hire people in that new place.
Portland was far too dark and dreary for 9 months of the year. TX was too humid, and Chicago too cold/windy in the winter. Sure, each of those areas has a 'great ______ season', but coastal California weather is nice for 9 months of the year (give or take ) whereas the others are nice 3.
Not to say I won't leave again (Denver seems like some place I'd like to pitch a tent for a while), but I always miss the weather when I leave.
I live in the midwest right now, and whenever I contemplate moving to the west coast, one of the things I would dislike the most is giving up having 4 distinct seasons.
The first warm days of spring, crisp fall mornings, "its so hot out we have to go swimming at the lake" days in summer, and the first snow of the year - these are just a few things that, in moderation, are really enjoyable to me (and many others).
Agree. What prevents people from moving to those places is the scarcity of jobs out there. There are good jobs in the Midwest, but not enough per unit area to generate the competition (except, perhaps, in Chicago for finance professionals) that you need, as a worker, to get a fair shake.
Despite the perception on Hacker News that small businesses are the way forward, the data actually support conglomeration and a death of entrepreneurship. See here: http://www.brookings.edu/research/papers/2014/07/aging-ameri... . Also here: http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-slow-death-of-americ... .
Venture capital is a feudal, connections-based oligarchy that no one should rely on, while bank loans now require personal liability and are therefore a non-starter for anything that might actually fail. Then, there's the general depletion of capital in the middle classes due to the collapse of unions, healthcare malfeasance, and the escalating costs of housing and tuition. So where are the new companies forming? The only place (or few) where they still can.
The Bay Area isn't some utopia at the vanguard. San Francisco is OK; the Valley is properly horrible. It's, for many people, the only option left in non-financial technology. It's the place least destroyed by the meltdown of corporate capitalism in the US.