Goodbye, New York, California and Illinois – Hello where?
bloomberg.comSonoma County, CA here. We've lost more people from our county than any other in the state between 2017-2018 [1], and it is only continuing.
From the few of these people I have spoken with - anecdotally:
- None left because of the fire risk, specifically. [though some obviously did - 2]
- Most left because of the cost of living: $600k avg home price.
- Some also left because of political and human environment: We have homeless encampments on our bike trails. We have fires caused by illegal cooking fires at these encampments. Petty crime is increasing, and state laws are only enabling this - people are sick of it.
1 - https://www.pressdemocrat.com/news/9149705-181/sonoma-county...
2 - https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/arizona/2019/04/2...
> Petty crime is increasing, and state laws are only enabling this - people are sick of it.
I wonder if people considered voting the politicians who made these laws out. Judging from CA voting patterns, probably not. And then when it gets really bad, they move to another state and likely vote for the same policies that caused them to move in the first place.
I first heard of this phenomenon the other day from a coworker that lives south of Atlanta, near the major movie/tv production area. People, from what are typically blue areas, are moving in and radically changing the political landscape according to him. He wasn’t necessarily against liberal ideas but his complaint was that they seem to vote for taxes just for the hell of it because every tax proposed is still significantly less than where they came from.
Either way, interesting times.
This is a real problem, and a real concern IMO. People move from their home cities and states to nice areas with low tax, then continue voting for the same policies and ideologies that led to their home becoming awful in the first place. I live in a rather conservative area that sees an influx of New Yorkers every single year. They all seem to complain about two things: the high taxes they left, and Republicans. I'd laugh if it weren't so mindnumbingly sad.
Reminds me of the saying, something like "if it smells like sh*t everywhere you go, maybe it's time to check your own shoes."
You seem to have a lot of judging and questionable assumptions in your post.
There is a very pronounced trend of people migrating away from states that are controlled by Democrats for reasons that are potentially ideologically driven policy failures. This raises a a very real and material question for the new host community - do the migrants understand why the situation became so intolerable that they felt they should move?
Migrants bring new ideas so a certain amount of discomfort and change is expected. But judgements and assumptions need to be discussed to work out if there is any merit to them. There is a risk there that shouldn't be glibly ignored.
So I suppose I'd call on you to flesh that out with some alternatives that fit the facts or some challenges to the assumptions rather than just calling a spade a spade. We all know it is a spade. If the spade is inappropriate suggest a better tool instead.
Statistically, people are moving from rural areas and to urban areas. Rural areas tend to be conservative and economically depressed. Urban areas tend to have high paying jobs and be liberal or progressive.
Aside from a few state/city couplings(Omaha, NE comes to mind) a US "State" is a poor indicator of differentiated policy or ideology. People in Atlanta or Miami or LA or Seattle have a lot more in common with each other than some might think.
Moreover, it seems like you're attempting to paint the picture that a typically Democratic State is somehow worse off than a conservative one. I'm positive that a person born in Washington or California almost always has a better statistical and economic outcome than someone born in the Deep South, for example. So, it seems if I were correct(and I'm almost certain I am), the spade is doing something right.
After the 2016 election while my friends were freaking out and moping I went and drilled down into the fine grained election results. You are absolutely right. The difference is really between 'the city' and exurban. Notable the size of 'the city' doesn't matter. In thinly populated areas the city might only be 15-20,000 people. But they all voted for liberal/progressive/left leaning candidates.
I think there are a lot of issues where the republican/democrat divide is very directly influenced by rural/urban environments.
(please do not assume any of the following takes a stance on these issues. Also don't imagine I know what I'm talking about)
On gun control, rural areas can have more than one gun per person with virtually no impact on an already negligible violent crime rate, while urban areas have fewer guns that are all much more likely to be involved in a homicide. So rural people see the issue as taking away rights for no benefit and urban people see that resistance as tacit support of gun violence and an attack on human life.
On abortion, cities have a lot more opportunity for promiscuity and have more unwanted pregnancies as a result. In the country, abortions are a much rarer concern; eliminating them would have little impact and resistance seems like tacit support of an attack on human life.
On taxation, city wages are higher. This may, citation needed, also influence positions on immigration.
Pollution is a greater concern in the city. Law enforcement corruption is a greater concern in the city. Cost-of-living and therefore necessary minimum wage are higher in the city.
I could go on (I can't, but fun to say so anyway).
Except no one talks about guns that are used for hunting when talking about gun control policy (maybe the idiots who use massive powered automatic rifles for shooting deer may be slightly affected).
Politicians use gun control policy to create divisions in people, but the actual gun control policies being considered themselves almost always poll very well amongst all Americans including those in rural areas and hunters.
It’s like Obamacare, where the actual policies within are supported by overwhelming majorities, but obamacare barely breaks even.
> Except no one talks about guns that are used for hunting when talking about gun control
Not only is that untrue, it’s so untrue that a common trope among gun types is to display two pictures of the same gun, one with a wooden stock, and observe the disparity in reactions. Most people can’t define what a “hunting rifle” is, and certainly can’t define legislation that would ban one kind of gun without impacting the other. One of the biggest complaints about California‐ or 1994 AWB‐style gun laws is that they target cosmetic but “scary” features like barrel shrouds or pistol grips far out of proportion with their actual impact on safety (in contrast with the real elephant in the room, handguns).
> maybe the idiots who use massive powered automatic rifles for shooting deer may be slightly affected
The poster child for moral panic when it comes to guns is the AR-15, which is significantly less powerful than a typical deer hunting rifle, so much so that some states ban it specifically against large game; it’s more appropriate for smaller game like coyotes and hogs.
If you’re trying to get rid of black rifles, then at least say openly that you want to ban semi‐automatic rifles and magazines. Talking about an AR‐15’s “massive power” is nonsensical, especially if you’re claiming your gun control proposals won’t affect deer hunting rifles.
I don't know if you meant to reply to the other response to my comment, but my point is a little broader than that. Hunting be damned, you could fill up wyoming with automatic weapons granted with no background checks and not see a serious uptick in gun violence. It is just a non-issue. Proposals to increase gun laws appear, from that environment, to be a useless power grab by the government. Again, not an endorsement.
To address your main point though, even if a majority of republicans would be okay with the gun control on the table, republican politicians are incentivized to represent the minority that are opposed until an equally signifcant minority actively votes for those policies. That incentive structure is probably for the best given our lack of proportional representation.
Just of note, automatic weapons where ban in the early 80's those that are left in the US are tightly regulated and require a FFL class 3, have strict rules on transfer and the local sheriff must approve the transfer. Many sheriffs will not allow class 3's in their county. If they will not, the resident is out of luck on getting one of the few automatic weapons left. Those remaining weapons sell for upwards of 10 to 20K and not one has been used in a mass shooting in recent history. People buying automatic weapons are by and large collectors.
What you are referencing is semi-automatic weapons, which require you to pull the trigger each time you want a bullet to fire. Many hunting rifles are semi-automatic. The difference between a semi-automatic hunting rifle and a semi-automatic black rifle is the difference between a Corvette and a Corvette with a Ferrari body kit. It's all cosmetic they are at the core the exact same rifle. A Remington semi-auto .223 hunting rifle is in spirit the same gun as a AR-15.
Handguns and homemade explosives are a much greater public threat and that is the reason most gun rights advocates see no value in compromise. The issue is completely a emotional issue and the facts, which advocates are well versed in, weight out contrary to the arguments that gun control advocates are making. The reality is that other than the occasional mass shooting people are just not being killed by rifles of any kind. Handguns are used in orders of magnitude more than rifles to commit violent crimes. A sincere effort to remove guns from criminals would focus on handguns and not rifles. Therefore rights advocated jump to the conclusion that the effort is to disarm the legally owned, armed population as that is the majority of rifle owners. The simple fact is the majority of criminals use handguns, they are more easily concealed, easier to wield and easier to reload.
The only exception to this is mass shooters who want to LARP Call of Duty. Which is why they choose rifles if FPS's and movies used handguns, mass-shooters would use handguns because in their crazy minds they are role playing. That being said, you have a slightly higher chance of getting killed in a mass shooting than you have getting hit by lighting. By the number it's just a non-event. In saying that, I am not trying to minimize them, just stating the facts, they are horrible events and we should certainly do something about them. But disarming millions of law abiding citizens to prevent a lightning strike event punishes the masses for a statistically small problem.
Common sense gun control would have at it's core handgun controls as well as mental health protocols. If they don't then they are conceived via emotion rather than statistical fact.
As a "self proclaimed" centrist, this is well stated. There's nothing wrong with anyone's line of thought, they obviously hold it for a reason. Problems only arise in this arena when one group tries to force beliefs on the other. A hunter trying to convince say, Chicago, that guns are good is going to have a hard time. Same with the Chicagoan that tries to convince a hunter that guns are bad. Neither are wrong, in reality...
Up until recently Dallas / Ft. Worth and Miami where conservative. The Cubans that fled communism held Miami as a conservative metro up until about 15-20 years ago. Orlando and Tampa where the same. Orlando for different reasons but Tampa was largely due to the conservative Cubans as well.
Texas and Florida are two of the states that are experiencing meteoric growth and to imply that those moving in are not shifting the political climate to that in which they came from is to ignore the fact that both went from solidly conservative states, with conservative large metros. To toss up states where the metros became in flux. To ignore that those moving in are not voting in the same failed policies that they are fleeing ignores the fact that both states policies are in fact starting to trend towards taxation, lowering of property rights and large scale social programs. The spade is a spade.
The same happened to Denver over the past 20 or so year.
On a note related to the main topic, I live in FL in the Florida Keys, it is a paradise I spearfish on the weekends and am usually out on a boat. Prices have gone up here, but one can still purchase a home on the water for under 500k. I could barely get a decent apartment in the valley for what I paid for my 7 acres of oceanfront land and home. I mention this to make the point that I can certainly see the draw, you get so much more for your money if one sells out of a major CA metro and moves to one of the growth states.
The biggest thing in those states' favor is easily housing policy. They tend to permit much more sprawl, so housing prices in general, and especially the cost of a detached single family home stay more reasonable. Aside from Houston, they're still not great on allowing housing density though.
Meanwhile, blue states have a "worst of both worlds" kind of policy. They don't permit much sprawl, and also don't permit much density, thereby pushing people to states where they do permit sprawl. Then they tell you that this is good for the environment, somehow.
That said, while it makes for cheap single family homes, sprawl has a LOT of negatives. Strong Towns explains how it basically functions like a Ponzi scheme in the long term, and within older cities the sprawlier parts are usually subsidized by the denser ones. There's also more cost to the environment, to health, to noise, to safety, and for transportation costs for both the government and the user. There's a reason the US has an unusually high traffic fatality rate per 100k people for a developed country, and there's an impact on our collective national waistline as well.
> Meanwhile, blue states have a "worst of both worlds" kind of policy. They don't permit much sprawl
Many states smaller (and less populated) than the expanse of sprawl in the LA basin. The only parts of CA that has much limit to sprawl are places with hard natural geographic barriers, like SF and the Peninsula.
Driving on the east coast or west coast, I see hundreds upon thousands of miles of sprawl. Californian sprawl even extends across natural barriers, with houses clinging to steep hillsides, houses built on ridiculously unstable land, houses built in shrub forests that obviously have an annual fire season. If people want to live that way, it’s fine. But they leave, and they build more sprawl wherever they go...
Miami has never been conservative, at most they had some conservative Cubans, who hardly ever had a plurality in the area. Dallas has never been co see stove either, that is what Ft. Worth and it’s suburbs were for.
Texas really wants a tech industry, which is why it is importing lots of liberals. By that I mean these people don’t move to Texas to be in Texas, rather they were lured their by great job opportunities.
Can you cite a single source of Texas "importing" workers, vs people fleeing to Texas and pretending they did so for Texas's own good? Texas was a tech hub before most of us were born.
Uhm sure? All the people that I know who’ve moved to Austin have done so for the career opportunities...no one just picked Texas and said they were going to find a job later. They were pretty mercenary about where they were going. Some were even forced their (eg when IBM closed Boca and moved everyone who didn’t want to quit to Austin).
> Texas was a tech hub before most of us were born.
Sure, they’ve also been importing liberals since before most of us were born. I mean my dad lived near San Antonio sometime in the 60s for that reason, again it wasn’t his choice (even being in the Army wasn’t).
If you ask Austinites they’ll tell you about lots of folks moving in just for the city and figuring out the rest later.
People move to Texas for cheap housing.
That’s the biggest thing these states have going for them. Lots of space and associated cheap housing.
The last two mayors of Miami have been Cuban Republicans. The city manager is a Republican, several of the commissioner seats are occupied by republicans. One could argue that currently Miami leans conservative. Marco Rubio represents Miami, to claim that Miami does not, at times, swing conservative is to ignore the clear facts that it does and much of that is due to the conservative Cubans.
plenty of the most populous areas in the world are not liberal and progressive. There are at least 20 cities in China larger than NYC. I'm sure India has it's share. So does the middle East and south East Asia. Let's not make assumptions based only on majority populations of European descent.
It is on a relative spectrum what’s left and right in those countries . In Europe for example the U.S. left would be considered moderate or conservative and not really liberal. Also the reason for urban areas being more liberal , is usually because closer you live to ton of people , better you need and appreciate collective/ liberal policies better
The US left is about on par with European left. The US right is more right than the average European right, which shifts the average.
Within those countries, you're still going to see more conservatism in rural areas, and more progressiveness in urban ones.
>There are at least 20 cities in China larger than NYC.
This is incorrect.
And they are all significantly more "liberal" than the surrounding rural areas, even if in absolute terms they are not as liberal as Western cities.
> There is a very pronounced trend of people migrating away from states that are controlled by Democrats for reasons that are potentially ideologically driven policy failures.
This observation may actually indicate the opposite, it is conservative policies that are failing. To see this, consider two potential reasons why people move away from urbanized progressive areas into more conservative areas:
1. Progressive policy failures (as you suggest)
2. The conservative areas are under-developed, and therefore have a greater potential for growth, which creates incentives to move there.
Under the first hypothesis, liberal policies ruin things. But under the second hypothesis, conservative policies ruin things. There is a pretty simple way to test out which is true: if the first is true, and progressive policies are at fault, then a conservative area would become more conservative as it becomes more popular and more people move there. If the second is true, then conservative areas would become more liberal as it becomes more developed.
Pretty much every originally conservative area that becomes developed later becomes more liberal (hello Texas). It's pretty clear that your hypothesis is false.
This feels like some bizarre version of 'white savior complex.'. The truth isn't 1 or 2, but somewhere in between. Conservative areas don't need you, and progressive policies aren't all failures.
> There is a very pronounced trend of people migrating away from states that are controlled by Democrats for reasons that are potentially ideologically driven policy failures
People who have worked in California until retirement taking advantage of it's strong economy to secure retirement income and then moving elsewhere to further maximize retirement dollars are a big part of the trend; to the extent that's about policy outcomes, it's policy success.
> do the migrants understand why the situation became so intolerable that they felt they should move?
For California, it's mostly having a very successful economy combined with terribly stupid housing policy.
Conservative areas are 'better' on the latter on some level because they permit more sprawl, which does provide for more supply, which means lower housing prices. Car-dominant sprawl is a disaster in other ways, though: environment, pollution, health, noise, danger, cost to government, cost to user, etc.
And conservative areas are usually even worse at allowing density, despite being ostensibly free market. I have a lot of conservative FB friends, and it's always amazing how quickly they're suddenly in favor of strict government regulation when it's for keeping housing density low; when it's their favored lifestyle at risk, free market principles are apparently no longer an issue.
There is no pronounced trend. In fact, this very article says so. The trend is for people to move from conservative rural areas to liberal urban areas. In fact, a deeper look at the data will actually prove the opposite. That Democratic controlled locations are thriving and people are moving to it. For example, within New York, NYC population is actually growing.
No one lives in the overcrowded costal states anymore. They're too overcrowded.
It isn't unreasonable to those of us that have lived over practically half of the country. Try moving every year or two, see what that does to your preconceptions and notions.
Atlanta was never a “nice area” until “liberals” moved into it.
Atlanta, the city, was a shithole ridden with crime until the “liberals” moved in.
Which is, for better or worse, the reality of all these cities that seem to complain about “liberals” moving in. They are shitholes because the “conservatives” are all cooped up in suburbs, and so no one pays any tax to maintain the city which ends up being somewhere that is just where the people come in to work and leave in the evening, until the “liberals” move in.
As someone who never mentioned Atlanta, I don't know what you are talking about. As someone who has been to Atlanta over the course of decades, I don't believe you.
Huh. I feel the same way in the opposite direction.
People move from their home states and rural areas to nice areas with civic services and permissive cultures, and then continue voting and advocating for the same policies and ideologies that led to their home being unwanted in the first place. I live in liberal areas that see a steady influx of people all the time, and distressingly large amount of them seem to complain about two things: The ineffectiveness of government (including the underfunded ones they left behind), and Liberals. I'd laugh if I wasn't so concerned about the displacement of my home cultures.
Makes me want to say something like, "if it smells like shit everywhere you go, stop shitting all over everything you find."
I would absolutely sympathize with you, if this were a true story. Believe it or not, I'm not a registered Republican, after all. To be fair, I've never heard of conservative folks overtaking a liberal city, only vice versa. If you have a true story to share, I'd love to hear it.
Instead, it feels like you're just reversing everything I said for argument's sake.
Reasonable. It's anecdotal, and no, none have been "taken over". What I'm predominantly responding to is this weird way people seem to look at these liberal cities and go "oh, they've succeeded in spite of their liberalness" instead of those being part of why they became desirable places to live in the first place.
The few examples that come the most to mind are what "Keep Venice Weird" is reacting to, and the lamenting of SF at the impact "tech bros" (vague, loaded term I know, but I don't have another) has had on the local culture. Which definitely don't fit cleanly onto the usual political spectrum, but AFAIK do roughly approximate it. And yeah, I wouldn't say these places are being taken over, and I would still say there's an influx of people complaining about things that went into making these places desirable in the first place.
I did deliberately match my phrasing to yours, and part of it is for argument's sake. There are both statistics and vibes, but there's not a great way to poke at anecdotes and vibes outside of reversals.
If the statistical reality is that liberalism takes over, but the emotional interpretation of that is... I don't know, that it shouldn't; that's weird to me. If one thing is taking over, it's generally because it's out competing the others. It's almost like when people believe in working together to make places better for everyone... they get better for everyone.
As an aside, sounds like you should be a registered republican. They need people with good heads and something like that set of views, and those sounds like what you have. In case it's in any way unclear, I do mean that as a compliment.
>What I'm predominantly responding to is this weird way people seem to look at these liberal cities and go "oh, they've succeeded in spite of their liberalness" instead of those being part of why they became desirable places to live in the first place.
Why would you think so? For example California used to be if not a Red State then a heavily leaning Republican: since 1880 until 2000 it has not voted for a Democratic president who has not also won the national election (and the 1880 election was extremely close). In the same time period it voted for a Republican candidate who lost the election multiple times (e.g. it voted against JFK and Carter).
Do you really believe that California had not been desirable before it started voting exclusively D (in 1992 the earliest)? I had not been living in the US at the time but judging by the popular culture it does not seem to be the case.
> Why would you think so?
Well asked! I've been trying to understand why I do.
I think it comes to this: Good places to live come from encouraging and empowering people to make those places their own, as communities.
What it means to be a democrat or a republican changes from place and decade to decade. What is effective in actualizing that community participation then also changes as a place changes over time (ironically, that's also why it's important to have that community participation).
AFAIK, the Republican party _used_ to stand for small, decentralized government; now they stand for ineffective and centralized government (despite the talking points).
I'm less clear on what the Democrats "used to be" (except racist, way back in the day), except that in this era and in these places, community participation is hampered by unaffordable housing, unaffordable and/or inaccessible healthcare, and a lack of living wages.
I know I haven't fully answered your question, but I've been at this for far too long. Thanks for asking so effectively!
If you think it's just the parties that have changed, then how about actual policies? Prop 187 has been passed in 1994 with 59% majority, can you imagine anything like that happening in California nowadays? No matter how you see DNC and GOP of 1990s, you surely can see that the California's attitude towards illegal immigrants has completely reversed now.
It's definitely not just the parties that have changed. I have no idea whether that law would've passed today; everyone hears "California" and thinks about SF/LA, forgetting about the large conservative areas. Look how long weed and gay marriage took.
Gay marriage was never passed by popular vote in California, it was a result of judicial activism both on the state level and on federal. In fact, CA voted against gay marriage in Prop 8.
However, the fact that party vote in California changed in 90s, when it's been already a prosperous and desirable state remains. So it does not seem plausible that liberal policies turned it into one. The opposite though, is completely believable - in a rich locale, with a lot of money, politicians who use the money to "buy" votes will eventually rise and will remain in power until the money's gone.
The issue is the lack of dimensionality on your axis. If the political spectrum recognized more dimensions, you would find it that high tax vs republican is only one small dimension, thus not necessarily a contradiction.
But that's not what the data shows. People from blue states are moving to blue cities in red states. Left leaning people are moving to similarly left leaning areas. Austin, Dallas, Houston, Miami, Atlanta, when was the last time these were Republican bastions? Look at the areas experiencing huge population growth. Texas might be red but the populations centers haven't been for years.
I think in the particular case of my co-worker the blue is spilling into the traditionally red rural areas. The population centers inevitably must expand to handle the migration.
So blue cities are expanding, as cities have always done?
Almost all big cities are blue. The biggest red city is Mesa Arizona.
This is a good point, but it would be intellectually disingenuous not to acknowledge that they've been drawn by the policy of the red states, specifically by housing policy that's made housing costs more reasonable than the blue states.
Not that I'm a big fan of sprawl, but it's undeniable that blue state housing policy that strictly limits both sprawl AND density has been an utter disaster for cost of living anywhere where the economy is good.
The sprawl has massive hidden costs; it's a similar situation to stadiums. The city centers end up paying for it, but not reaping the benefits in tax bases / revenue.
The housing costs - while they do have a lot do with policies that prevent massive new construction - also have a lot do with a lot of people moving and wanting to move to these places.
So, question for you: What about the blue state policies is that results in their economies being good, so that these problems exist in the first place?
It was my understanding that most restrictive housing policy is implemented at a city and not state level.
California has largely become a single party state. I'm not trying to start an argument between Democrats and Republicans here, but we can clearly see a pattern everywhere in the world. Once single party rule is institutionalized the politicians are no longer accountable to voter interests.
It's like having a monopoly and not having to compete.
Really you want both sides to be strong and for there to be a healthy push and pull. So the best ideas from each rise to the top and then do battle via good faith debate. With the ability and willingness to steelman each other's arguments.
Instead what we tend to see is an eagerness to interpret everything in the worst way possible, attacking strawmen and talking past each other. Which accomplishes little aside from increasing polarization.
Ideally, you want more than two sides , there are nuances to everyone’s beliefs, forcing them to choose just red/blue is reducing choices and doesn’t reflect real preferences
Not really. The farm valleys are very, very red, while the major cities are very, very blue. I would say CA is a very politically polarized state.
Don't the farm valleys have much less people than the cities? The map might look as if the colors are balanced, but the population density matters.
The valleys are mostly irrelevant due to their lower population.
And that’s why both chambers of the state legislature are ~20% Republican?
Yes, a nicely irrelevant amount.
This is why I really wish we had ranked choice voting (or approval voting). That way we'd have more political parties and a healthier political climate.
Ranked choice voting isn't what's stopping a third party. Majority-wins / first-past-the-post is.
There's ranked choice voting in San Francisco, and there's not a new party.
> Ranked choice voting isn't what's stopping a third party. Majority-wins / first-past-the-post is.
Uh, ranked choice / IRV is a different system than majority / FPTP. Having the former means not having the latter (for any given office.)
But state and federal offices don't use RCV, and local offices are formally nonpartisan, so there are no partisan offices that SF's use of RCV effects.
Maybe I used the wrong terminology. More specifically, I think our issue is with winner-take-all, rather than proportional representation (see: all(?) parliamentary systems).
We have something different in California, apparently you don’t know about it? Hard to have a conversation when folks are unaware.
California allows two candidates from the same party to run against eachother. Do other states not?
It is worse than that. With the passage of the "Top Two Candidates Open Primary Act" California has open primaries (anyone can vote for anyone on the ballot in the primaries) and only the top two get to be on the main ballot. So many times only two Democrats are on the ballot with no Republican candidate at all. Not a good situation in my opinion.
It would actually work in favor of Republican-inclined voters, though not necessarily the party itself.
By allowing anyone to vote, Democrat candidates are incentivized to be more moderate, because a vote from a Republican is as good as another from a Democrat. Without open primaries, a Democratic-only primary pretty much decides the winner, and a candidate only has to appeal to fellow Democrats.
Yeah, no. Reality doesn’t bear out with your theory.
IMHO because R's instantly become disenfranchised. Only if voting were compulsory would it work as prev suggested, and thats not realistic.
Jerry Brown was a conservative by any historical understanding of the term, and he won in a landslide. Gavin Newsom is also relatively moderate. For example, he's made it clear that it's simply not economically feasible to throw money at homeless housing (because he literally tried that in SF as mayor). And hit the pause button on high-speed rail (which is basically a death sentence). Newsom rose up through the San Francisco Democratic political machine, which while liberal on social issues has been until recently predominately controlled by right-of-center politicians and interest groups. The last three mayors, including Newsom, have been opponents of the self-styled "progressive" faction. Unfortunately, Newsom has ambitions for higher office so he's not providing much leadership at the moment; just refereeing squabbles and trying to avoid bad press.
A large contingent of Republicans wanted the top-two primary system, believing it would benefit them. (Though the GOP opposed it.) It didn't work out that way. But it didn't really change the dynamics in the other direction, either; that train had been accelerating for years.
California is a one-party state because of term limits. Running for office is expensive and difficult. Few sane people, unless they're independently wealthy, wish to expend all that time and effort to serve a mere two terms. They want a political career. With term limits the only way to have a political career is to jump office every two terms. The best chance of accomplishing that--of achieving career "progression"--is to work closely with a political party, which can ensure a spot in various low-level offices if you don't make the cut for a bigger office. Term limits make the party system more important. What ends up happening is that the party with more offices and better electoral chances in the near future when this process starts will quickly build on that initial advantage, while the other parties will quickly wither. If Texas enacted term limits I have no doubt that Houston, Austin, Dallas, etc, would quickly become, nominally at least, Republican.
That said, California may be a one-party state, but there are absolutely liberals, moderates, and conservatives within the party. What difference does the label "Democratic" or "Republican" make, so long as there are free and open elections? From a foreign country's perspective, most American politicians behave alike regardless of whether they're Democratic or Republican.
One benefit of being an all-blue (or all-red) state is that there's less political grid-lock. At least, less grid-lock from naked partisanship. Grid-lock from the electorate demanding conflicting and contradictory policies... alas that doesn't go away.
> A large contingent of Republicans wanted the top-two primary system, believing it would benefit them. (Though the GOP opposed it.) It didn't work out that way.
It does benefit them, by giving Republicans more influence on what candidate is elected in districts where they have no chance of electing one of their own.
> California is a one-party state because of term limits.
No, it’s more because the California Republican Party followed the national party to the far right over the last couple of decades, while the California electorate didn't.
California is a “one party state” because Gov Pete Wilson and the CA GOP went after the racist vote in the mid 90’s to get re-elected by heavily supporting Prop 187, which denied all state services to undocumented immigrants. Until then, it was relatively conservative.
Turns out that (thankfully) there aren’t enough racists for keep control of the state government, and since then the CA GOP has become basically irrelevant.
In the long term I think the national GOP is doing this by going after racists, extreme fundamentalists, and other fanatics.
The fanatic vote is political cocaine: temporary high, then you need more and more, then your non coke head friends drift away, then you are strung out.
> then your non coke head friends drift away, then you are strung out.
Alas, that may be more wishful thinking than reality. :( There are countless countries around the world, both in modern history and today, that prove the dynamic can be sustained indefinitely.
I don't know about Dallas, but Houston and Austin are solidly liberal, and I don't think term limits would change that. Most people would still vote the same way for mayor and city and councilman.
Uh, yeah. Reality does bear out your theory. The extremes have been muted on both sides.
Yes, if your views are at the extremes, you have less voice. That's a FEATURE, not a bug. And I feel no sympathy for you.
I would say it’s your own bias which is informing your opinion. California has only gotten more “progressive” with each election.
If that makes you happy, I hope you understand that it’s “progressive” policy which has caused crime to explode, housing prices to rise, and people to leave the state.
> hope you understand that it’s “progressive” policy which has caused crime to explode
Crime has not exploded in California. California’s violent crime rate rose in 2017—but it remains historically low. The statewide property crime rate decreased in 2017. Crime rates vary dramatically by region and category. Violent crime increased in a majority of counties but property crime decreased in most counties. [0]
[0]https://www.ppic.org/publication/crime-trends-in-california/
I don't trust any property crime "stat" in any moderately sized city. Every single person I know whose had property crime happen to them which is in multiple cities and states doesn't even bother reporting it because the cops won't do anything so it's just a waste of time.
Sounds like you’re the property criminal, because the odds of every single person you know having property crime committed against them is ridiculously low, unless you’re the one committing it.
"whose had property crime happen to them" refers only to the people I know who have had property crime happen to them, not everyone I know.
Most of the property crime is see from various places around here the past couple years has been theft and damage under $500 - not enough to make it worth filing an insurance claim, and police reports don't seem to do much around here, sometimes they tell you to call back in a day or two if you do call.
So there is plenty of crimes posted on the fbook / nextdoors / stuff like that were people are feeling victimized / but these are not going to show in any crime stats anywhere. Unless fbook has some AI run through and tabulate this stuff and report it by area one day..
You also can't see the impact from some stats. A neighbor recently had a naked guy pounding on her back door, they did get cops out for that one, arrested him from hiding inside here storage shed... with screenshots of the whole ordeal posted in a group - lots of people were a bit traumatized, yet you would see in the crime stats '1 arrested for trespass' - which does not give you a good idea of the impact on the community of this data point.
trying to reply to comment below, but I guess the thread is at max threshold.
I like to point to data for calming things down sometimes like the gun violence debate.. but often times there is much missed in looking at data from a far.
Plus, a couple of mayors ago, our city mad all the cops change how they report crimes (choose the softer things to charge people with so the stats look better) - and, officers were actively asking people not to press charges for things, go so far as explaining the process, and how we would spend hours in court and they would be off the streets doing important stuff for hours if we pressed charges, and that the person was not going to be in jail anyway..
Maybe things are different elsewhere and maybe in some places they have some of the same tricky data reporting, until we have all robot cops that run the same software in all cities, some of these things are going to be difficult to compare.
Insurance claims generally require a police report.
I would say it’s the lack of mental healthcare and a social safety net that causes all of the above. And it’s not possible to address on a state level as all the other states would ship the problems to the state that tries to offer the benefits.
> California has only gotten more “progressive” with each election.
That is different from "damping the extremes".
Why is it so difficult for those on the "conservative" side to believe that the election outcomes reflect the will of the populace when they actively reject "conservatism"?
> I hope you understand that it’s “progressive” policy which has caused crime to explode
This is a dog whistle way of saying "homelessness" as most crime has not exploded.
However, I have yet to see a conservative solution to homelessness short of "round them up and ship them somewhere else". aka part of the reason for California's homelessness is other, generally conservative, states shipping them in.
> housing prices to rise
A fair argument. And this is also a contributor to homelessness. Prop 13 is going to have to fall before anything really helps with this.
> and people to leave the state.
I'm still waiting for all these Republicans in Southern California to head to Texas. Any time now ...
What the article points out is that most people leaving California are, unfortunately, on the lower end of the income range. Conservatives like you should welcome this as they are generally Democratic Party folks.
Texas is actually the top state destination for people leaving California. I don't know whether we have any data about their political views.
https://www.sfgate.com/expensive-san-francisco/article/move-...
Do you know California is also the top state destination for people leaving Texas ? You know why ? It is because these are two largest states and they exchange population. The per year net migration to Texas is less than 0.1% of CA population.
only beneficial during the primary after the top candidates have been selected, which can both be extremely left-wing due to the caucus
There are plenty of republicans in california, they just run as democrats. Even Reagan used to be a DINO until he came out of the closet in support of Barry Goldwater's presidential run.
How is a jungle primary different from no primary and a free for-all-election with a run-off? Is the latter also corrupt?
>How is a jungle primary different from no primary and a free for-all-election with a run-off?
Majority/runoff with no primary would mean if a candidate gets an absolute majority on the first ballot, they win. You can't win at the primary in the jungle primary.
This is very wrong. Drive the 5 sometime. Outside of LA/SF it gets very red, very fast. Even within those areas it's only the centers that are truly "blue"; (AFAIK) Orange County is particularly conservative, for example, and it's always been my impression that places like Marin, Palo Alto and Orinda are the same way. It's where the term "California Republican" came from.
Look how long it took to legalize gay marriage and weed!
It's not even that it's one party. Since there's only two parties, there's a lot of variance within each, and you can be a Democrat without trying to make freelance work impossible, petty crime routine, streets smeared with human excrement and a trip in public transportation both rare and dangerous. I don't see why even somebody who would never vote Republican still can't choose not to vote for somebody like politicians who pushed through the idiotic AB5, for example. Or the ones who have been in charge for so many other ills plaguing modern California. I don't think it's party-against-party thing. If CA voters wanted, they could vote for much saner policies still well within the mainstream of Democrats (or at least something that has been mainstream of Democrats before 2016), but for some reason they do not.
California is a single party state in name only. There are plenty of conservatives who call themselves democrats in all levels of government. Many city councilmen in LA lean very conservatively in everything but the common sense stuff like not being a bigot, so they fly under the radar and people see the D by the name and vote them back in without reading a word of policy.
Reno resident here. Policy change is something I tend to worry about given there's been a huge influx of Californian "refugees" over past the several years. If California continues its trajectory with housing costs and homelessness, it could definitely "bleed over."
Homelessness isn't as big of an issue here than it is in California (I expect in part because of the colder weather), but housing costs have definitely been affected.
Are you sure homelessness isn't as big an issue? I was in Reno last winter and the banks of the Truckee River were basically one big homeless encampment stretching for miles.
There no California "refugees", because most people in California is also from another state
Crime peaked when Pete Wilson was governor and California was a swing state. Since then, under Davis, Schwarzenegger, Brown, and now Newsom it has decreased significantly.
[0] https://www.ppic.org/publication/crime-trends-in-california/
I know quite a few fairly liberal people who moved explicitly because they wanted to do this. To a lot of people in my social circle, it seems inherently unfair that at a federal level your vote counts for more in a lot of conservative rural areas.
Poor people are broke and don't have good jobs with livable wages, so the average life quality is less for people at the very bottom. A fraction of people will turn to self-/other-harming-distractions like drug use, crime and mischief when things aren't good. Couple that with upstanding citizens being unarmed and helpless unless they're billionaires, judges or Laurie Smith's buddies, criminals are going to see most Californias as "easy pickin's." "Tough on crime" hasn't worked, the War on Drugs has failed miserably and hating on poor people isn't going to solve anything.
If Sonoma alone (or along with other small voting blocs) is bearing the brunt of state policy it may not feel in their power to change.
They not only don't vote them out, but they double down on their voting patterns.
So, I presume you have the legislative solution for homelessness? I'm sure lots of people would be very interested, so let's hear it.
Former Sonoma County resident from 2009-2017 here. Three break-ins in my last year and a half caused my exodus. A new skate park had been built across the street that included bathrooms and a bus stop. A homeless camp immediately sprang up in the woods behind it, and I started getting robbed.
That combined with the fact that the garden I had was 100% legal locally until the state legalized recreational cannabis and the county went for the cash grab. What Sonoma County did to their small cannabis farmers is another huge reason people are heading elsewhere.
It left me in the position of leaving or having an illegal garden that was being robbed. I can tell you that I didn't move to Northern California to grow cannabis illegally and I didn't move to the woods to get robbed, so the choice to leave was tough but unambiguous.
Edit: I misunderstood.
Forcing homeless services into an area and the subsequent homeless people entering your neighborhood is the politically correct 21st century version of blockbusting[1]. I suspect this is probably why Amazon, not exactly a friend of poor people, is putting homeless shelters in their offices, so they can lower the surrounding real estate prices and more easily expand[2].
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockbusting
[2]https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-headquarters-homeless...
Drifting the topic but I've wondered why they don't section off some good wilderness land to let homeless people make a kind of wild west type town for themselves. If I was homeless I'd certainly rather live off the land in that setting with a nice cabin even without electricity, catch my own meat, and generally be able to be self-sustaining than sleep on concrete and panhandle.
There are different kinds of homeless people.
Some of them might do well in such a setting.
But more than a few of them would be disruptive and ruin the land and ruin it for everyone else.
There are plenty of articles and videos about what ends up happening to these encampments- they turn into dumps with piles of used needles and lots of human waste. The last thing you'd want is something catching fire and spreading.
Generally, most habitable 'live off the land' type of places are spoken for already, no nearby property owners are going to approve of such a 'zone'.
I work remotely but just moved to Sonoma county because my partner got a job here. The house prices are really insane. Seems most people here are either rich retirees or people whose families have lived here for a long time and made a ton of money with real estate bought before prices exploded. I don’t see any jobs here that would even remotely justify the house prices. It’s a beautiful area but the economy is pretty weird.
I'm born and raised Sonoma County (as is my wife) and we are about the only people we grew up with who still live here. We saved/worked through college bought a house at a decent time (2014), and our mortgage payment for 3BR/2BA is less than many friends pay for a room. If my wife wasn't a winemaker we would most likely not be living here either. I cannot begin to understand how or why people would move here, and many people have come from out of the area to work at the City I work for only to leave after a year or two of living in a home 1/4 the size of where they come from and saving absolutely no money despite their pay increase. We've had 3 people hired for the same position all decline after a month or so of looking for housing, saying they cannot find a place where they could afford based on the salary (and the salaries are high).
It’s hard to beat CA weather, scenery, and access to outdoors. And be a drive from a major city like SF. Hence lots of rich people are willing to pay a lot for housing. Plus, CA has some decent socially liberal laws that set it apart.
If one can afford to live here I get it - sorry writing during short breaks at work. I don't understand how someone who is young and in an entry level service industry job could make the decision to live in Sonoma County, however with my wife supervising 10-40 seasonal interns a year (shes worked in different sized wineries) I have become friends with a lot of them. I wish them the best but more often than not I see them give up after a year or two and move home. This has led to a lot of well loved restaurants slowly decreasing in quality and closing, or offering limited menus (I eat out only a few times a year so I am not decrying the loss of restauarants, but rather pointing out a visible expression of the rising cost of living).
If you have the money I can’t imagine much better places in the world than Sonoma, Marin or Mendocino county.
Scenery and access to outdoors can be had in many other places. It's mostly about the climate.
If your salaries can't sustain a workforce they're still not high enough no matter what you say.
Weird is certainly the word for it. The SF real estate catastrophe is pushing up prices here, particularly the south end of the county, while (in the small tech scene at least) salaries haven't adjusted. I've lived here since 2011 but I don't think I would start here today. But of course, anyone who bought a house 20 years ago is just fine since their costs are fixed. Renters and recent buyers pick up the tax bill. Thanks a lot, Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association!
(Seriously, Prop 13 is awful policy.)
Housing prices are going up in Sonoma because nobody is building houses (in SF, Sonoma, or any of the other counties in the 9-county Bay Area). Sonoma needs to build as much (well, more thanks to PG&E) as anywhere else out here.
Yes, absolutely. I'd add that this area loves its urban growth boundaries, so the only way to add lots of housing is to build up. This makes the carve-out in SB-50 for counties with a population under 600,000 problematic, in my view.
>Seems most people here are either rich retirees or people whose families have lived here for a long time and made a ton of money with real estate bought before prices exploded
Yep - I lived there between 2015-2017 and this about sums it up.
Sonoma county needs to clean up. Rampant drug abuse, crime(prop 47) and homeless encampments everywhere. I can’t even begin to explain the hassle I had to deal with my farm there. My farm business is literally trashed due to Sonoma county’s lack of law and order.
> $600k avg home price.
> homeless encampments on our bike trails
These seem linked somehow...
Are they really? An honest question - suppose the housing does a nosedive to 100K. I still find it hard to believe that those living on the streets in tents with no jobs will rush to buy houses.
The other category of “invisible” homeless - those living in cars and at friends places/garages will of course benefit if the average price of the housing drops
That would be the most naive interpretation of the relationship - what if, for example, the invisible homeless also burden charities and other support systems in a way that leads to more visible homelessness? What if, given that high prices are a sign of lack of supply, visible homelessness is just a symptom of lack of construction in the county?
"Suppose the house price drops" is a very non-specific hypothetical. Why would the house price drop, and what impact could that have on homelessness?
I think "linked" is probably the right term. It's certainly a spectrum of people with issues (substance abuse, mental health, opportunity, bad luck).
A drop in housing prices doesn't immediately fix any of those things, but it unlocks some options. Looking at Zillow, rent of a 1 bedroom unit is around $2000/mo (put another way, that's 100% of the income of a person working at minimum wage), that's just an impossible situation.
If housing prices come down, rents come down, the most functional 1/3 of the homeless population gets off the street, resources can be applied to the more difficult cases, etc.
> Are they really? An honest question
Not an economist. But many of us perceive that in the US today the middle class is contracting. A few people from that class may migrate to the upper class-- good for them-- but probably the overwhelming majority of folks migrate downwards.
So if OP means that in a context where there is a lot of quite expensive real estate you would expect also to find a good number of people who are so marginalized that they are living in their cars or on the streets, then yes, they are linked.
Obviously people with no real income will not be rushing out to buy houses... however, lowering home prices would help prevent people from becoming homeless in the first place. If you only have to manage to pay for a $100,000 home, it's going to be much easier to keep those payments up.
For those already homeless, special assistance will be required to get them back into "moneyed" society. However, a lower entry point to homeownership would make this assistance less costly.
You understand rent would also go down too right?
If housing prices nosedive, so does rent. Not everyone in a tent encampment needs to be a buyer.
I’d say my point still applies, perhaps with a smaller degree. If rents drop 3x (an economic disaster pretty much) are tent encampment inhabitants rushing to rent, coming up with deposits and getting pre-approved?
You keep using that word "rushing" but there's no solution that I'm aware of that would cause hordes of homeless to rush towards housing.
What we can do is judge whether a policy helps or hurts. Higher housing costs causes more homelessness. Period.
> If rents drop 3x (an economic disaster pretty much) are tent encampment inhabitants rushing to rent, coming up with deposits and getting pre-approved?
If we're dealing in hypotheticals, why do you seem to be asserting that they would not do so? If they can hold down some sort of job, and they can afford the lower rent why wouldn't they go for a real roof over their head?
Or are you saying that campers simply don't want that? I have no idea what you're on about with these questions...
Those kinds of troubles are the same reason people leave other areas I know well - Most of Orange County/LA County, CA and King County (Seattle)
Are you sure they are leaving king county, because the traffic keeps getting worse here? I wish more would leave, we are full up.
People we know are leaving (I have been in SoCal -- Santa Barbara, LA, and Orange counties -- for the last 12 years) but are clearly being replaced, and then some, by am influx of migrants and immigrants.
Can you talk more about the state laws? Are they not discouraging homelessness or are they too weak on petty crime?
Here's some background on homelessness: https://calmatters.org/explainers/californias-homelessness-c...
I don't expect that you intended it this way, but be aware that the way you've phrased the question is likely to offend --- homelessness is complex and most homeless folks aren't criminals.
I certainly didn't mean to intend, only wondered if the parent intended to conflate the two issues and was trying to find out. I find the issue of homelessness a fascinating puzzle of many issues and wonder how it might be solved.
That link looks good - cheers.
The second one, as far as I'm aware (not from California): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_California_Proposition_47
Prop 47 is a ridiculous red herring. It raised the threshold for felony [whatever] to $950. To my knowledge that threshold hadn't changed in my lifetime, which is to say that the intent of the original statutes was that there should be a significant barrier to a felony charge. Meanwhile a misdemeanor can be punished by up to 364 days in jail. However police are generally unwilling to enforce misdemeanor statutes.
A couple weeks ago one of my cars was vandalized (hood was etched). The last time I talked to a body shop about getting a hood repainted I was told to expect to pay at least $600-$800. I'd expect by now the total cost will be over a grand. For all of the whining about Prop 47 (not from you specifically), do you really think the vandal was cognizant of the threshold for felony vandalism? Do you really think that they were trying to create just under $950 worth of damage? I sure don't. Hell, I don't even think that person deserves to spend in excess of a year in jail over this.
Prop 47 only encourages crime because we've moved into "police won't enforce the laws on the books" territory.
Not enough information about your vandal to speculate on his or her motives but there are reports of gangs of shoplifters raiding shops and taking less than $950 worth of goods each e.g. https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2016/05/14/shoplifting-cal...
Oh it was one of my neighbors, not a gang. ~$800 was the quote for a car with cheaper paint. This car has metallic paint (more expensive and more difficult to respray well), I'd be very surprised if I could find a competent shop to fix it for less than a grand.
https://www.criminaldefenselawyer.com/resources/criminal-def...
https://www.shouselaw.com/burglary.html#2.3
I'm not a lawyer so here's how I interpreted these lawyers:
Petty theft is up to six months in jail + up to $1,000 fine. Prop 47 added a misdemeanor shoplifting statute with a max. incarceration to one year. Previously this was considered burglary where a defendant could be charged with either a misdemeanor (up to a year in jail) or felony (up to three or so years).
The existing burglary statute (which otherwise covered what is now called shoplifting) carries a sentence of up to one year in jail (misdemeanor) or more (felony). The gangs taking less than $950 worth of goods are taking advantage of police apathy. So, sure, maybe Prop 47 resulted in an increase in shoplifting/burglary. However, if the police were to see these things through repeat criminals would still be subject to the same felony statue as before.
I am not a lawyer too but, from what I know, the police do not prosecute crimes. They bring their reports to a DA who decides to charge or not. And the DAs, being an elected official and seeing what is the public opinion of these crimes from the prop 47, do not want to charge them. And if the DAs are not going to charge these crimes anyways there is no point for the police to catch the criminals.
The police don't prosecute crimes, correct. As long as they're not making arrests it's not even a matter of what the DA or judge does.
And if the DAs are not going to charge these crimes anyways there is no point for the police to catch the criminals.
And there it is. There is absolutely a point in making misdemeanor arrests. Making misdemeanor arrests allows the rest of society to focus on the next step in the process.
So, in your opinion, the initiative comes from the police and DAs have not changed their charging based on prop 47?
Then, why did the police change their behavior in your opinion?
When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. So for the police more "lenient" sentences for first time offenders is offensive. They want to crack skulls. If they can't then they don't care.
The SF POA, for instance, threw a ton of money around to defend capital punishment in California while the residents of San Francisco elected a DA (Kamala Harris) who campaigned on a platform of staunch opposition to capital punishment. It was a lot of the same crap with the three strikes law. Non-partisan analysis pointed out that the California statute was excessively punitive and expensive but police and prosecutors across the state came out swinging against proposed reform.
Same thing with the new DA (Boudin). One of his planks was focusing on gangs (a.k.a. organized crime) that are breaking into cars versus and focusing on getting addicts and homeless people into diversion/treatment programs. Of course there was plenty of outrage about how property crime was going to get even worse under Boudin's reign of apathy. Whatddya know, someone posted a video the other day of a break-in at an Embarcadero parking lot. Was it a junkie looking to score? No, it was a group of people in a car, wearing masks going about their task very methodically.
https://digital.modernluxury.com/publication/?i=360208&artic...
Not sure how is capital punishment and a car break in video related to shoplifting so I will ask again: what changed from the point of view of police? They did not get to crack skulls before. From their POV nothing has changed at all - they arrest, book, and put the suspect in jail either it's a misdemeanor or a class A felony. No skull cracking happens at all.
The only difference I can see is that making arrests which do not end with charges will show up as the police harassing the citizenry in the statistics so the police, rightfully, avoids making those. The link I posted quotes a police officer saying as much: While misdemeanors, in theory, can bring up to a year in county jail, Fresno Police Sgt. Mark Hudson said it’s not worth it to issue a citation or arrest a suspect who would likely be immediately released because of overcrowding.
Capital punishment is an example of police demanding to use violent tactics.
I will ask again: what changed from the point of view of police?
Their egos got bruised.
They did not get to crack skulls before
If you mean literally, sure they did. If you mean metaphorically then again sure they did. They're literally throwing a tantrum because things that could've been charged as a misdemeanor or felony (at the discretion of the DA) can now only be charged as a felony for a repeat offense. Note that a lot of the anti-Prop 47 rhetoric misses this. Theft of $950 can still be charged as a felony under a variety of circumstances (including the case of simply being a repeat offender).
While misdemeanors, in theory, can bring up to a year in county jail, Fresno Police Sgt. Mark Hudson said it’s not worth it to issue a citation or arrest a suspect who would likely be immediately released because of overcrowding.
So what? Jails and prisons across the state are overcrowded. The state is exporting prisoners to counties and other states. The overcrowding is a not so subtle hint that simply locking people up is not a solution. Prop 47 doesn't change this dynamic, if anything it would reduce the overcrowding (which is a good thing except for those who would like to see petty theft carry a life sentence).
Okay, I see your point. Police is throwing a tantrum but you are not denying that the criminals are not punished any more.
It's not just prop 47 or the cops. The new DA just refused to prosecute a murder.
https://www.sfchronicle.com/crime/article/SF-District-Attorn...
> We have fires caused by illegal cooking fires at these encampments.
Be careful about tossing around this kind of rhetoric. I heard the same story about a fire in my old neighborhood in LA. It turned out that the son of the head of Chamber of Commerce started it trying to firebomb an encampment.
https://ktla.com/2019/09/04/suspects-in-eagle-rock-brush-fir...
Please research the facts before posting this. The fires have been caused by people using Propane tanks with attachments to heat their flammable tents.
The Kincade Fire was started by PG&E, but somehow whenever wildfires get mentioned, people immediately point to the homeless...
I only made this comment because it seems to be feeding into exterminationist sentiments among the wealthy and homeowners. As I pointed out, this led to an attack on an encampment in my old neighborhood.
Your example is deplorable and should not happen.
The other points are not baseless: Skirball fire in LA is currently attributed to a cooking fire as the source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skirball_Fire
My view is that this is not the homeless fault either - people have to eat and shelter. What we need is a right to shelter or similar approach to actually address the root problem. Medical care and development (lack of it) are also contributing issues.
OP didn't say that the wildfires were caused by the homeless. There have been three small fires at an encampment between Santa Rosa and Sebastopol in the last few months: https://www.pressdemocrat.com/news/10578855-181/fire-crew-re...
I am sympathetic to the plight these people are in and truly believe the only reason I'm in a house and not in one of these camps is that I somehow avoided the misfortune that has befallen these individuals. A lot of those who find themselves homeless are only there due to a precipitating crisis that they were unable to get out from under. That being said, they do not belong on the only east-west connecting bike path between two towns, where the only other alternative for cycling is to be on the shoulder of roads that are 35-55 MPH. They shouldn't be using open fires to heat tents.
Ever since the Boise ruling cities have been aware that they cannot arrest homeless individuals for camping on public land if there are not enough shelter beds for them within the municipality. The failure of the county to act on this in a timely manner is the big problem here; this camp existed in a smaller capacity in previous years and it should have never formed a second time. They should have made funds available proactively to have the temporary housing they are putting up available before the rain season began in November. Santa Rosa and the county waste time fighting over who is responsible for the camp, as its county own land within the Santa Rosa city limits.
I'm sure I'll get some hate for this but we need to cut our losses with the SMART train and not extend the $0.0025 sales tax in march. SMART is up and running and should now be able to operate on their own revenue. They should cancel any plans to extend further north the Windsor, Healdsburg, and Cloverdale as this expansion will probably cost close to a billion dollars based on the current state of the track through Healdsburg and beyond (failed bridges, completely washed out sections along Foss Creek, etc). We should develop a more efficient bus bridge from these locations to the airport and invest in ending the homeless crisis now.
Yeah, they are blocking a transit corridor. On a floodplain. It's not good.
And I agree --- the county response has not impressed. In that sense it's actually great that the encampment is in such a prominent location. The county can't keep playing their inhumane game of whack-a-mole. They have to actually do something.
The SMART financing situation is certainly a mess, but I don't think that it's reasonable to expect revenue neutrality from a public transit agency. I think it's reasonable for it to see a public subsidy proportionate with automobile infrastructure. However, I am personally very frustrated about the gaps in the bike path.
I'm mostly inclined to blame the situation on the ridiculous way we fund transit development in this country. Everything is funded from a mix of sources --- local, state, and federal --- and the federal funds are often "matching" funds. So SMART has to carefully break projects into bits to match the available funds and grant criteria. It's ridiculously inefficient. But of course, this complaint isn't really actionable given the political gridlock at the national level.
Thank you for being an informed and thoughtful presence in this thread!
"Be careful about tossing around this kind of rhetoric."
It's literally the cause of every fire in Riverside County so it is FAR from rhetoric, it is FACTUAL. It starts in the riverbottoms, from homeless cooking fires.
Every person I know who's left California did it because of housing costs (except for one, who did it to get away from "the damn liberal government that wants to take my guns").
We have a major housing cost crisis in this state, as well as a big NIMBY problem. There have been good solutions run up through the state house, that either fail to pass or get so watered down they are no longer effective, in large part because the most liberal parts of the state happen the also be the wealthiest, so they vote against it.
It's one of the few areas in California where the GOP and the Dems agree.
They only want to help poor people if it doesn't affect their property value.
I was one of those who moved from the SFBay to Texas. Knowing that for what i'd need to save up for a down payment for a home in the bay is enough to buy a house in Texas cash was an extremely strong motivating factor.
Of course Texas has its downsides too.. the weather, the traffic (depends what city), less tech jobs to name a few?
I moved to Texas, because it actually has weather.
I hated the way SoCal was always sunny, always the same weather, mostly the same temperature, and no interesting weather events. I hated how whenever it rained it made the evening news. I found that days blended into each other, weeks, blended into each other... the monotonousness made me bizarrely depressed.
There is a saying that the weather in California is either magnificent, or unusual.
In LA, summer really kicks in end of June and sticks around well into October, with plenty of interesting weather patterns throughout like marine layer events by the coast that just burn off over the course of the day. Then there are six months of perfect fall weather—no hotter than 70 no cooler than 50—rain about once per week, and atmospheric river events keep things interesting. The local mountains snowcap.
Very soon we will be entering the rainy season, if not already, and the hills will turn into emeralds.
I felt the same way about the weather in SoCal. Lived there for 6 years. When I look back and imagine the weather: I walk out of my apartment at 9am and bam, the sun is beaming down on me. Walk out of the office for lunch, same thing. Every single day. Every season. Same thing. So predictable. The monotonousness was indeed depressing.
I missed weather and seasons. I eventually moved to the Pacific Northwest.
> I felt the same way about the weather in SoCal. Lived there for 6 years. ... the sun is beaming down on me. Walk out of the office for lunch, same thing. Every single day.
I moved from NYC to SoCal for 3 years. There's nothing worse than going out drinking until 4AM, waking up with a horrible hangover, and then looking outside to see a beautiful cloudless 70 degree day. I moved back to NYC and now my hangovers are greeted with freezing rain, sloppy sleet, and sub-zero temperatures. Down the Tylenol, order some Chinese food, and sit in bed: the world is at peace.
Nowhere in the world is perfect. Everywhere is a compromise.
My dash melted when I spent a summer in Austin. I would spend a million on a house if I had to just to experience good weather year round, though Austin really isn’t that bad off summer.
Being able to buy a house is a pretty important factor as well.
All of the people I know who left NYC also left because of housing costs, even though New York has been putting up new housing at an insane rate.
NY has not been putting up housing at an insane rate. Housing in NY is actually being constructed at one of the lowest rates in the last century. Adjusted for business cycles (we're in a peak now), NY is building less housing than they have build in ~100 years, and Manhattan is at its lowest density since the 1890s. The current period is only a "boom" relative to 2009-2012 when basically no new housing was constructed.
Manhattan has a glut of luxury condos that are sitting vacant but Williamsburg, Bushwick, Greenpoint and LIC have seen a boom (https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-building-boom-pushes-new-york...) over the past few years.
Commercial real estate has gone up a lot as well and has led to a ton of vacant retail space. My father had a carpentry shop in bushwick and just had his land lord triple their rent.
They have seen a "boom" relative to 2009-2012 when literally zero new housing was built, they have not seen a boom relative to 1900 - 2009, especially when accounting for business cycle. I understand that you are seeing what you perceive to be a lot of housing construction, but relative to historical trends and population/household size trends, there is very little housing construction happening in NYC.
The "boom" is relative to all of 2000s. Look at the number of permits in 2015 [1], especially in the outer boroughs.
My argument, as someone who grew up in Brooklyn and Queens, is that building new housing doesn't really drive the prices down. I have a lot of friends who had to move or shut down their small businesses because of the rising costs.
[1](https://www.buildingcongress.com/advocacy-and-reports/report...)
[2](https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/buildings/html/dob-development-r...)
"building new housing doesn't really drive the prices down" there is a lot of empirical evidence against this claim, and almost no evidence for it. Rising costs in cities are due to a few factors: (1) lack of new housing, (2) changing economic conditions in which high paying jobs are moving from the suburbs to the cities (to be fair, there is a small factor in very few cities of super rich people buying housing and not living in it, but that is largely confined to Manhattan, London, and suburban Vancouver, but is not broadly an issue in housing affordability) From after WWII through the 80s, American cities were largely in this strange largely racism induced recession (white flight to the suburbs) which caused a historical aberration of cheap housing and commercial space in cities. That trend was a very short counter trend blip in the 5000 year history of real estate in cities. The way forward is to build a lot more housing in cities, as its eminently clear that lots of people want to live in them, that living in cities is better for the environment than the alternative, and that our economy would be doing much better if the desired urbanization was actually allowed.
I love cities, think they are great, and live in the Bay Area myself. I don't know how old you are, but much of the flight to suburbs was due to the building of freeways and the fear of nuclear attack on cities. Younger people did not grow up with bomb shelters and duck and cover drills at schools, so living in a big city is not something they fear. If we have a nuke or two blow up a few cities today, there might be flight out of the cities once again. I sure hope that doesn't happen.
White people didn't leave cities because of the threat of nuclear attacks, they left because there was an incredible amount of racial unrest, violence, and rioting. There is a lot of research on the issue [0].
Climate change is a much larger threat to anyone under 30 than nuclear annihilation is, and the balance of evidence we have says that urban lifestyles (car free/car light, living in a multi family home) has a smaller carbon footprint than traditional suburban living.
How would you possibly be able to estimate the probability of nuclear annihilation? There are 13,000 nuclear warheads ready to launch on a minutes notice.
I don't know old you are but duck and cover drills were a thing in the Bay Area well into the 80s (although typically for earthquakes not warfare).
And if you ask anyone who was in school during duck and cover, they would tell you they took it about as seriously as a tornado drill.
Yes, nuclear duck and cover drills is what I was referring to.
I agree with you that on aggregate across most cities all of this holds, but it's not alway the case for top cities like SF and NYC, where the true demand is way higher than potential supply.
I'm not a NIMBY type and am not complaining about gentrification but am speaking to the fact that building new housing in Williamsburg and LIC helped double average housing prices in the surrounding areas [1]. I used to hang out in williamsburg in the late 90s and early 2000s, when it was an industrial area and bushwick when it was a complete dump. All of the yuppies who live here now would have never stepped a foot in brooklyn/queens if these areas weren't rezoned. I live in Greenpoint now and pay over 3x more than my grandmother used to pay for a similar apartment 2 blocks away from the early 90s till late 2000s.
We should definitely build more housing, but we also need to admit that rising income inequality is the real problem here. A large portion of our country has not seen their wages grow and are a medical emergency away from living on the streets. SV is home to worlds most valuable companies, it might be time for them to start paying their taxes so we can provide a safety net for people who need it like every other developed nation.
[1] https://www.propertyshark.com/Real-Estate-Reports/2015/10/14...
The right metric is new homes per capita by which NYC is about as bad San Francisco.
It doesn't help when there are insane regulations like dedicating double digit percentage of new units to be "affordable"/subsidized/section 8. Anyone with a full time minimum wage job would not qualify for "affordable" housing, you literally have to not work at all, it's such a scam.
Don't get me started on this. I helped an friend get into below market rate (BMR) housing in SF. She paid approximately $330k with almost no money down for a 2 bedroom, 2 bath condo in the center of Hayes Valley. Today, equivalent market rate units in her building sell for $1.5k to $2m.
Basically, there is a supply of homes that are available to you at three points: 70%, 90% and 110% of the median income. How these three points are chosen I don't know. Very few are at 110% of median income. Most are available to those that make 70% or 90% of the median income.
The reason this is bullshit is because it's estimated that you need to earn about 400% of the median income to be able to afford a market-rate home in SF. This pretty much leaves everyone between 110% and 400% of the median income without any real options.
Worse yet, by making a policy that covers the just above the center of the income distribution to the bottom, you basically disincentivize those voters from becoming active and involved in supporting solutions that help the entire distribution. Basically those between 110% and 400% end up a permanent minority unable to achieve support for policies that will help their cohort.
Needless to say, I don't live in California anymore, despite earning almost 3x what she earns because I can't really afford to buy into the market. California is fundamentally broken.
> She paid approximately $330k with almost no money down for a 2 bedroom, 2 bath condo in the center of Hayes Valley. Today, equivalent market rate units in her building sell for $1.5k to $2m.
How does that work if/when she wants to sell the place? Is there some sort of cap on what she can sell it for?
She can only sell it for the purchase price adjusted for changes in the median income. If the median income in the city goes up (which it does over time because lower income renters are eventually forced out of the city), then she can sell it for more. It obviously won't increase as fast as market rates, but it will go for more than she purchased it. The house needs to be sold back through the BMR program. It can only be willed if her heir(s) also qualify for the BMR program at the time of death.
At the end of the day, she gets the benefit of not having to tie up cash in home equity. While other people are paying $6000 or more a month in a lease, she's paying a little over $2000 a month in a lease and gets to put all the excess she has into more liquid assets like an index fund.
There are several ways to handle this, but a common one is to have a deed restriction that sets a maximum resale price and requires the buyer to meet income eligibility criteria.
I wrote some about this, and about how I'm worried that wealthy people could abuse this, in https://www.jefftk.com/p/affordable-housing-workarounds
The entire idea is preposterous. The solution to affordable housing is oversupply of housing. Gov should incentivize new construction to reduce prices and let the market fix it.
Strong disagree, the solution to affordable housing includes a very large amount of private/free market housing, but the free market won't really address the needs of people below 30% of the median income. Additionally, good affordable housing is one of the best anti poverty tools that we have. IMO the long term solution is robust private market housing construction for the middle class, and a robust public housing construction system for those who truly need it.
> the free market won't really address the needs of people below 30% of the median income.
It will if it’s not illegal to build. SROs are illegal. Boarding houses are illegal. Houses below a certain minimum are are illegal.
https://www.economist.com/special-report/2020/01/16/what-is-...
> From 2013 to 2017, Tokyo built many houses as the whole of England.
> House prices in Tokyo are now 9% lower than they were in 2000, while in London they are 144% higher, adjusted for inflation.
Anyone using Japan as an example of housing prices does not understand Japanese housing.
Zoning in Japan is done at a national level, not local. Once an area is designated for housing, housing goes there. Because of this there is a constant flow of new housing, which drives the price of old houses down.
This is not possible anywhere zoning is done at a local level. Anytime one person has the ability to stop another from building you immediately create NIMBYdom and where the NIMBY exists, more housing does not because the NIMBY cares about nothing but their own property value. But that also feeds into the insane American idea of housing as an investment rather than a place to keep birds from crapping on you.
Until the NIMBY is eliminated, and housing is no longer sold as an investment, housing costs will not go down.
So why can’t we use Japan as an example? That seems like a laundry list of good ideas.
> the free market won't really address the needs of people below 30% of the median income.
Why? Do you think a poor person's vote is worth more to the government than their wallet would be to a house builder?
Is it impossible to make an acceptable house at 30% the cost of a median earner's house?
Your reasoning is valid for people whose productivity approaches zero, in which case welfare can indeed be needed. But the current housing problem is systematic and touches a far bigger percent of the population, and thus shouldn't be solved with charity.
Imagine you are a property developer. You borrow money to buy land and want to build as many housing units on that land as you are allowed to and sell them for as much as you can. Buying granite counter tops in bulk and selling the housing units as luxury is going to make you a lot more than trying to cater to the bottom of the market, so nobody does, unless forced.
Do it enough times and there will be an oversupply of such housing, pushing price down to the cost of land + construction. With no profit margin at that price developers will target higher and lower price points. The solution is always just more construction.
Public housing is a complete failure and the epicenter of violence in every city. Name a current project in ANY big city you'd raise your family in?
Gemeindebau in Vienna Austria.
The problem is that in most areas the government is primarily voted in by existing landowners, who don't want more housing, and don't care if lower-income renters are being forced out.
The non-landowners are either not abundant enough, or only plan to live here for a short enough period of time that they don't bother to get involved in local politics.
While this is the whole "NIMBY" thing... is that really a problem? No one complains that Americans can't vote in Britains elections, to set their laws. The whole point of voting is that the people who actively live there get to decide what happens to their city.
Yes, that's a problem. Nobody that bought a home on the vague notion that they HAVE to make money off of it when they sell it will ever vote to have a homeless shelter built across the road.
I think the cause and effect is intertwined. Many of the people who now plan to only stay for a few years have that attitude because they feel disenfranchised and locked out of the planning process, while at the same time being priced out of the ability to put down roots.
Here in New York, at least, the eligibility for those units is based on the median income in the neighborhood where the building is. In some cases these affordable units end up with requirements that are pretty substantial, e.g. https://www1.nyc.gov/site/hpd/services-and-information/housi...
I don't see anything in your link about NYC putting up housing at an insane rate, and my understanding had been that NYC housing growth was at historically low levels?
Here's a link with some more data https://streeteasy.com/blog/nycs-unsold-condos/.
The rezoning and redevelopment of the queens and brooklyn waterfronts brought a ton of new high rise condos with it. I live in northern brooklyn and there's a new condo building being built on almost every block. At the same time there's more vacant storefronts than I've ever seen and the only businesses getting by are coffee shops, hair salons and trendy modern american restaurants that charge $18 for burgers and fries.
If that’s not making enough of a dent, it’s not evidence that it’s not helping at all.
Compared to CA, NYC is building like crazy from my anecdotal observation.
Your article talks about 16k condos over 6y, which is ~3k/y. That's not zero, but that's really not very much housing compared to the ~8M population of NYC. I know this isn't the total of New York housing construction, but it's so little you wouldn't expect it to help much.
For example, during the 1920s NYC was building housing at about 7%/y! Housing was much cheaper then, and through the period of low demand, but when demand picked up again we didn't let people resume building at anywhere near historical rates.
I found total construction numbers: ~25k new units in 2017, depending on how you count (https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/rentguidelinesboard/pdf/18HSR.pd...)
That's only about 0.3% housing growth.
Sorry, I used 8M people as the denominator for growth instead of 3.5M units, so it's more like 0.7%
Expanded this into a post: https://www.jefftk.com/p/is-nyc-building-much-housing
The storefronts are only there because of significant state tax credits for including them.
Like all things real estate, there’s some other tax angle where the owners make more money demanding commercial rents above what the market can afford than actually renting it. They probably securitize the losses somehow.
Is it housing cost or housing risk? Is one thing to put a million dollars into a home and sell it for $1.4m five years later. It’s another thing to owe s million on a place that’s now worth $400k.
That's not a thing in California. Loans on residential property are non-recourse, so if you owe more than it's worth you just stop paying.
We moved from San Francisco to New York City after having kids mostly due to housing and public schools.
We miss the city and our friends, but couldn't see ourselves there long term.
New York City is expensive, but there are areas of relative affordability that feel much more accessible, comfortable, and safer than the Bay Area.
> New York City is expensive, but there are areas of relative affordability that feel much more accessible, comfortable, and safer than the Bay Area.
Could you share which areas? I've been exploring NYC as well but have yet to stumble upon any areas that match what you described.
Unless you live in the most fashionable areas of Manhattan, the rents are tolerable. If you live outside the most fashionable parts of Brooklyn, Queens, LIC, the rents are quite okay, provided that you work for a decent wage.
If you choose to live close enough to a train station, almost everything of interest is within 20-40 mins by train. Subway is not exactly great, but it's safe and works around the clock in most places. (To say nothing of the fact that in most places the daily necessities are within walking distance, even in not-so-dense Brooklyn.)
The subway and train system is really a democratizing force.
It makes places in Brooklyn, Queens, New Jersey, and Long Island accessible with a reasonable commute.
Even in Manhattan, though, the rents are similar to SF but we've found you get slightly more for it.
Swaths of Brooklyn and Queens. The thing with NYC compared to the Bay is that their public transit makes living in the relative sprawl much more reasonable than Bay commute traffic
I have friends who swear by Astoria.
I'd say most of New York city meets that criteria.
are you limited to those two cities?
Unfortunately yes so far, due to my career. We're hoping I'm allowed to transfer to a smaller city in the near future.
We're finding it tough to live in a city with two kids, and we'd prefer to live somewhere with a lower cost of living.
Also moved from SF to Nashville, TN.
Lot's of factors:
- Cost of living - Housing - I am self employed (no state taxes) - Attitude, entitlement, hypocrisy - Petty crime rampant (drug use, break ins, theft, defecation) - Extreme political climate in SF/CAWhat does the last point mean, in practice?
Could it mean that a person must be guarded with their political views or face societal ostracizing and career stagnation?
I moved from SFBA (tried Mountain View, and SF in SOMA and Inner Richmond) because IMO it's not such a great place in every respect except tech jobs and maybe (compared to some places, to various degrees) weather.
The only way prices figure into the equation is the quality. It's not that I couldn't afford a house in Mountain View, it's that, jobs and prices aside, I'd need to be convinced to move to Mountain View from, say, San Antonio. And I wouldn't move there, or to SF, from Seattle or Denver if the prices were the same - based strictly on the quality of life the way I see it... On top of that, of course, the prices are not the same.
I'll chime in and say that I just moved from California to Washington in September of last year. While its not a huge change, its enough to make a difference.
Factors on why I did it:
- Housing costs #1. I got into a rent controlled 2 bedroom 1100 sqft duplex unit. It was ok, but the landlord sucked and the place was very unmaintained, and i was paying $2800 a month. No yard, no garage, tons of homeless around digging through my trash in the outskirts of Berkeley near trains and noise
- For the same price, I now live in a 2200 sq ft home with a yard, garages, in a nice area called Sammamish. In an area with lots trees, quiet, and a bit of occasional wildlife.
- Political climate was getting intense. Things were being taken to extremes, and I was honestly afraid for my safety if I accidentally interacted incorrectly with the wrong parties. Being in Berkeley didn't help, but it was most of the bay area.
- Washington is fairly liberal, but its balanced, and not extremist.
- Cost of Living in california is off the charts at this point. Between insurances, food, services, etc. things were going up and up.
- Washington has no State tax [Edit: I meant state income ta], while my pay was adjusted accordingly (i moved internally within my company as they have washington offices). I actually have more money at the end of the month. Quite a bit more. I paid down tons of debt just in the few months Ive been here. My grocery bill went down by 25%, my insurances were cut in half, Utilities are cheaper. I feel i have so much more breathing room. I have money to save, I am not living paycheck to paycheck anymore.
And to give context. I am a well paid senior software developer. I made and still make GOOD money. But my dollar goes sooooo much further up here, I am actually getting benefit from that good salary, instead of wondering where its all disappearing too and my debts not going down.
And I actually love everything else up here. I love the weather, I like rain, and the bit of snow we got just recently made me so happy. I see wildlife in my yard (deer and bobcats, and owls). Life is calmer, drivers are calmer. People actually seem like they care about their communities. My neighbors came out and said hi when we moved in and were friendly and welcoming. I didn't even know my neighbors in California.
And traffic, people are unhappy about traffic up here, and it can get almost as bad as California, but taking 30 mins to get 17 miles for work during rush hour, compared to 1-1.5hrs to go 10 miles across the bay bridge for work is vastly better.
California seems to be just unlivable if I want to work there. While I am lucky to be in a company that has good remote work culture, and so on now, most tech companies require you to live near the city the offices are in. And that affects things.
I am lucky I found a path out, and it still burned a lot of savings and bonuses to pay for the move. Even escaping was expensive.
> Washington has no State tax
Surely you mean income tax. Oregon is the state that lacks sales tax and makes up for it with an income tax.
Also, I'm not sure why your grocery bill would go down compared to California. Moving from LA to Bellevue, I noticed groceries cost more up here. Both states don't apply sales tax to groceries, at least.
It also costs a bit more to eat out here vs. LA, at least at the low end. Probably prices are cheaper in LA than the Bay Area, however.
Eating out compared to the bay area is cheaper, but not by a lot, i say about $10-15 for similar quality food and service. For a similar place in California that I pay $75 plus tip and tax and all that, i pay about $65 here in washington. Not cheap, but cheaper bit a little.
Groceries were very expensive for me, and I tried to shop smart with Trader Joe's and Luckys (cheaper than Safeway/Sprouts/Whole foods). I would go to others for small things, but majority shopping there.
Here I live near a Trader Joe's, Whole Foods, Safeway, and a local chain call Metropolitan Market, which is like Whole foods 1000x better, but also very expensie.
My grocery budget is the same, but i spend less. For a $150 in groceries in California, I am paying about $110ish for the same things.
So maybe its a Bay Area thing, but I am just paying less somehow.
I think LA in general is cheaper than the Bay Area, so we aren't comparing apples to apples here. The nice thing about LA is that fresh produce is much easier to come by, there is more diversity in vegetables and the quality is higher. Seattle and the East side are just so so in this department.
Likewise, I was living in Westwood LA (near UCLA), food for students is priced cheaper (and also has a bit more diversity). If I could live in the U District with a kid, I would totally go for that since eating out would be much cheaper.
Food is cheap all over LA. You can get a proper meal for like $12 or less in every neighborhood but maybe pasadena. Certain grocery stores are cheap and some are suprisingly expensive. All the international grocery stores are cheap, but even trader joes is cheaper than vons for my typical grocery run (~$50/wk), surprisingly.
Groceries in WA have no sales tax unless it’s something produced by an employee on the store (sandwich made on the spot) or alcohol.
Washington is quickly turning into California in terms of politics. Lots of liberals moving in and trying to take their broken views with them.
Downtown Seattle is looking like SF/Bay Area in terms of crime and lack of police enforcement due to what/whom people vote for.
> Political climate was getting intense. Things were being taken to extremes, and I was honestly afraid for my safety if I accidentally interacted incorrectly with the wrong parties.
Can you explain this point a bit more? Are you talking about political tensions, e.g. Antifa beating you up if you dared wear a MAGA hat, or am I misunderstanding you.
> There have been good solutions run up through the state house
What are the best solutions you've seen?
> They only want to help poor people if it doesn't affect their property value.
I'm sure there are some unsavory high net worth individuals who are happy to support policies keeping housing expensive just to keep assets inflated even if it means access to housing is harder for everyone.
But I'd guess for a lot of people it's more practical: when most of your net worth has become accidentally tied up in your home, some changes may mean you risk becoming one of the poor or homeless. Or visceral: you perceive risk, even though it isn't there (some folks fear a neighborhood light rail stop only to find their property values jump). Or just seeing your community change can be uncomfortable
And while I don't know if the solutions you're thinking of are of the "bring more supply online" kind... there's something weird with the issues in California if the story of net outflow is true. The fact that rents can jump over 60% in a decade while the demand pool is stable or shrinking means that this isn't an ordinary supply problem. Either the existing supply is being manipulated in some way, or some portions of the demand pool can offer a lot more than others pricing the rest out of the market. Solutions that are entirely focused on MOAR SUPPLY may be just as likely allow present dynamics to happen at a somewhat larger scale as they are to fix a macro problem.
> What are the best solutions you've seen?
SB 827 was pretty good. [0]
SB 50 was a good idea with a bad execution [1]
> if the story of net outflow is true.
The article says that California still saw a net inflow due to births and incoming foreign migrants.
> Either the existing supply is being manipulated in some way,
It is, via rent control, which has shown time and again to only help people who already have housing at the expense of those who don't already have it when it's enacted. It also helps wealthy people more than poor people by constraining rent raises even though they could afford market rates.
It is also manipulated by prop 13, which allows people to rent out properties they've owned for a long time at a profit when similar properties can not be. The natural market rate of rent is all inclusive of current costs including tax. But if your tax rate is artificially low, then that difference is increased profit for you, which encourages people not to sell their properties.
For example, I'd had my home for 10 years, and if I were to rent it out, my profit would be about $1,200 a month at current market rates. My property tax is artificially low by about $1,100 a month. So my entire profit would come from Prop 13. Why would I sell my house if I can rent it for profit only because of the lower tax rate?
> or some portions of the demand pool can offer a lot more than others pricing the rest out of the market.
Yes, there is a lot of foreign investment in California real estate which just sits empty. I get ads from agents that "specialize in finding Chinese buyers" which is code for "people who will pay more than asking and not care what condition the house is in".
[0] https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtm...
[1] https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtm...
Prop 13 is essentially "rent control" for homeowners, and largely has the same effects as rent control for renters.
> Yes, there is a lot of foreign investment in California real estate which just sits empty. I get ads from agents that "specialize in finding Chinese buyers" which is code for "people who will pay more than asking and not care what condition the house is in".
Or more simply, “money laundering”.
Well not exactly. A lot of it is that China only allows their citizens to hold so much private wealth, so the wealthy find ways to get their money out and hold it elsewhere.
California real estate (and western real estate in general) is a good place to hold it because of our stable economy, solid legal system, and you get something tangible (the land and building).
So as a rich Chinese person, you invest in western real property as a vehicle to make it appear that you don’t control money that you are not entitled to by law, or move it out the reach of the banking or taxing authority.
... that’s money laundering!
That is not money laundering. If you want money laundering go have a look at what goes on with Trump properties. Real estate changing hands with massive variances in value, well out of step with market influence.
The entire concept of money laundering requires the money be illegally obtained. Simply moving money that you legally acquired around is not money laundering. Stop using words you do not know the meaning of.
Did the laws have protections for the current home owners?
It seems perfectly reasonable to me that people would want to protect themselves if they don't have any assurances that developers won't just build ugly tower blocks.
On the other hand, if people are opposing development that involves real architects developing aesthetically pleasing designs that respect the existing community, then it seems reasonable to me to criticize NIMBYism.
> It seems perfectly reasonable to me that people would want to protect themselves if they don't have any assurances that developers won't just build ugly tower blocks.
If developers want to build ugly tower blocks, and people would actually buy those blocks, why stop them? Just because I bought my house ten years ago doesn't give me the right to stop someone from building something "ugly". At least, it shouldn't.
It's important to remember that just because the law says, "you can now build a thing", that doesn't mean the thing will get built. First, the current property owner has to sell, and sell at a price that it makes sense to build the ugly thing. Then a developer has to want to take the risk of building the thing.
It turns out, making it legal to build things doesn't really mean they spring up instantly. It's a slow process that takes decades to play out.
In the 70s, a section of San Francisco that was zone single family only was rezoned to dual/triple/quads-allowed. Since the 70s, only a few of the single family have been torn down and replaced with quads.
What gets built next to someone's home can affect their quality of life (e.g. due to noise, pollution, increased traffic, blocking sunlight, blocking views, etc.). So I don't see why they shouldn't have a say. It's no different than any other negative externality.
Their say is their ability to move away. Neighborhoods change. The irony is that when they moved in, their neighbors were complaining about all the change happening.
Here in Cupertino, everyone says, "this should all be single family homes!". If you look at the old newspapers from the 30s and 40s, everyone was saying, "We should remain farmland!".
Why is it that the people who built the single family homes happen to be right? Maybe it should have been farmland. Or maybe it will be even better as a mixed community of single family and multi-unit dwellings.
It's called progress. For some reason people think that when they bought the house everything was perfect. The progress until then was good, and any progress afterwards is bad.
The way to do this is to repeal prop 13. This will force people to sell and move.
So you want to create a upper middle class transient population that is mostly tech workers?
Because if prop 13 is repealed..after 15-20 years of work, the retired tech employees can’t afford annual increase in taxes either.
Or is this just to get seniors to leave Bay Area by making it unaffordable for them?
Being priced out of one's home is a red herring that the low tax zealots want you to believe to keep prop 13 in place.
Somehow in the 49 other states that don't have Prop 13, people aren't priced out of their homes from taxes.
There are other options. There are home equity lines, reverse mortgages, or even freezing tax payments and adding them as liens on the property at time of transfer.
But even if you're worried about that, you should still support repealing prop 13 on anything that isn't an owner occupied single family home.
There is no reason a rental property should have tax protection, or a commercial property.
>Somehow in the 49 other states that don't have Prop 13, people aren't priced out of their homes from taxes.
Allow me to introduce you to the great state of New Jersey. People here are absolutely priced out because of the property taxes, especially older retired couples and low earners who may have a house but hit hard financial times. A $400k house will probably have property taxes over $10k.
NJ has Abbott districts:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abbott_district
It’s a tax to try and equalize resources for all schools, and is very progressive in sense. Other states let poor areas have poor funding for schools, whereas NJ requires richer areas to send funding to poorer areas to try to give the poor children a chance. I actually think this is an admirable goal of NJ.
NJ also has one of the worst unfunded defined benefit pension problems, which is obviously not so admirable, and will continue to contribute to rising taxes of all kinds and decrease in government services in NJ for the next 30 years.
As a former resident of New Jersey, I'm aware of Abbott districts, and trying to place the blame them for NJ's high property taxes is absurd. It's not a separate tax, it's simply redistributing school funds from existing tax income. As for the amounts of funding the districts get, here's what it says in the wiki article:
Abbott district students received 22% more per pupil (at $20,859) vs. non-Abbott districts (at $17,051) in 2011.
That is a HUGE amount of money being spent regardless of district classification. As for the pension problem, please do not underestimate the ability of the NJ government to kick that can down the road as hard as they can. I firmly believe that they will do anything they can to not solve it until it's too late.
Taxation is tyranny. I have difficulty understanding the motivations of a working class that is demanding more taxation.
I really think this line of argument is going nowhere; you seem to have fundamental opinions on taxation that others here don't share, and I don't think further discussion is going to be all that productive.
That’s because others seem to have opinions about taxation and no understanding of how taxes work while I am trying to point out that property taxes are Ad Valorem.
in austin people are getting priced out because of taxes. Mainly poor minorities. It is called gentrification.
Houses that were 50K 10 years ago are now 400K with a 2.5% property tax rate. If they are renters, then their rent went up to cover the taxes.
In my area houses are up to 1m+ which results in property taxes of 25K/year so even middle class families and retirees are getting taxed out.
The city is trying to approve density city wide and the NIMBYS are trying to block it. Ill laugh when they all get taxed out 10 years from now.
High density isn’t the answer either. I don’t know one high density city in the entire world where housing became affordable and available for all as density increased.
Medium density and spreading out is the right solution. The example that comes to mind is the snail shell structure/concentric circle design of Paris, France.
With a partial repeal they should also do away with the generational tax transfer. There’s no good reason to maintain an aristocracy.
That never comes up..the same tech sector working population want to pass their fortunes to their children through trusts and tax planning. I have seen them bristle when I suggested that their kids should pay taxes on their inheritance. It would be hilarious if it weren’t so hypocritical
Is it helpful to label older home owners who invested earlier as ‘zealots’?
Property taxes are paid on the sale price. It is not a punitive tax to fund new entrants.
An example: Consider a 75 year old senior couple on fixed retirement income living in their fully paid 40 year old home. They paid the 300k mortgage and the house is worth 1 million.They raised their kids who attended public schools for 12 years each.
Property taxes are used for public school education. 45% of California budget is for schools. Property taxes go into a common pot and distributed to different school districts. It averages between 10-15k per student.
Schools have taken over nannying and provide more than basic education. They take on services that are generally the area of social services and social workers.
For example, if there are more non native English speaking families with children in school, the district gets extra funding. But more often than not, the children who know English as second language don’t come from high income areas..that is..their homes don’t contribute a lot of property taxes to the pot. Renters get the best deal because they don’t have to pay property taxes in the best school districts and often these are older properties that enjoy low taxes.
The problem here is that homes are roofs over our heads. It’s not speculative investments. They are not funding sources for the waves of new migrants and their children.
To ask 75 year old retirees to pay more taxes on property they haven’t profited from is heartless. That you need senior citizens to educate this working generation’s children’s education is shameful. It just means that the current generation doesn’t know how to manage their finances. It’s like someone living off their ageing parents pensions even when they are earning fat pay checks because they think their parents don’t need the money.
In my observation..those who ask for prop 13 to be repealed are usually : 1. First time house owners or renters 2. Transplants to California from other states that are usually economically depressed..almost always suffering from CA sticker shock 3. In their first high paying jobs 4. Don’t have parents living in California 5. Don’t have parents who were home owners in California 6. Really bad at financial management.
It boggles my mind when I see 25-30 year old Silicon Valley tech workers crying for prop 13 repeal and want you make seniors on fixed pensions homeless. They are people who are looking into other people’s homes and coveting what they think they are entitled to...
Most of the property taxes are going to fund public schools. If you want affordable housing, turn your ire towards parents who have kids and are not willing to pay for their own kids education...Instead of demanding from seniors who have paid their dues and have built the public schools and roads and infrastructure of California with their taxes when most of us weren’t even born.
I am deeply ashamed to be part of Silicon Valley that is disrespectful to the senior citizenry. On one hand, they want homeless people from all the states and undocumented immigrants to get free services and be taken care of..just when you think that such charity is laudable...on the other hand they are demanding to repeal prop 13 which will create more homeless seniors and retirees will end up without a nest egg for their safety net making them more vulnerable and even dependent on the state for services. How is this in any way logical or rational..even setting aside the fact that it’s definitely not ethical or moral.
Senior citizens in the other 49 states are doing just fine.
There are problems with increasing property taxes on elderly folks on fixed incomes, the solution isn't to say "you never own any tax on the appreciated value" the solution is to say "you can pay the tax on the appreciated value when you sell your home" which is an insane liberal tax and spend policy practiced in the hippie haven of the... state of Texas.
Additionally, the lions gain of the benefits of prop 13 don't accumulate to the working class elderly living in appreciated homes, it goes to giant corporations like Walt Disney (yes, Disney Land is protected by prop 13), golf courses, extremely wealthy property investors, and the heirs of people who have owned nice homes and then died who then bequeath both their house AND their insane tax rate on to their children.
maybe because young people in other 49 streets are not trying to make their senior citizenry homeless by increasing their taxes to educate their children for free.
Inheritance should be taxed at assessed value as should rental properties as well as commercial properties. Primary homes should not have prop 13 protections repealed. It’s not an investment to many..it’s their home.
In California, public money is spent on things like gender reassignment surgeries for govt/public sector employees and prison inmates..we have student loan forgiveness schemes if you work for 3-5 years for the county...retirement at 50 for most law enforcement and Fire Dept employees. Billions of dollars in pension funds and unfunded pension liabilities. Mayor Newsom just increased funds homelessness by another one billion. Yes, one billion in services like counseling. Not actual homes for the homeless. We offer services and education for all undocumented immigrants. First two years of community college free.
That’s why so many flock to California. Because life in the golden state is golden. And then they try to change prop 13 to punitively tax the senior citizenry and retirees on fixed income. Because. As someone spat out earlier ..”low taxation zealots” are the bad guys.
And then they try to change prop 13 to punitively tax the senior citizenry and retirees on fixed income.
I'm not going to bother digging into most of the rest of your claims but this is particularly disingenuous. Most of the recent attempts at changing Prop 13 have focused on a split roll that would keep the tax limits on primary residences. Putting grannie out on the street is exactly what the anti-tax zealots (Jarvis and co) used to sell the state on Prop 13 and 8 in the first place. What's being proposed now would raise taxes on things like vacation homes and commercial property.
That’s not what repealing prop 13 means..do you know the wording of prop 13?
Why should vacation homes be taxed? It’s is an asset. Imagine.. You buy a diamond ring..would you be asked to pay a use tax every time you wear it?
That’s not what repealing prop 13 means..do you know the wording of prop 13?
Yes. In addition to following the flurry of news articles every time some politician dares to bring up Prop 13, I grew up in the Bay Area, and in fact I studied Prop 13 along with its consequences and potential changes while at university. If you'd like to be pedantic, your words were "And then they try to change prop 13".
Nobody (at least nobody with any sort of visibility) has proposed repealing Prop 13 wholesale.
In this forum, they did.
They used repeal and partial repeal interchangeably.
Prop 13 also pushes undue costs onto new property development. Lower development costs equals fewer luxury condos. Were California to both build more and repeal Prop 13 fully it's unlikely that retired tech bros would be priced out of their houses.
Even so one of the primary roles of a county assessor is to determine where tax breaks are suitable. Allowing the (typically elected) assessor more discretion via a Prop 13 repeal almost certainly guarantees you won't be putting grannies (or retired tech bros) out on the street.
> Property taxes are paid on the sale price.
No, property taxes are paid on the assessed value, and assessments don't just happen at sale time. Only CA has this weird freeze-taxes-at-time-of-sale thing.
> It is not a punitive tax to fund new entrants.
No one is claiming it is. Hell, it isn't great even for homeowners who are "protected" by Prop 13, because if they want to move (say a widow/widower whose kids have moved out, living alone in a 3000 sq ft house who wants to downsize), they often can't, because their new property -- even if it's smaller! -- will destroy them with higher property taxes.
All this protects are people who never want to move, and, worse, it protects wealthy families who can pass their property down to their descendants without a market-rate tax.
> because their new property -- even if it's smaller! -- will destroy them with higher property taxes.
Nope. Prop 13 allows transferring assessed value of the old house to the new house if it's in the same county. Even inter-county if the new county allows it. The assessed value is also preserved when the property is inherited by children and grandchildren. The number of carve-outs it has to favor incumbent landowners is pure insanity.[1]
EDIT: These were allowed to die in December, 2018.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1978_California_Proposition_13...
> Only CA has this weird freeze-taxes-at-time-of-sale thing.
Not even California has that, strictly speaking. California just sharply limits the rate of value assessment increase without qualifying events (mostly transfer outside of close family and new construction).
What’s wrong with never wanting to move? Out of homes people paid off after 30 years of mortgage? Why should we promote the notion that tax paying citizens should become transients due to tax burden?
So tax the descendents. Property rights are one of the reasons why this country was founded..primary homes need to be protected from predatory taxes and redistribution of wealth.
If those who had lived in their house for 30 years sold their property, they will have made more in capital gains from that sale alone than the average American has made in their entire life. I'm not exactly awash in sympathy here.
So you are saying people who invested earlier should be penalized because they were..I don’t know..alive before you and had a life and build a home that happened to appreciate in value even though it’s a perceived value with no real liquid gains.
Maybe they don’t want to profit out of capital gains. Maybe some people love their home of 30 years and would like to spend the reminder of their lives debt free after planning their retirement.
Seniors and retirees are such low impact on society. They have savings. They pay for services they don’t use. Their pensions and ssi is based on pre inflation valuations. They don’t use schools. Probably drive less and consume less and have a smaller carbon footprint. Most importantly they have already paid for themselves and probably paid their dues to society and several batches of public school kids.
To be envious of them and trying predatory taxation techniques on them is a breach and violation of social contract.
On the flip side, there is a finite supply of housing. A retired senior citizen living in a house prevents a young professional from living in that house. Given that the former is going to provide far less benefit to society than the latter, there is an opportunity cost that needs to be accounted for somehow. A property tax is not a bad way to account for the opportunity cost.
> Seniors and retirees are such low impact on society.
IIRC, medical care accounts for more government spending than all other discretionary spending combined. And most of medical care is going to be caring for seniors.
I never said there's anything wrong with never wanting to move. I just said that Prop 13 mainly protects incumbents who never want to move, and creates a really bad situation for everyone else.
Normally property taxes are paid based on assessed value. Assessed value is a function of market value that is determined recent neighborhood/comparable sales. The problem with Prop 13 is that it doesn't allow for the taxes to capture increased market value.
Why should taxes capture market value? That’s surrender to the state to keep taxing us.
To ask for higher taxation is asking for the state to take care of individual expenses through redistribution of wealth. Other states don’t offer as many services as California which is practically a nanny state.
The young people are expecting the state to do the grabbing so they can be taken care by the state. This is mostly due to public schools brainwashing kids with extreme progressive liberalism.
All these seniors that paid their dues paid how much in UC fees/"tuition"? And now they want to tell this generation to pay when they didn't? Isn't that called pulling up the ladder behind them?
No. The seniors paid for subsequent generations of public schools. Even when their children were all grown up and no longer in the school system.
It’s time for those kids who were educated with public funds and tax money to pay back. Not ask for more money from retired seniors.
So fix the university system. Don’t ask retired people to shoulder the burden of grown ass employed and able bodied younger generation and their children.
Most people have rental properties as investment properties.
Example: a 1 million dollar home rents for about 3500-4000/month in my Bay Area city. 10% goes to management company. And insurance is another expense, it’s not a lot.
Assessed value of a million dollar at current rates would be around $12k without parcel taxes or special special taxes added which can be another 3-6k extra.
It leaves about 2000-2500 as income. Assuming the home is completely paid off. If there is a mortgage or if it’s refinanced, there won’t be much of an income.
Rental income is considered income and subject to income tax.
Rents will RISE making housing even more affordable if people 13 is repealed. Any form of taxation is only designed so the house..aka the govt...wins. The house always wins.
Lobbies with housing interests are simply making home owners the villains...while the problem is lack of public transport, infrastructure and proper city planning and commercial zoning.
It’s easy to make seniors(who have no PR companies or lobbies) the villains or hard working people who have one or two rental properties as income nest eggs because they don’t have pension funds or stock options.
The Silicon Valley tech workers act like they are sharing and passing around a single brain cell amidst themselves when it comes to housing issues in the Bay Area. It’s mind boggling how easy it is to manipulate people into a mob when a nameless faceless villain who can’t be identified is painted to be the victimizer.
That’s not really true. Market values are based on total cost of ownership, and higher taxes reduce the value or value growth.
Your taxes go up, but so does your debt service. I live in a secondary market of a very high tax state (NY). My effective property tax rate is about 1.8%, almost double what you see in NYC. But... my housing value is much lower. My home in NYC would be well over $1.5M, and is a fraction of that. It’s better to pay the tax.
In terms of old people, the answer depends. Usually people sell because they cannot maintain the home, want to be near family, or have medical issues. I’ve never heard of anyone (other than a farmer) who moved because of property tax.
Farmers pay a different kind of tax.
If people 13 is repealed, older people will have to move because they can’t pay their taxes on their fixed retirement incomes.
NY is not CA. We are a different market.
You are assuming that property prices will stay the same. If prop13 is repealed, I do not think that will be the case.
Property in CA is speculative and fluctuating. One cannot accept paying taxes based on assessed value. Property market is a volatile market.
It is the equivalent of gambling. Would it make sense if our taxes on the roof over our heads are pegged to Wall Street or stock exchange indices?
When property taxes have to be imposed based on fluctuating speculative assessed value, how would people on fixed income and pensions plan to pay their property taxes at the end of the year?
The assessed values already increase every year. Social security payments are capped. Salaries are based on employment contracts and is capped.
The habit of paying tech workers with stock options that are essentially speculative financial instruments have taken away all realistic financial intelligence one would assume amongst the current generation.
A good economy relies on stability. How does pegging fixed incomes to volatile speculative property value make any sense? It is entirely irrational and illogical. It’s financial illiteracy. You can’t plan for anything and especially not retirement. Such short term thinking.
Your hypothetical old people utilize their stored equity via a loan, just like you draw from your pension. Reverse mortgages are a common way to do that. Or, you sell and downsize into a property or place that you can afford.
Real estate markets are fairly liquid, and assessors always have a process to grieve your assessment based on market or other conditions.
California is way too protective of the property owner. Carrying costs in terms of taxes are frozen in time and anyone can walk away from a mortgage. Stock options are what keep the machine going.
Why are you making financial decisions for strangers? Esp in a way that benefits you and has no value to them?
What is the sense in extending their lines of credit to PAY TAXES?
Are you suggesting that they should go into debt to pay taxes? It is equivalent of highway robbery. Akin to saying.. mortgage your home again to give us the money?
Real estate markets are not liquid. Liquidity is exchange of monetary and financial instruments for an asset. A home is an immovable fixed asset. As long as it’s owner occupied, it’s domicile and not an asset. When it’s rented out, it accrues rental income which is taxed.
Right to property is a fundamental right. This is not a feudal economy and it’s not the Middle Ages. Stock options are speculative financial instruments and relying on them is akin to gambling.
Your understanding of finances ..if representative of the wider California working population..sheds light on why the current generation has no financial management skills. I am beginning to suspect it’s by design starting at public schools where children are taught to suckle at the govt teat and think taxes are nourishing food.
moving away with a million dollar check in your pocket sounds so terrible.....
Moving where? Why should people leave their homes that they built and paid for ..Human beings like their community and neighborhood where they have a support system. When you know your neighbour is just a phone call away next door, you don’t have to rely on doctors or nurses or ambulances or fire departments. As you get older, community is a great source of comfort and moral support.
People won’t realize this until they get older or have lived with older family members/friends. Older family members are also a great source of support and mentorship for the younger generation. It is not always about money.
A million dollar check won’t speak to you or hold your hand. Most of the million dollars will go to taxes and then barely paying for the next roof in a not well serviced and strange new zipcode. It’s a downgrade. Why would anyone want to downgrade their lives and walk into uncertainty when they are old and vulnerable?
> Human beings like their community
What community? Most members of someone's community in SF that didn't buy early enough have been priced out of the city.
The native San Franciscan is a rarity precisely because of bad policy like Prop 13.
We are all only educated by our limited views.
They could literally move anywhere with that money and live like proverbial kings. But I’m not for or against prop 13, I was just saying. My friends parents retired and moved to Portugal. Best move they could ever make, they’re happy, well settled, etc..
maybe they dont want to move. i am genuinely flabbergasted by the number of people who think seniors should just pick up and 'move elsewhere'.
how is this different from someone telling an accented immigrant to 'go back home'?
many retired folks want to stay with their families and grandchildren. finally enjoy their communities after decades of working and paying off bills and mortgages. perhaps some would want to cash out, but many simply do not because they have been fairly successful in the bay area and dont need the extra money, but they are not literal millionaires with liquidity.
30 something year olds after less than a couple of years in a stable job and having another thirty years of earning potential asking people who have a couple of decades left in their lives to uproot themselves.
it is even more bizzare when the suggestion is to take reverse morgages to pay more taxes and supporting the repealing of prop 13. thats like saying that having a $5000 credit card limit is like having $5000 in the bank. reverse mortgages are literally betting on the fact that the person holding it would die eventually. that's someone's inheritance..legacy...a house they built and memories. most importantly, its their property.
there is a vulture like quality to young people in silicon valley's tech sector..those who hover around retiree's homes hoping they'd either sell and leave or find taxes unbearable and sell.
if someone cant afford housing, it means they have to take it up with their employer. if there isnt enough housing, move. take another job. convince your employee to build better cities. its not coveting someone's properties or wishing that they will 'move away'.
this is not an emotional appeal to be 'nice' to seniors. its just absolute shock at the helplessness of a workforce that is supposed to define bay area to come up with creative solutions and their impotence when it comes to creating change with their local governments.
what this shows is that the current working class generation has no influence, no clout, no real wealth, no creativity, no grit to challenge government or authority. most shocking of all, they are cutting off their noses to spite the face by asking for more taxes to be collected and to be delivered to a bloated state govt that has a terrible record with managing public funds, delivering results, being transparent and accountable.
Guaranteed almost 40-50% of these are jobs are going to disappear in the next decade. Guaranteed. what then? what would happen when automation displaces workers/employees and incomes dry up? this is how ghost town are born. while sf bay area is not there yet, it will be a whole different world.
Not saying they should move, just pointing that theres a great opportuniy many don’t see or are aware it exists where moving can buy you a whole lot more in terms of quality of life, healthcare, property.. For that money they could move together with family and still have plenty of resources left. Cali is no longer worth it with everything that is going on right now. Just saying not imposing anything...
I hear you. But that’s like suggesting defeat. The problem here is bad city planning and Sacramento shenanigans. A very cunning move of turning people against people so the govt can get away with doing nothing while pocketing all the cash.
They are literally pitting us against each other instead of fixing infrastructure, public transport, homelessness, community services and tax reform so its less taxes, not more.
Imagine you are a household and you want to maintain a standard of living. As family size grows, it makes sense to cut down the budget, eat out less and making the money and resources stretch more over more heads.
What the govt is doing is essentially vying for free money by taxing people more and creating more cash rich people. And pocketing the cash for the care and feeding of big Gov. they are making out like bandits. This is what Kings and feudal lords did...just tax working class more.
Just follow the money. I did it with just one thing. Prop 47. They don’t even charge people anymore for crimes that involve goods valued less than $950.
Why? Because it costs money to maintain prisons, police force and courts etc. waste of time and resources to petty crime.
This has resulted in more petty crime. Car break ins, property theft, chain snatching, lap top snatching, shopping mall robberies etc. the police won’t even take a report so there is a record of it. Who knows what that number is..
So you’d think they’d save oodles of money, right? Where is it going? It goes back to unfunded pension liabilities. It costs $70k per prisoner. Prison guard unions are the most influential unions. It’s going back to fill the hole that is unfundwd pension liabilities. It’s the same with teachers union, police officers unions, Fire Dept unions. These departments keep shrinking as density increases but they become more and more expensive and have larger budgets. Where is the money going? Pensions negotiated by unions.
Look at homelessness reforms. Where is all the millions going? Half the budget is for salaries and employees. It’s all coming from our taxes. Take every expense and scratch the surface. Beneath all the goop and gunk obscuring transparency, there is the govt playing with our money. With no accountability. We don’t ask questions because we are fighting amongst ourselves. Turning tech workers against seniors. Homeless against working class. Teachers against parents. And indoctrination begins at public schools where kids walk out to ‘support teachers unions’.
This has to end. Let’s not be suckers. This is the oldest game in the book. This is how the British colonized my people for 250 years. They called it Divide and Conquer.
I think that's reasonable.
The issue that I would see is a situation where the new construction causes property value to drop and therefore the original residents cannot afford to sell their homes and move to a neighborhood similar to the one before the construction. If they cannot afford to move away then its really not a meaningful say.
"A say" covers an enormous spectrum.
What much of California gives neighbors is "a veto".
There are many other jurisdictions that have solved this tradeoff in a functioning way.
I think it's reasonable that you don't get an actual nuclear waste facility next door, but people in California have gone so far beyond any kind of "reasonable".
Exhibit 239839229: https://www.citylab.com/equity/2018/10/san-jose-trying-build... - people getting bent out of shape about housing for teachers, FFS!
It's not clear to me from that article: Did the plan that they were opposing provide any assurances that the houses built would be good quality? The people quoted state that their concern is that overcrowded or low quality public housing[1] would be built. If the law addresses their stated concerns and they still oppose it then I think that it's fair to criticize them. However, I don't think it's fair to just assume that they are lying about the reason for their opposition.
[1] I could see criticizing public housing being code for "we don't want anyone who isn't upper middle class"; which of course is unreasonable. However, on the other hand I've lived in places where the public housing took the form of a massive tower block that was like something out of Judge Dredd; so I think its understandable that people would be concerned about it if they aren't given any assurances.
> "we don't want anyone who isn't upper middle class"
This is precisely what it is. They're teachers, for crying out loud.
The US hasn't really done 'giant tower block' public housing for decades. That's just scare tactics.
In that case, then I think it would be reasonable to criticize them. Although, it still seems to me that it wouldn't hurt to put something in the law that specifically says that they won't build giant tower blocks.
The more you read about this stuff, you realize that there's some real ugliness there - now and in the past. Maybe not everyone, but it goes well beyond the original intent of zoning to keep housing away from factories and tanneries and such.
https://www.sightline.org/2018/05/25/a-century-of-exclusion-...
Of course, in places like San Francisco and Portland, people are mostly smart enough to not "say the quiet part out loud", so they come up with other excuses.
Of course, in places like San Francisco and Portland, people are mostly smart enough to not "say the quiet part out loud", so they come up with other excuses.
No we fucking said the quiet part out loud quite proudly in San Francisco. Take a look at the covenants in the Forest Hill neighborhood. It's still fairly bad as those folks recently successfully fought an attempt at building a low income retirement home.
And we certainly weren't that offended by the Chinese Exclusion Act.
Long form piece about racist housing policies in San Francisco:
https://www.fastcompany.com/90242388/the-bad-design-that-cre...
Because giving them a say has caused massive inequality and the loss of billions of dollars in wealth?
If you want to preserve your sun, traffic, views, whatever, you are free to buy it. Nothing is stopping you from buying your entire neighborhood and leasing to your neighbors, other than your lack of capital. Why should you get something for free that has nothing to do with what you paid for, the parcel and the air 30 feet above it?
It has everything to do with what you paid for. The environment around a home effects the home itself.
It sure does, but you haven't bought the private environment around your property and therefore should have no right to dictate its use by its actual owners.
If someone is doing you legitimate harm, like dumping toxic waste into your drinking water, then you have the public government than can dictate the rights in regard to private use on the toxic waste dumper on behalf of the public. Increasing housing supply in an area with high demand is not doing legitimate harm, it keeps housing affordable and is good for the environment vs. infinite sprawl.
Now that I live in Houston which does not have zoning in the typical sense I prefer that things get done ASAP instead of people arguing for years for the right to build more housing on a lot that they already own. This contributes to the obscenely high cost of living in certain parts of the country.
In my experience (granted I only lived in Houston for about three months during an internship), the lack of planning makes the city a nightmare to get around. I always considered Houston an example of what not to do.
The irony of complaining about aesthetics as mentally ill people run around shouting at pedestrians and pooping on the sidewalk in mid day...
No, it's reasonable to criticize them no matter what because they're preventing other people from having the same opportunities that they were afforded.
I'm not advocating that more housing shouldn't be built. What I am saying is that there is a middle ground between allowing existing homeowners to veto any proposals and not giving them any say or protection.
Sure, there probably is. But if we imagine that this is a spectrum where 0 means "no say" and 10 means "absolute veto power", CA is at 9, and most functioning communities with healthy housing growth are probably at 5 or below.
The aesthetic preferences of crotchety neighbors should be close to the bottom of our housing priorities.
I don't think it's fair to assume without evidence that existing homeowner are "crotchety neighbors". It's quite possible that they have legitimate concerns that, and would support new construction if their concerns were addressed.
Go to public hearings. Their demands are almost never reasonable. New housing should never add any traffic ever, and it should look fantastic (with different people differing on what this means) and it shouldn't have children because there's no way the schools could cope with the "massive increase", and it should have enough parking to handle the entire extended family at Thanksgiving (in a severely land-constrained area) and by the way it should also be actually "affordable" (far below market rates).
They really don't generally argue in good faith.
I would recommend looking into Katherine Levine Einstein's research on the concept of "Neighborhood Defenders".
I've been to plenty of neighborhood meetings. The "issue" most of the time is a personal anxiety over change. Why should society cater to that?
I don't necessarily disagree with you; however, strictly for sake of argument, a couple of potential reasons:
- Providing a sense of security strikes me as a core role of society.
- People who are afraid tend to be willing to resort to draconian measures like NIMBYism to protect themselves.
- Anxiety that things could change so much that one is unable to follow their chosen way of life strikes me as a reasonable fear.
I think you're starting to (unintentionally) argue a straw man, or at least are making assumptions that just aren't true.
No one is saying that developers should just be able to build whatever they want, whenever they want, with no oversight. No one is saying that the community should completely shut up and have no input into the process.
But the actual objections brought up at actual planning meetings that happen in SF are universally bonkers. It literally actually is people opposing change just for the sake of opposing change. If there is anyone at these meetings making reasonable objections, they're completely drowned out by the other 20 people shouting that the sky is falling.
It's protectionism, and the "I got mine, so fuck you" mentality, plain and simple.
You’re assuming the process we have resolves their feelings when it does not. If anything, we’ve normalized the idea that new development is bad and as a community member you should be fighting it, leading to more resistance than there would be otherwise.
I grew up in Central California and then lived in the Bay Area from 2001 until 2010. Had kids, and a online job, so we next moved to the Sierra Nevada foothills, where we lived for a decade.
We moved to a suburb of Houston, Texas about a year ago. Best decision ever.
In a nutshell:
Overall, quality of life has gone way up.
Taxes have gone down. Wages have gone up. Everything is cheaper, which means we all get to do more fun stuff.
On the negative side of the equation: The avocados are smaller here.
> Taxes have gone down.
Are the kids school age? If so, what do you think of the public schools?
The schools are very good compared to what they had in California. We live in one the top 500 school districts in the country (there are about 10,000 of them).
Serious question:do you still vote Democrat?
Tongue-in-cheek comment that I've read somewhere is that folks flee Democrat-run cities due to high taxes and mismanagement and move elsewhere, but then continue voting Democrat to bring back the same policies they wanted to escape from.
folks flee Democrat-run cities due to high taxes and mismanagement and move elsewhere, but then continue voting Democrat
This does seem to be the case.
If you look at the voting statistics for cities where Californians are fleeing -- Boise, Las Vegas, Reno, Salt Lake City, etc -- those cities are rapidly turning blue.
But I don't know if they continue voting Democrat "to bring back" their old laws and lifestyle so much as they're just used to voting a particular way and continue to do so.
There don't seem to be a lot of people who put effort into making informed voting choices on a candidate-by-candidate basis and just go for whatever party they voted for last time.
> But I don't know if they continue voting Democrat "to bring back" their old laws and lifestyle so much as they're just used to voting a particular way and continue to do so.
I think the way people vote tends to reflect their beliefs. And generally, beliefs don't change often or drastically.
I think the way people vote tends to reflect their beliefs. And generally, beliefs don't change often or drastically.
I see a lot of people who vote based on how they've always voted, rather than based on their actual beliefs. It's part of the tribalism of it all.
Three data points:
In West Virginia there is an expression called Yellow Dog Democrat, which means that the person would vote for a yellow dog before he voted for a Republican.
In Chicago, for the better part of the last century, the policies and positions a lot of the so-called Democratic Party politicians would be considered to be very Republican in other states.
One set of my in-laws lives what would be considered by many to be a redneck lifestyle, deep in the woods, surrounded by guns and beer and American flags, and cobbled-together vehicles, and talking smack about Bernie Sanders being a Communist and such. But guess what? When they go to vote, they vote Democrat simply because they always have.
It's the reason in some elections in some places you have the option (or sometimes the requirement) of pushing one button and voting for everyone on that party's ticket, rather than being forced to choose each candidate on their own merits.
There’s not really a such thing as a candidate-by-candidate basis, certainly not these days. Candidates are reliant on party infrastructure, endorsements, and fundraising. So when the time comes to line up votes the party speaker or governor or whoever is the acting voice of the party says “jump” and everyone jumps. Voting for a Republican or a Democrat means voting for one more vote for the party line on anything that counts, so you might as well pick which party line you like better and move on with life. It’s sad that this perversely incentivizes things to not change, since it makes party endorsements all the more important.
I think a lot of the problem that "democrat" and "republican" are relative to everyone else in the area whereas the official party platform that candidates have to work toward to get $$$ is more or less nationally homogeneous.
Your neighbors in SF might think you're Newt Gingrich but relative to your new neighbors in Boise you may as well be Bernie Sanders.
I live in Henderson, NV and can at least anecdotally confirm that what you're describing is true. People moving from California, many of whom cite 'safety' reasons, maintain pro-regulation and anti-gun stances, despite Henderson's murder rate being 1/5 that of Oakland, 1/2 of LA, and 1/2 of San Francisco.
Are you proposing that Henderson is safer than these large cities because there's less gun control, rather than other factors?
I think they're proposing that Henderson's lack of California-flavor gun-control hasn't caused it to be unsafe.
This was what I was trying to communicate, albeit not as clearly as I should have!
100%. The safest cities in America have the least gun control. Maine passed constitutional carry 5 years ago with much resistance and last year was voted the safest place to live in America. Meanwhile cities like Chicago with the strictest laws are murder capitals. Liberals then say but the guns are coming from X, Y, Z! Well why aren't X, Y, Z murder capitals? Let's deal with the root of the problem and clearly it's not guns/the symptom.
Just to get my personal bias out of the way: I'm pro-gun, and strongly pro-individual freedom across the board. That goes up to the extent that I don't even care what types of weapons someone owns, so long as they don't use them to harm others.
That said, the violence problems in Democrat-run cities is not because of the guns, nor is it due to gun regulation. There were a slew of poor governmental decisions that have led to massive inequality, poor social conditions, and fostered an us-vs-them culture through the militarizing of police and criminalizing of the poor.
It turns out that if people feel cornered with no way to improve their lives or escape their poor situation, they resort to organized crime or other desperate measures.
TLDR - Crime is primarily driven by social circumstances. Criminal culture is cultivated generationally by those circumstances.
In the Northern suburbs of DFW there have been some news reports of this but more from a culture clash instead of policy point of view at the moment. Collin Country (North of Dallas) is growing tremendously with people moving in from all over the country.
It's all been positive with anecdotes like inviting "the new neighbors" to real TX bbq's and things like that but it's definitely real.
I don't think housing prices fit easily into generic-Democrats fault somehow. Which seems to be the main reason most people are moving out of the very expensive cities. Based on Bay Area vs Seattle vs Houston it seems to be mostly about do you build new buildings according to demand or not.
Houston's zoning laws and the prevailing attitudes about the role of government are not coincidental.
Or, you know, they just want to move to a smaller city. Houston's still a third as dense as LA, NY or Chicago so its not like politics are the only differences.
What is a large American city run by republicans?
Obviously this depends upon your definition of large but Colorado Springs is the second largest city in Colorado at 713,856 in the county and 464,474 city. Has historically been republican and has recalled elected officials that voted for gun control. Colorado Springs is pretty frequently in the top running as one of the best places to live.
Jacksonville, Fort Worth, etc...
Tarrant County (Fort Worth), flipped blue last election.
https://www.star-telegram.com/news/politics-government/elect...
Senators don't run city governments, though.
Which is proof of the topic on hand. The influx of Californians brought their Democrat voting behavior with them.
>>Tongue-in-cheek
it is not Tongue-in-cheek , democrats fail to make the connection to the policies they support and the effects of those policies.
See the polices are suppose to "fix" those problems and when they inevitably fail because socialism is not workable, they do not blame socialism they blame the execution, it just was not done "correctly", so if the just vote in the correct democrat this time socialism will work
Prop 13, one of the major factors in the CA housing crisis, was a Republican led initiative passed in 1978. This may come as a surprise to you, but CA was Republican leaning until fairly recently (remember Arnold Schwarzenegger?). A lot of the factors that are contributing to the current housing crisis were established long before CA turned solidly blue.
In what possible way does having a Cap on property taxes, and requiring 2/3 majority to increase taxes cause a Housing Crisis?
>>but CA was Republican leaning until fairly recently (remember Arnold Schwarzenegger?).
Arnold Schwarzenegger was a RINO, Around here we would call him a Democrat, California Democrats are the extreme of the extreme Left. So anyone Right of Stalin is a Republican in California.
Further since 1978 (as far back as I could find data) the CA legislature has been Democrat Controlled, so sure they may have had a couple of "republican" Governors, that does not make them a Republican state or mean any free market policies where passed, the Democrats have had a tight grip on the state for as long as most people have been alive
It is a complicated issue and there were number of unintended consequences. But the main one is that long time property owners (NIMBYs) are insulated from (if not down right incentivized to support) anti-development measures. Because their property tax rates were frozen at time of purchase, they do not feel the impact of rising property prices. It also has a chilling effect on housing 'liquidity', because moving out of your existing home to upsize/downsize would mean you loose your preferential tax treatment.
I added a link below that goes into some of the other issues that it created [1]. And in case you think I am trying to blame Republicans for the housing crisis, I am not. Local politics rarely align cleanly with national partisan fault lines. In California, the NIMBYs tend to be more conservative and have aligned themselves with liberal anti-gentrification and anti-development environmentalists. And the liberal leaning millennials (who are heavily impacted by the housing crisis) are aligned with right leaning pro-development groups.
Regarding your RINO comment. I think this link is relevant [2]. The current Republican party would be considered extremely right wing in any other time or in any other first world country. Universal Healthcare receives bipartisan support in every advanced economy in the world other than the US. ObamaCare, the 'radical socialist left wing policy', was originally proposed by the Heritage Foundation[3]. And Universal Basic Income was originally proposed by none other than Milton Friedman, the champion of free market economics[4]. So these 'socialists' that you deride aren't socialist at all, but rather centrist democrats pushing center-right policies.
[1] https://www.kqed.org/news/11700683/too-few-homes-is-proposit... [2] https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-republican-party-ha... [3] https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2010/apr... [4] https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-02-19/univer...
>>And Universal Basic Income was originally proposed by none other than Milton Friedman
100% false, Friedman's negative income tax WAS NOT a UBI. it was a replacement for all welfare. It was the lesser of 2 evils and if you watch any of the talks he gave on the subject it is presented just as that. Better than massive government welfare programs
Further with UBI there are "good" ways to do it, (i.e I would be in favor of a Geo-Libertarian UBI) and there are Bad ways to do it (i.e UBI paid for with Income based Taxation)
> US. ObamaCare, the 'radical socialist left wing policy', was originally proposed by the Heritage Foundation[3]
That is 100% misleading, Some parts where yes but many parts where not. 2 of the Big Differences is that the 90's plan included Tort Reform which is need to lower costs, and did not expand medicare like Obamacare did
It was also viewed as an unacceptable compromise by many republicans, the purpose of the bill was to compromise with the Democrats that wanted Single Payer, this is the exact compromise that was made for the ACA and as predicted by the Republicans in the 90's it simply gave the democrats grounds to then claim "it was not enough" and that the only option now is single payer government run healthcare.
It has more or less removed Free market alternatives from the debate which is sad
> The current Republican party would be considered extremely right wing in any other time or in any other first world country.
Wrong actually, if you look at any data the democrat party is pulled WIDELY to the left, where the Republican Party has more or less stayed the same or has shifted slightly to the left since 2000
Republicans have not changed their principles or policies in a large number of year, it is the "left" that has changed considerably.
> 100% false, Friedman's negative income tax WAS NOT a UBI
Uhhh, you are flat out wrong. They are basically the same thing[1]. Here is a link from CATO (a conservative outlet) talking about how the benefit of UBI is it would replace existing welfare programs[2]. Maybe try using google before making ridiculous claims.
> the 90's plan included Tort Reform which is need to lower costs
Tort reform was a straw man argument that was used by Republicans in a desperate attempt to explain why the ACA was not a 'conservative' policy. Pointing out small differences in policy details to try and explain away the origins of the policy is straight up dishonest. And just to be clear, tort reform was left out because it does not have a meaningful impact on health care costs[3]. Including it in the ACA would have been pointless and just added more complexity to an already complex piece of legislation. It was 100% the right thing to do.
> it simply gave the democrats grounds to then claim "it was not enough"
Largely because Republicans have continued to knee-cap the ACA at every turn. We tried to fix healthcare with a bipartisan policy, and you all threw a hissy-fit and decided to do everything in your power to make it fail. So I have zero sympathy with your single-payer fear mongering. The democrats shift towards stronger support for single payer was entirely in response to the shortcomings of the ACA, which largely happened due to Republican obstruction. You brought this on yourselves.
> Republican Party has more or less stayed the same or has shifted slightly to the left since 2000
I posted a link that was using data from a non-partisan research institute, and the conclusions of that research was that Republicans have been shifting rightward, even since 2000. Here is the link again[4]. Please show me credible non-partisan research to support your claim that the 'democrat party is pulled WIDELY to the left'. If you think the rise of Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren some how proves your point, consider this: Bernie Sanders has been in politics since the 1980s. And as mentioned in my original post, his policy proposals would be considered center-left in any other time or in any other country. The only thing that has changed in the past 25 years in American politics is the complete take over of the Republican party by overzealous ultra right-wing anti-government partisans.
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/BasicIncome/comments/6djjsj/whats_b... [2] https://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/universal-basic... [3] https://publicintegrity.org/health/analysis-the-mythical-ben... [4] https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-republican-party-ha...
>>>Uhhh, you are flat out wrong.
I am somewhat of a Friedman expect so pretty sure I am not
>>> They are basically the same thing
Not in economics they are not. Negative Income Tax is a poverty prevention plan, designed to ensure people are not living in poverty
UBI Provides a basic income FOR ALL PEOPLE, does not matter if you make 1 billion dollars, or $1 of other income everyone gets the same basic income
>>>Maybe try using google before making ridiculous claims.
I have studied economics, and most people in the Chicago and Austrian schools of economics for more than 20 years, I do not really need google to understand the difference between UBI and Negative income taxation
>>> We tried to fix healthcare with a bipartisan policy, and you all threw a hissy-fit and decided to do everything in your power to make it fail.
Well first off lets get one thing perfectly clear, I am not Republican. I am Libertarian. Republicans want far more government than I do, and I believe all income based taxation is theft. I want people to be able to protect their marijuana gardens with fully automatic machine guns. So my positions do not align with either Republicans or Democrats as both parties are generally Authoritarian in nature simply arguing over what area's of my life they want to control never arguing if they have the ethical or moral right to that control
As to "fix healthcare with a bipartisan policy" which of those exactly where suppose to fix Healthcare? Certainly not ACA.
>>> Please show me credible non-partisan research to support your claim that the 'democrat party is pulled WIDELY to the left'.
[1] https://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/pew-research-c...
[2] https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/why-the-democrats-have-...
>>> If you think the rise of Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren some how proves your point, consider this: Bernie Sanders has been in politics since the 1980s
yes socialists have always been a part of the Democrat party, a minor one. Even Bernie Sanders from 2016 and Bern Sanders in 2020 is WIDELY different having shifted FAR to the left on many issues including immigration (in 2016 is was very much against open boarders, in 2020 he is now not only for Open Boarders but giving everyone in the world Free Medical Care paid for by stealing money from US Workers if that is not extreme left well...)
In the last 4 years alone we have seen the Democrat party take a Hard Left turn and stomp on the Gas....
>>> The only thing that has changed in the past 25 years in American politics is the complete take over of the Republican party by overzealous ultra right-wing anti-government partisans
Yea,,, no. I do not see any of that, If anything in the last 25 years the Ultra Right (generally viewed as the Extreme Religious Right that wants to do things like ban Video Games and porn) have LOST large amounts of power. Of course as with any debate I guess we need to define our terms because what you "Ultra Right" to you may not be what I view as "ultra Right"
Serious question:do you still vote Democrat?
He said "Houston," so chances are the answer is yes.
People outside of Texas like to pretend that it's a solid red state. They conveniently don't bother to look at electoral maps and pretend that Austin doesn't exist so long as they can make jokes about where someone else lives.
They also said "suburb", though.
While many congressional districts in the city proper are dominated by Democrats, the suburbs usually go to the Republicans.
That's becoming less true, especially around Houston, where there were several district flips to blue in the last midterms, even with the heavy Republican gerrymandering.
https://www.kut.org/post/texas-suburbs-are-slipping-away-gop...
Texas Republicans have gerrymandered the heck out of Austin to make sure the blue stays contained.
If you think Texans pretend Austin doesn’t exist, I doubt you’ve ever been to Texas. It’s very frequently lovingly referred to as a liberal armpit, shithole, etc.
Austins problems (super high housing costs, homelessness) are often trotted out as an example of Democratic policies being the source of California’s problems.
If you think Texans pretend Austin doesn’t exist, I doubt you’ve ever been to Texas.
I said no such thing. I said people who like to stereotype Texas as Republican like to pretend Austin doesn't exist.
As for visiting Texas, I lived there for many years.
And California has some Republican districts. That doesn’t mean the people stereotyping California for being liberal are pretending they don’t exist.
Stereotypes are broad generalizations that are lucky if they are even accurate about the majority, let alone all of something.
Hello Californians, welcome to Texas! Please don't vote for the same policies that caused you to flee your state.
Texas funds most everything through property tax so there is an incentive to build.
As far as taxes go, yes voting left tends to result in that, but in my experience high housing costs is not a left vs right issue. Where I live most left-leaning voters would choose legislation that would bring down housing costs.
Every large city in this country is run by democrats. Texas is no different.
No, it's not. Ft. Worth is run by Republicans. San Diego, Jacksonville, El Paso, Oklahoma City, Fresno, Mesa, Omaha, Colorado Springs, Miami, Virginia Beach, Tulsa, Arlington...all have Republican mayors.
A mayor does not make a city. If that was the case California would be a republican state since they have had republican governors in the recent past.
Well in that case, the issue gets even more complex as you factor in whether or not a city with 4 Democrats and 3 Republicans on the council and 1 Republican mayor is a "Republican" city or a "Democrat" city.
My only gripe with the area is all of the flooding that happens regularly in the area and you never know when the next hurricane that is gonna extensively damage the area is going to happen.
Native North Carolinian checking in.
I'm from Charlotte and I can honestly say that I grew up with more friends who had parents from New York than from NC. A lot of middle class people from upstate NY settled in Charlotte due to the economic opportunities and weather.
I'd wager that this migration really started about 30 years ago, and we're seeing the numbers increase even further due to network effects. For example, we've got a sizeable community of former Buffalo residents who gather over football games at restaurants that are run by other Buffalo natives.
For what it's worth, New Yorkers seem to be very culturally compatible with North Carolinians, we get along just fine. I feel like I've seen a bit less animosity for New Yorkers in NC than I saw for Californians in Seattle. There are jokes (ie, the town of Cary in the NC Triangle is sometimes said to stand for "Containment Area for Relocated Yankees"), but it never feels like genuine resentment.
I may just be biased though because buffalo-style pizza in particular has spoiled every other style of pizza for me. Please Buffalo peeps: keep coming here and sharing your food culture with us.
Washingtonians (and moreso Idahoans) are particularly irate about Californians moving in, and have been for as long as I can remember. There are a lot of "salt of the earth" types who, regardless of political persuasion, see Californians representing big houses, loose morals, and heavy traffic. The Northwest ethos has been one of eclectic flavors of stoicism, serenity, and a nordic work ethic. Californians, in their eyes, bring a more chaotic, cutthroat energy.
I've lived in and love both states. Every native Californian I've met on their home turf assumes that the entire state of Washington shares the same microclimate as Seattle. Most Washintonians rarely wash their cars relative to California's sparkly standards.
All of this is of course changing as more generations co-mingle, but the lore remains.
> see Californians representing big houses, loose morals, and heavy traffic.
I seriously doubt any place can make a defensible claim to high morals anymore, but big houses as a stereotype for California? I think that applies way more to Idaho. Space is too expensive for most people to live in big houses in CA. If anything, they go to lower population density states like TX and the South to get the bigger houses available there.
I was referring to the big houses they can easily buy when moving to the PNW. Its very common for somebody who was struggling to afford an $800K mortgage on a 3bd/2ba in CA to get a 6bd on 2 acres with a lovely view and a smaller mortgage in the PNW.
Anecdotally most people I know who have made that move just want the modest home they couldn't afford in CA, not a mini-mansion. Many have realized that owning a huge house beyond your actual needs is a maintenance nightmare.
There were anti-Californian campaigns started in the 1970s in Oregon. SNOB (Society for the Native Oregon Born) was started in 1979. It's been going on (in the PNW) for a long time.
The Wiki article on Californication has some dates that suggest it's been a known phenomenon since the 1940s! [0]
Maybe that's what it was historically, but these days, most of the sentiment against people moving from California is because more demand raises house prices and rental costs that are already perceived as overly high, and pricing too many locals out. Cultural issues are mentioned as an afterthought, if at all.
As one of the Californians moving to the PNW, I've noticed the people who most hate those darn Californians moved from California about 10-15 years ago. I've been here about 18 months, and only run into one guy who has deep roots here and was super grumpy about Californians. I'm sure it varies though depending on exactly where you are.
>I've noticed the people who most hate those darn Californians moved from California about 10-15 years ago.
If you moved states to escape a problem and the problem followed you you'd be pissed too.
Thanks for that perspective, that makes a lot of sense.
Their fault for telling us where they went though. I'm gonna start telling people I moved to Texas and it's great. It's believable, and maybe people will move there and leave me be ;)
It's all pretty silly really since almost nobody in the PNW has roots that go deeper than 3 generations.
9 generations and counting, but people who hate "newcomers" are just uptight anyway. The attitudes of the pacific northwest are something most people can adopt in about six months, and most of the people who move here are looking for a change of pace anyway.
I find this to be a really interesting perspective. "Big houses"? Who can afford a big house in CA? "Chaotic, cutthroat energy"? I grew up on the east coast and have found CA to be much more easygoing to the point that I don't think I could go back.
I do like my loose morals, though ;)
Upstate NY and NYC proper are very different areas (might as well be different states). Upstate NY have more in common with west MA, Vermont, NH, than with folks in the NYC area (where most of NY residents live).
The difference even more than someone from Alexandria/D.C with south VA, (e.g Danville, Roanoke, Halifax County etc...).
Yeah, I've noticed that as well, which is why I mentioned "upstate" specifically. We do get people from both parts, but tbh I don't think most of us NC people can tell the difference other than by food preferences and that the people from upstate tend to be more 2nd amendment. Otherwise, both seem more similar to each to other than to southerners.
But is it wrong to call people from upstate NY "New Yorkers" - or is that term only reserved for city people? If so, what are they called?
It's not wrong, but we'll assume you think we're from the city and start trying to explain where our specific part of Upstate NY is.
Upstate New Yorkers also works fine as an alternative.
Michigan has it easy with their conveniently hand-shaped state. NYS but not NYC is a pain to describe.
Hah, I seem to have the opposite problem them.
I was meeting a co-worker who introduced herself as a "New Yorker" (from Long Island) and I told her about how a there were a lot of New Yorkers here, like one of my close friends from Syracuse.
She gave me basically the same patient response I got here about how upstate was different. So I'm trying to be more conscientious about how I use that particular demonym and the context of it. But truth be told, I tend to throw most people from the north into a pretty broad "Doesn't like sweet tea and sometimes might talk loudly" category - so I'm still not able to guess if someone is from a different part of NY unless they tell me.
Please Buffalo peeps: keep coming here and sharing your food culture with us.
For a while, I would have said that they already sent you all the food culture they could. But I passed through Buffalo on a road trip a few months ago, and I gotta say, it's got a very hip vibe these days. Went to a great brewpub for dinner, and a local ice cream joint for dessert serving homemade ice cream.
They might be shipping you more food culture yet!
I know a lot of these conversations are about families and older people than me, so an anecdote from the POV of a 26 year old
I just moved from Durham, NC back to New England after a year (Moved to NYC specifically, this is my first time in a truly large city)
I can't for the life of me figure out why anyone in my age group (and in tech) would want to move to Durham/Raleigh from NYC, except for raising a family
The cost of living in these places New Englanders and Californians are flooding has been shooting through the roof faster than the standard of living, which is staying steady to dropping as gentrification and population growth causes very real problems with traffic, crime, and homelessness.
Ironically, the low taxes that draw people to most of these places are a result of conservative policies, the same of which lead to limited infrastructure spending and ability to handle all this growth.
-
Sure I pay 40% more for less space, but I don't need a car anymore, I can still go out to nature on the weekends, I can still go out to nature on the weekends, food scene on my surrounding few blocks is equivalent to the whole of Durham (and paradoxically cheaper, CoL calculators compare things like milk and bread, but when there's a restaurant on every corner, pricing is somewhat competitive), there so many activities, the list goes on.
Also the elephant in the room for all these low COL area conversations is savings. I can save the equivalent of my entire paycheck from Durham every month, and still live off what's left when subtracted from my NYC salary.
And while it's true NYC is more expensive, there's no rule that says one day when I'm retiring and trying to live off my savings I have to live in NYC.
A dollar is a dollar. If you take a pay hit based on lower COL, you're making a long-term sacrifice based on your current situation.
I'm not a fan of Durham, but I really like downtown Raleigh. The food is good, the people are friendly, and the local music scene is surprisingly vibrant. I've met at least two young people in Raleigh who are originally from NYC, a couple from Philadelphia too who said they don't want to move back.
The things those young people seem to have in common: - Work low-skilled service industry jobs - Have involvement in the music or art scene - Are unhappy with standard of living available to them in "affordable" parts of bigger cities (ie, crime + pollution, not being able to afford a car for trips / gigging).
So that's one example of the type of young person who would prefer to move to Raleigh. I don't know if they're the type who will stay long-term, but there's definitely an appeal to a certain set of people. Highly paid techies who can work anywhere may not get much out of it. Personally, I just enjoy being here because I'm from NC and like the culture and my friends and family here. I might consider a bigger east-coast city in the future - but the west coast in general has completely lost its appeal.
90% of people become parents [0]. Raising children is difficult in a city where single people struggle.
[0] https://www.quora.com/What-percentage-of-people-become-paren...
Yeah... I specifically prefaced the comment with "most people in these conversations are talking about families" and specified in tech.
Even if it's just for a few years, the amount of money you can save up by living in these high COL cities is insane (for tech workers at least)
Honestly, part of it is I don't know how long that's going to be true. If we have a sudden tech bust, I'd rather be sitting on a large amount of savings and trying to find work anywhere it pops up than on a smaller amount that won't sustain me if I have to move to a high CoL area
If you want to explore this exodus yourself, one of the things you can do is use the uhaul.com website. They have dynamic pricing based on availability and demand. At the current time, renting a 26' truck to move one-way from Mountain View CA to Dallas TX will cost you $4,230. But driving the opposite direction will only cost you $846.
At those prices one is better off just buying a trailer and keeping it.
Hell, I wonder if you could buy a used 26' truck in Mountain View, do the move, and sell it in Dallas for more than $4,230 less than you paid for it.
Im sure you can.
My wife and I moved here to California (my home state) mid-2018 from Michigan (her home state). We moved out here for a startup, but shortly after relocating the founder ran out of money and could no longer pay me. This was a huge shock because on the surface everything was fine and dandy. Got totally bamboozled.
I still remember walking into our co-working spot to pick up some mail and was told that I should leave the premisis becuase our bills were way past due and I could not have access to our mail. I was like uhh wow holy shit, he isn't paying you either. That was a surreal moment.
After the move and the shit show of the startup, our savings had basically evaporated. I had to get to work ASAP. I am very fortunate to have a support group of friends and family and was able to land a gig working on a Rails-based ecommerce site for a furniture company.
Fast forward to now and I am still a freelance consultant with usually 3-4 clients or projects happening simultaneously. I have done pretty well for myself, but the last year was one of the most stressful and chaotic years of my life. I am seriously struggling with my mental health.
Throughout the entire time we've been able to save a little more money, but all-in-all we are pissing away a tremendous amount of cash every month on our rent and other expenses that are a little higher here in CA. Moving here to Orange County was predicated on the killer salary from the new gig.
The current plan is to head back to Michigan. My wife's family is all there, so as far as a state to flee to it makes the most sense. Our rent will cut in half for what will be a far bigger property with a lot more breathing room. An idea we are tossing around is buying land and building our own home from scratch, which is something we could never even imagine doing here in California.
I think that I have a tougher time appreciating all the wonderful things our state has to offer. Having grown up here I just see all the traffic and density and lack of breathing room and want to head for the hills. It makes the higher living cost tougher to swallow. Plus, knowing we'll really never be able to afford the kind of property and home that we know we can have over in Michigan, it makes sense to get out of here without planting deep roots again.
I went through something that rhymes with what you went through. My wife got in USC and I found a job in Irivine. We moved here and things were okay for a while, about 2 years, and then the job was gone. That was a very stressful 4 months. We stuck it out, I commuted to Santa Monica from Irvine everyday ( 6 hour commute by train). Then I eventually found the gig I am at now and have been for the past two years. We go back every Christmas and 4th of July to visit our family's but I have to say everytime I land back at SNA I feel so much relief I am back in CA.
Just my two cents.
> Having grown up here I just see all the traffic and density and lack of breathing room and want to head for the hills.
And that's why so many people live in those WUI areas (wildland-urban interface) which is one of the factors why the amount of property damage (and human lives) has increased from fire risk over the years.
> An idea we are tossing around is buying land and building our own home from scratch, which is something we could never even imagine doing here in California
Doable in places like Joshua Tree or Quincy (NorCal).
There are empty lots for sale even in dense parts of LA.
I am curious what a "killer salary" looks like in Orange County, compared to LA and SFBA (assuming it's a tech job).
The base was 230k which in retrospective is not really killer for this area. In hindsight I should have known that this was an unreasonable salary for the size of the company and its stage, and so it was kind of a red herring.
Suffice to say I won't ever make this mistake again.
Where in Michigan are you going to be moving back to? Ann Arbor has gotten more expensive since 2018, although you probably won't have a problem affording an apartment even in downtown since you work in tech.
Illinoisan here, have a lot of family and friends that have escaped. Escape is literally how they talk about it too. Most of the complaints I hear is about cost of living and property taxes. All the costs and taxes of a state like California, without any of the beautiful weather (except for 3 months of the year during summer). It's a big issue, and part of the reason, I believe, that they just legalized recreational cannabis.
The main difference I see between Illinois and CA/NY is that the cost of housing is MUCH more reasonable so that the overall cost of living in the area is MUCH more reasonable.
It's not more reasonable when you consider the property taxes. A $350,000 house looks great until you factor in $10,000 annual property taxes.
Even when taking property taxes into account it is. look up how much comparable homes to that 350k home in illinois are in NY/CA and how much their property taxes are in addition to that significantly higher home prices.
And you have significantly fewer opportunities to earn income.
3% FMV property tax is pretty rough, but do you get a tolerable school system as part of that bargain?
I don't get this at all. Housing is easily half the price of California, and so is income tax.
Pretty easy to figure out in California. High cost of living, crime is out of control, homeless taking over parts of the city. Our state government is either unwilling or unable to address these issues. So sale your overpriced property and move to a state with more sensible policies and taxes. Seems pretty reasonable.
I'm a native Californian and everyone in my family badly wants to move for all of those reasons.
Crime has ticked up slightly compared to the lows, but it has comparable rates to the 60s right now. Before the explosion of crime in the 70s and 80s
Many people aren’t bothering to report crimes now. The police won’t do anything about it. You can pretty much get away will minor property crimes/theft now without any repercussions.
If we're making assertions contrary to data and treading on unfalsifiable positions, then I suppose the source is anecdotes, and I suppose mine are as good as any:
I lived in Los Angeles in the early 90s for two years, and visited frequently through the rest of the decade. Experienced petty crime on at least 3 occasions, had a few close calls with violent crime, saw the Rodney King riots unfold, and heard some pretty crazy stories.
I've spent the last 8 years in LA... I've experienced zero instances of petty crime. I know it's not gone from some conversations I've had and everyone here has their take on LA's various problems, but across demographics nearly everyone I know agrees that this city is definitely a safer, more chill, higher quality of life place than it was 20-30 years ago. Except in one regard: housing is less affordable -- how much less depends on which boom/bust cycle you're looking at and who you're looking at, but definitely less affordable. So, not coincidentally, homelessness has become a much more serious issue.
The weirdest thing is that this is apparently happening with a net outflow from the state. Rents up over 60% with a stable/decreasing demand pool for housing is an odd dynamic and likely means this is no ordinary supply problem.
I can't speak to the Bay Area or the rest of California, but that's what things look like in LA.
>The weirdest thing is that this is apparently happening with a net outflow from the state. Rents up over 60% with a stable/decreasing demand pool for housing is an odd dynamic and likely means this is no ordinary supply problem.
Only a net migration of domestic residents. After factoring in natural population growth and foreign immigration you still have a growing population.
Depends on where you live. Hancock park? Sure, no petty crime other than burglaries. Pretty much anywhere else but the most bougie neighborhoods are rife with petty crime.
When I flew for the holidays my bike was stolen out of a gated garage. LAPD isn't going to jump on a grenade for my bike. Cars parked along the street are regularly targeted for smash and grabs. The nearby encampment maintains a cache of torn apart electric scooters and bike parts (maybe mine is in there too). I've been on a bus that was 'ambushed' for a bike mounted in the rack out front. Last week on the train two unstable men made eye contact and started posturing and raising their voices, one pulled a shiv out of his pocket and luckily the other one fled the car, but that could have been bad. Life on the west side, but I still wouldn't trade it for anything.
Huh. My recent time's been on the west side too, my neighborhoods have been decidedly middle-of-the-road (def not most bougie), transport stops close, homeless people camping nearby fairly common, sometimes in alcoves of my current building. Still haven't drawn the property crime lottery. The biggest thing for me, though, has been visiting places like Carson, Gardena, and Inglewood realizing they seem safer (though safer than the early 90s might not be a really high bar).
Sorry about the bike, though, maybe that's a signal for me to be a little less casual with stuff in the garage, and I definitely feel you about encounters with people on public transport.
California has a net outflow of domestic migration, but once you include total immigration from the rest of the world, California has a net inflow and population growth above the fertility rate.
My neighborhood is plagued with crime. Cars getting broken into repeatedly, stuff getting stolen from houses. Businesses getting broken into. This is around Long Beach.
Or the police will over-react. I wouldn't call LAPD on someone in anything but a life-or-death situation because they are so likely to escalate the situation rather than resolve it.
This is simply not true, not for the entire state. Don't forget CA is a huge state, it's not just SF and LA.
I did see this pattern in SF though, minor crimes go largely ignored.
CA Proposition 47 made petty theft to be a misdemeanor and not a felony anymore. And in result police will spend fewer resources on something that can end up as just a citation.
Is there any city in the US that your argument could not be applied to?
If [x] has a low crime rate, that's just because people aren't reporting crimes.
Cost of living is real. Weather is real. Outside of a few highly nomadic ultra-high net worth types the tax advantages of moving states is just too trivial in absolute terms for most people to bother with. The idea that masses of people are moving for lower taxes seems like a rhetorical invention of the WSJ editorial page versus anything rooted in reality.
Disagree strongly on taxes. Moving from CA to WA, could save a family making $100,000 nearly $1,000 per month.
ca.gov says state taxes for someone making $100k are $6,466.00. That's less than half your claim.
Not to mention states without income tax fund themselves somehow. There are other taxes which partially offset the lack of state income tax.
CA governments, city and state, have more debt (unfunded defines benefit pension benefits) than WA does though, so in the future the taxes will continue rising.
Yup. I just moved from CA to WA. It was like an instant ~10% raise of state taxes alone.
CA's income tax is very high. The effective tax rate is 7%+ for most tech workers. That's a huge amount of income to give up, especially if you're comparing to a state with no or low income tax.
Should be higher imo
Nobody is preventing you from paying more. Problem solved.
> tax advantages of moving states is just too trivial
It’s not. For a family with $85,000 a year, getting rid of state tax could mean an extra several hundred dollars a month in income.
> For a family with $85,000 a year, getting rid of state tax could mean an extra several hundred dollars a month in income.
It could, if you could take the $85,000/year job with you. Pay for similar skills in the lower CoL states is also notably lower, though.
Which is accounted for by the lower CoL. I've had a couple of recruiters call me about jobs in San Francisco so I checked the CoL, and the CoL difference between San Fran and Houston is over a 100%. And companies weren't willing to pay double the rates they are here.
If you're turning a profit in Houston, and you double what you're spending, you don't need to double your pay to be turning a larger profit.
You'll spend the time and effort to move for a couple grand a year? Does that really make sense? How many years does it take to break even?
Spoken like someone who is out of touch.
Yes, for a family making $85K, having an extra $3-4K in your pocket every year is a big deal.
How much does it cost to move your family from California to Texas? How many days are you not getting payed? How many weeks is your SO unemployed? How long are you paying for two rents or mortgages? It just doesn't seem like $3k is a net gain to me.
I don't think people are quitting their jobs to save 3k in taxes. But when they are considering taking a job in California for 100k or in Texas for 85k it moves the needle in addition to cost of living.
Spoken like someone who has never moved.
It makes sense when you are also significantly decreasing your cost of living at the same time in addition to cutting taxes and want to purchase a home something that really isn'y possible in NYC or the bay on that income but is easily possible in a state with low cost of living.
Cost of living, sure, but in this thread we're discussing how significant the tax aspect actually is.
We're talking a couple hundred a month. That's a small car payment for Christ sake. That's a huge influence on people's monthly budget and likewise a significant quality of life (from stress reduction if nothing else) improvement.
It doesn't need to actually be beneficial to be a reason people do it. As you can see from the replies, there's certainly a perceived benefit.
> New York, California and Illinois have been hemorrhaging residents.
Well, no. At least California (about which I see a lot of these stories) is gaining residents. Yes, it has negative net interstate migration. But it has both positive net natural population growth and positive net total migration, because the positive net international migration more than offsets negative net interstate migration.
So, white flight?
> So, white flight?
Given the racial dynamics of wealth and the fact that the interstate inmigration is wealthy and the interstate outmigration is less wealthy, probably not “white flight” as that is usually conceived.
I’m curious about inter-California migration as well.
I live in SF and wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of people in SF move to LA.
Personally I would be more than happy moving to San Diego. In my opinion the best city on the west coast and relatively cheap for a coastal city.
I find it interesting that Illinois and New York's leavers seem to have much more income banding with respect to destinations than California's, which in turn seems to at least partially be related to Californians not going to Florida.
My first instinct is to assume that well-off-ish retirees in Illinois and New York retire to Florida, while in California they just stay in California. (Though other possibilities exist: for example, California leavers could be in two groups for most of the exit states, and so happen to average incomes out more than for Illinois or New York.)
I also find it interesting that the income-destination pairs of leavers for those two states seems like they might indicate potential easy presumptions about general political and socioeconomic status compared to California. Curious if there's actual data backing supporting these obvious presumptions.
We made a map using domestic migration data: https://twitter.com/LechMazur/status/1202655115628466177
It seems obvious that states with the largest populations would see the most people leave. This graphic would be more interesting if the scale were per 1,000 capita.
I tend to agree, but how would you weight it between states?
Per 1000 capita in the source state or the destination state?
Also that would overweight the low pop density states, assuming there's a baseline immigration rate, painting an entirely different picture with the Dakotas/Wyoming/etc.
the direction (your arrows) are too small and hard to see, yet the most important part of a visualization
perhaps put the arrow at the end, that way one can see which connection is a source and which one is a target
The ends are actually pointed towards the destination state. I think the direction is pretty visible once you expand https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ELCwc3xWkAEEbgW?format=jpg&name=... but point taken, thanks.
The numbers are shown in tables with Net Migration (taxpayers and dependents) and their Average Income of departing taxpayers.
So 75,386 (taxpayers and dependents) moved from IL to FL and their average income was $135K.
That seems to imply that they all took their high paying jobs with them somehow.
This may be slightly skewed by the effect of retirees (people earn the most before they retire). Illinois has high taxes and terrible weather. A lot of affluent people leave the state and retire to Florida. I'm not sure if the article's analysis is really concerned with these nuances.
The data would be more interesting if it factored out people retiring. I'm actually a bit surprised that people from New York and Illinois seem to stay on the East Coast by moving to Florida for the most part. But, in any case, I expect that the Nevada, Arizona, and Florida migrations in particular are driven by retirement to a significant degree.
That said, anecdotally, I do know a fair number of people who have left California and essentially no one who has moved there absent a work-related reason to live there. The state has things going for it but also a lot of negatives--especially CoL in a lot of places.
> Illinois has high taxes and terrible weather
Illinois has a flat income tax; at $135k income you would only be beat by the states that have no income tax (like Florida). Most of the states on that list also have weather that is either terrible in the summer or terrible in the winter, so I doubt that weather is really a factor in people moving.
I had a talk recently with someone who moved from Chicago to Atlanta. He said it's the property taxes that really kill you there. Allegedly, by moving to GA he decreased his property taxes enough to put an extra 100k towards the mortgage for the same monthly payment. I don't know the hard numbers on that myself, but it was enough to convince me that buying property in Chicago was probably a bad idea.
It's not hard to get that data. The tax rates are public knowledge.
Cook county has just over a 2% per year property tax.
https://www.cookcountyclerk.com/sites/default/files/pdfs/201...
That document shows how varied the property taxes are in Illinois. Moving from "Chicago" to Atlanta for tax reasons is believable depending on whether the person is moving from the City of Chicago or the Suburbs of Chicago.
> On average, the 2018 property tax bill for a home with a market value of $200,000 would be: * City of Chicago: $3272 * North and Northwest Suburbs (Cook County): $4741 * South and West Suburbs (Cook County): $6268 * Dupage County Suburbs: $4556
My sister used to live out in Kane County and her house, which she sold for about 33% less than my downtown condo is worth, was almost double my property taxes. Nearly 1.5 hours driving from downtown!
Illinois has massive levels of debt, which mean ever increased taxes and decreasing government services for the next 20+ years. And they’re going to hit you hard if you’re upper middle class, since that’s who has the money.
Same situation with NJ and CT and KY.
If I was investing the next 5+ years of my life somewhere, I would check the reports below:
https://www.truthinaccounting.org/news/detail/financial-stat...
https://www.truthinaccounting.org/news/detail/2019-financial...
You'd be surprised; I've met plenty of people that talk about how much they like warm weather and want to move south for that reason. Personally, I lived in Arizona for a while and have no desire to live in a hot climate again.
I think it's the snow that really gets people. It just interferes with everyday life in a way heat doesn't (ie, limiting car usage and driving safety until it's cleared). This mostly applies to car-oriented lifestyles though - since walking in high heat vs snowy or icy conditions are both quite risky.
Also, there is actually a pretty strong correlation between shoveling snow and heart attacks in older folks: https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/can-shoveling-snow-put-y... . So it definitely makes sense to relocate if that is a factor.
These sound like good reasons not to live in a car-based, suburban lifestyle. People in Manhattan don't have these problems.
What about property taxes?
So, the guy who sold RxBar ($600m in 2017) moved to Florida from Illinois (Chicago) in this time span, and I'm wondering thinking if that's partly why the Illinois to Florida avg income is so high compared to every other number on the state to state tables.
Edit for additional context, RxBar had no outside funding or venture capital, so that $600m went to the founders and maybe other early employees. https://www.inc.com/robbie-abed/this-chicago-startup-sold-it...
Having left Orange County California for Phoenix Arizona in early 2019, I definitely plan on staying. We can easily afford a house, the community here is unbelievably better (many young large families, an amazing Diocese), lower income and property taxes, cheaper gas, constitutional carry. Sure it may get a little hot in the summer but you can easily drive up to Flagstaff to escape the heat, and, in the winter, go skiing for much cheaper than Big Bear.
Having lived in Arizona for 3 years, IMO, it is one of the worst places to live in the US
Why?
I'd like to cordially invite more folks to leave New York to make room (and depressed housing prices) for the rest of us. Thanks in advance!
After you, sir.
I live in NYC now but I dont know how long I will stay here. You cant really buy an apartment for < 1MM and the taxes are out of control. NY State has to be one of the worst states to live in right now. NYC even has a mansion tax on any house purchased over 1MM dollars, and manhattan has a huge amount of empty high end condos now because no one wants to buy them
To me its fascinating the growth of state's pop. TX is sucking up people so fast. NY has hardly changed in 70 years.
State 1850 1900 1950 2020
NY 3 7 17 19
IL 1 4.8 8.7 13
CA .1 1.5 10.5 39
TX .2 3 8 29
FL .1 0.5 2.7 21According to your Numbers from 1950 to 2020, Texas only went up 3.625x.
CA went up 3.71x and Florida did 7.77x.
Definitely grew compared to New york, but hardly sucking up people so fast
You're right, just the last 10-30 years CA pop growth has stopped while TX has continued at 20%/decade.
Texas has built housing. NY essentially hasn't.
That's not true. NY more than NYC. NYC has been building housing and the rest of the state has plenty.
scale nyc housing construction to a per capita level and it's actually pretty paltry
And this sucks for the rest of the country because these people have no sepf awareness and will vote for the same dumb policies that screwed up their original homes.
Having left NYC for Texas 5 years ago, I can confirm the grass is greener on the other side.
I'd assume that grass was brown and dead. (But no state taxes would be nice.)
I'd assume that grass was brown and dead.
Only if everything you know about Texas you learned from cartoons.
It rains all the damn time on the coast. You dont even have to water your lawn and it stays green.
The tech job market in Dallas and Houston is pretty hot.
How's the water? One of the main things that scared me out of Texas living is it's too hot and the water is algae tasting.
I currently live in Houston.
I don't drink tap water directly. It goes through a brita water filter. After that, it's generally fine.
As for too hot... I 100% agree. I'd move if I could keep my job. I want to move north where it's cold. But I don't want to move where people are.
I feel like North Carolina is the sweet spot right now. I live in Wisconsin so it's hit or miss on summers and winters being too cold or too hot. NC has very comparable summer weather and warmer winter weather, also it doesn't have absurd cost of living like the west coast or NYC.
Having lived in NYC, SV, London and Chicago, living in Austin has been dream.
That being said, it's pretty clear it's heading towards Seattle levels, which is quickly headed towards SF levels of societal issues.
What about it has been a dream? Very curious as I live in nyc right now and want to make a change. How has NYC stacked against these other places?
I love NYC.
Here are the downsides of NYC that I don't miss (relative to Austin):
- High income tax
- Far from anything west coast (skiing, mountains, outdoors, SF/LA, etc)
- Cold winters. Much easier to get to the caribean in the winter.
- Hard to get "out" of the city during the summer that doesn't have stupid logistics (e.g. hamptons). You can get to one of the lakes 15~60 min depending on where you live in Austin.
- Everyone talks about work (austin, people don't care what you do for a living)
Downsides of Austin:
- It's a small town. If you're social, you'll know everyone in about a year.
- Opportunity is limited.
- Satellite airport (gotta connect via HOU and DFW)
- Summers get HOT.
In't it too hot on Summers....? How do you deal with the heat...
What part of Texas, and how has it been better?
As someone from the northeast, I'm intrigued!
Can't stand the rampant cell towers there, where they literally let people have one, give them money and only the neighbors that live there get screwed.
Greener, but also regressive and generally playing catch-up to progress. Texas ranks in the bottom half of states on most quality-of-life rankings.
Define regressive and progressive. I see these terms used all the time but I've never seen a description that matched the words.
"progress"
Is that why net immigration to Texas is positive?
On what quality of life metrics does Texas rank poorly?
Texas is a really big and diverse state. There are very large remote areas, for example, with poor access to medical care and the schools in some areas may not be up to national averages.
However, I presume that you will not be choosing to move to a rural county. Houston has the worlds largest medical center and the neighborhood where I live has some of the best public schools in the country.
The web sites and newspapers that rank cities do so by using some sort of strange linear combination of factors, like so many points for having four distinct seasons and so many points for having professional sports teams and so many negative points for having more police per capita, etc.
I think that the best way to judge location attractiveness is to look at how people vote with their feet. The states that have a net gain in population have been judged to be better places to live.
> The states that have a net gain in population have been judged to be better places to live.
It depends how wealthy you are. If you make enough money to afford all the niceties of CA, then you won’t see a reason to move to TX.
What's the story behind the more affluent going to Wyoming? Would love to understand this
That's some weak reporting. It says it's easy to setup shell corps with a registered agent. That's true for most states and is perfectly legal.
They should have discussed how WY makes it easier than most states to avoid being directly connected in any documentation of the shell corp. This makes it harder to track down the real owners in cases when they're being used illegally or sought for litigation.
okay but you don't have to entirely relocate your home there do you? this doesn't sound right
At least one factor is one of the lowest property tax rates in the country. When you have no mortgage, housing prices don't drive your monthly burn rate as much as property taxes. It changes the picture completely on what you look at when choosing where to go.
I'm guessing there is a lot of cheap land near beautiful nature, skiing, hiking, etc that people tend to do in retirement.
Probably a tax dodge / vacation home thing. I have no actual information to back this up, but usually when rich people start moving somewhere it's to save money.
Californians arent all moving just due to housing costs, overall cost of living there is pretty nuts and unless you work in big tech, your salary is not that great. State plus federal income tax alone was a deal breaker for me when I was there.
State plus federal income tax alone was a deal breaker for me when I was there.
Especially now that state income tax is no longer Federally deductible. I've found it very surprising that people on both the pro-tax and anti-tax sides don't make a bigger stink about that.
That and property tax on high-value housing is basically no longer deductible either.
I think Republicans backed this plan hoping it would create pressure to decrease taxes in blue states. Instead, the double taxation has only incensed taxpayers like me.
I live in California.
An interesting thing we learned is that if we move out of the country for, say, 3 years, unless we set up our lives so we have no intention of remaining California residents, the state will continue to pursue us for income taxes even while overseas. Federal law has a different system which makes more sense -- a tax exemption while overseas.
Given that we expect to spend a substantial amount of time overseas in the future for personal reasons, I'm thinking we may need to move to a zero tax state in the US first, just to get out from under the sway of California.
I'm curious if anyone else on HN has experience with this.
This is a misunderstanding of how CA tax law works.
If you move to say, Nevada, before moving to China or wherever, but you always intended to return to CA afterwards, then for state tax purposes you never stopped being a CA resident. So, for example, if you keep a storage locker with your furniture in Cupertino for when you return, you clearly never intended to permanently leave and so you're still a CA resident for tax purposes.
If you don't plan on coming back to CA after moving to China or wherever, you stop being a CA resident immediately and only owe state taxes for the part of the year you still lived in CA. And it's easy to show that you are no longer a CA resident, for example, by selling all of your CA-based property.
If you own a house in California and visit it often, even if you are living in China, they might still claim you are on the hook for California taxes. I guess you really have to move out and then rent the house out or sell it to be off the hook.
The biggest issue with CA and moving abroad temporarily is that CA doesn't have a foreign earned income exclusion or foreign tax credit. So you really don't want to be a CA resident if you need to move out of the USA.
Since I moved to Switzerland (and then China, ironically enough) from CA, it was something I had to look into...I wasn't sure if they would come back and say I was a CA resident even though I really had no ties there. In particular, if I wanted to vote, I could have in CA, but that would have been a bad mistake. On the other hand, I wasn't eligible to vote in any other state, so I spent 11 years not voting. When I finally left China, it was for a job in CA...which also gave me some pause as I didn't intend to return to CA in the first place.
Thanks. It's too bad people decided to downvote me. Probably because of my username, but who knows. In any event, do you have thoughts on solutions?
Claim that your permanent residence to Washington state (or some other income-tax free state) if you go abroad. Actually, make it so by moving to WA first, and then going abroad. Also, not all states are like CA, some do support foreign tax credits at least.
I hadn't looked but tbf that's a pretty shit username.
In my experience, California still tries to claim tax residency based on owning a house there (on the basis that it is not a rental in this case), despite moving out of State a decade prior and visiting infrequently. It doesn't matter if you own a house, have a job, and all the other accoutrements of a life in another State, they'll still harass you about paying income tax. Even if you are staying in the country but in another State, it still might be a good idea to dispose of all CA-based property.
When it comes to taxes, California has a serious stalker vibe.
Obviously I was talking about the situation where one doesn't want to sell all property in CA and wants to be able to return to CA from time to time, maybe for months at a time.
Anyway, our current thinking is to establish residence in Nevada (probably in Tahoe) and then go to Europe from there. Thanks for the downvotes.
If you're returning for "months at a time", they'll probably still hit you with a tax bill. Not a tax lawyer, though, so take it for what it's worth.
Not sure why this was down-voted, but this has been one of my concerns about ever moving to CA in the first place--I wouldn't want to be stalked by this predatory creature for the rest of my life. (And have already experienced this to a lesser degree with a couple of other-coast states.)
Yeah, I was wondering how that'd apply to getting accepted in YC... Maybe you intend to go back home after the 3 months or locate to another city big in tech like Austin or Boston. Wonder if California would try to say you were a resident, however I feel like YC would be more similar logically to how college students are treated since usually you are still a resident of where your parents live, unless you intend to get a job and live where you went to school after graduation.
In that case, if it comes up, I think California would be looking at your living situation: are you in a temporary living situation, like a long term stay hotel, or did you rent an apartment and move your stuff. Did you forward your mail and change your accounts? Are you visiting home, or are people visiting you in California. What did you actually do after the YC period, etc.
If you're living and working in California, there's not a whole lot of difference in taxation between a part-year resident and a non-resident who happens to be working in the state often; it's more of a problem when California considers you a full year resident and you're actually working somewhere else. For residents, during the period of residency, all income is treated as California source income, but for non-residents, California only taxes income that is actually from a California source (basically earned income from working in California, or gains on property in California).
Even if you're considered a resident during YC, you wouldn't be taxed on non-California source income before you moved in, or after you moved out. It's usually not a problem when you legitimately move; it's more of a problem when you keep a house in California, and visit frequently, and still get your hair cut in California, still vote in California, etc... Or in the case that you move overseas --- there's a presumption for US citizens that an overseas move is not a permanent move, and that when you come back, you'll return to the last state that you resided in, and many states with all-source taxation for residents will make a strong suggestion that you're still a resident, until you establish residency in another state.
California has one way out:
California allows a domiciled taxpayer to be taxed as a nonresident of the state if they are outside of California for an uninterrupted period of at least 546 days under an employment related contract, unless they have intangible income of greater than $200,000, or the principal reason for their absence is tax avoidance.1 The employment related contract can be in another country or another state. The taxpayer is also allowed to have up to 45 days of presence in the state each tax year before they no longer can claim the safe harbor. A person can start filing as a nonresident on the presumption that their out-of-state assignment will last the required 18 months; but if for some reason their foreign employment terminates early and the 546 day requirement will not be met, any tax years for which the taxpayer treated themselves as a nonresident must be refiled as a resident and all taxes owed for that period must be paid.
(https://www.amexpattax.com/news/alleviating-double-taxation-...)
this largely depends on your future plans, such as if you plan to return upon your return to the US. my non-professional recommendation to you is to minimally get a lease w/ witness while signing it in new state, new drivers' license, and utility bills in your name with non-trivial activity. obviously this is not free, but consider it insurance and vastly cheaper than 11% + penalty backtaxes on CA income.
obviously you are welcome to skimp out on any one of these, but you'll have trouble convincing auditors you're a resident without it. note that NYC tax authorities have solicited location data for purposes of 183 day rule, etc.; i am not an expert in CA but precedent is there.
Yep, I heard of this too. The guy who helped invent the processor moved to Nevada to an apartment, and California tried to say that an apartment isn't a permanent residence and stalked the guy even sending state employees to dig through his trash. He ended up suing California in Nevada and a judge ordered the state to pay him a lot of money, but the state found a loop hole to wiggle out of paying what the judge ordered.
New York is supposed to be very aggressive too. So say you left New York and left items in storage, the state might say you never left.
Same with going to college or the military, you are still considered a resident of your last state since it's assumed your heading back home after college and during the summer breaks, unless you decide to live and stay where you go to college after instead of returning home then you'd need to take steps to change your domicile and move your stuff. One of the reasons you don't have to change your license after 30 or so days, same as someone on vacation since they intend to return home and not living where you are visiting.
I know digital nomads and full time RVers run into this issue, since you are technically homeless for living in a vehicle but still need a driver license and registration somewhere, but a few states are friendly to full time RVers, with South Dakota being the easiest to setup domicile where they only require you to rent a PMB and spend a night at a hotel or campground but all about intent. Some states won't help you unless multiple proofs or you get assistant from a homeless shelter. So if you retired buying a half a million dollar RV, the state considers you the same as a homeless person living on a park bench even if you don't consider yourself homeless.
So you should sell your house, take all your stuff but if you want to keep it in storage rent storage in your new state, update bank to the new state if it's a national bank - if it's a local only bank or credit union need to close your account, update your will for the new state, cancel or switch gym membership if a national gym (like planet fitness, change your home club to your new state) and other steps. Then estate taxes too. I know I was reading once some man who lived in NJ rented a locker in NY and New York decided he was a resident because of that. Then some places will claim you as resident based on where you purchase a grave plot. Seems like this stuff can be tricky, especially the richer you are. I know rich people with multiple homes, domicile issues seem big, but even people who live in RVs have to plan for this. For example recently President Trump declared Florida as his domicile instead of Florida since he owns properties in both states.
Most people only have one house, so that's both their domicile and residence. Then if you are famous, your family get to profit from your likeness when you die, so say you were Elvis, and courts ruled that's based on the state you were domiciled in. Tennessee for example is much more protective and allows family to profit the longest compared to other states, as remember reading someone died and family was trying to argue if they were really a Tennessee or California resident.
So domicile is based on both intent and action. Kinda interesting someone who lives in a RV has to understand and do the same legal steps as a multi-millionaire with multiple houses, but I guess they never considered people would live in RVs, or work remotely traveling. Probably Americans working and living overseas is a minority too, but some states like California don't want to let their residents go. I know someone in a RV group posted they left South Carolina to retire and RV full time seeing the country, and haven't been back to SC for over a year, and the state still wanted to tax them over 6,000 and they charge property taxes on vehicles. Then VA considers a RV a luxury and taxes them extra compared to cars even if your RV is your home. Then someone from Michigan didn't want to change states to one of the friendlier ones, so rented a mailbox and changed his license online, later to get a threatening letter from the DMV since they didn't consider it a valid address, leaving them the option of switching states or using a friend or relatives address. Then I guess after a full time RVer switches domicile, then legally they are just on a long vacation since SD says you have to return once every 5 years.
I did move to Puerto Rico, there is a small and growing tech ecosystem there and growing. A lot of tax incentive and flights to Miami and nyc are cheap. Rents are cheap and this is a good deal for remote workers
If I’m honest, as a young professional from Florida I always envied those able to uproot and move to the west coast. My whole family (both mine and my wife’s) is here on the east coast, and I spent a lot of years somewhat resentful of the missed opportunities.
Today, at the age of 35, my position has completely reversed. If anything, with the advent of the remote workplace, I’d rather be in a low cost area such as the one I live in, and the “opportunities” I’m missing out on these days just don’t seem so attractive anymore.
Florida's upsides: No Sales Tax. If you're not looking for waterfront, housing is super affordable. Amazing place if you're single.
Florida's Downsides: Homeless are more aggressive than in SF. Florida Man. Frequently 10% sales tax in most places due to lack of income tax. Higher property taxes if you're in a really progressive area. You're swapping out earthquakes for hurricanes. A lot of "Keeping up with the Jones'" mentality here. Not a great place for tech.
I'm still trying to understand how it all works in the USA, so please bear with me. What do you mean by "No Sales Tax", then go on to say "Frequently 10% sales tax"?
Clearly that is wrong. There is no income tax.
The sales tax is 6% to the state, and counties can increase it for their own purposes, up to a maximum of 8%. The average is 6.65%. At certain times in summer, school supplies and hurricane supplies are 0%. Grocery items are 0%.
Yup -- my apologies -- No Income tax.
I think they probably mean no income tax.
Besides the usual issues with SF, Bay Area .. really California: homeless, cost of living, fires (health), earthquake one of the most concerning aspect for me are taxes! You pay tons of state taxes to get pretty much nothing in return.
I and my wife have 2 years of run away. Wait for my kid to finish the pre-school cycle, after which we are out of here.
We have already begun to look into alternatives and evaluating pro/cons and yes Texas comes as one of the top choices along with Colorado.
So... are you going to vote like a Californian, ruining those states, and then look for a new state? People sort of end up with the government they deserve, even if they don't like the result.
California would be great if it were filled with a mix of people from Texas, Wyoming, Oklahoma, West Virginia, New Hampshire, Florida, Iowa, Idaho, and Kentucky. The laws would be very different. There would be much more freedom, including lower taxes.
Surprised to see Michigan still on the list. Ten years ago it should have been number one. But things have gotten much better, dramatically better in the last two years.
Reports I've seen is that the state should see an increase in population in the 2020 census. Last time that happened would have been perhaps in the early nineties.
Would be great if their charts were showing % rather than absolute numbers (or at least would show % in addition to absolute numbers).
It shouldn't be too surprising: California and New York are in top 5 by population size.
ps - their use of "hemorrhaging" to describe movement of people feels inappropriate.
“Hemorrhaging” is a pretty common way to describe an exodus of people or money. It’s a common metaphor that’s also used in “stop the bleeding” or the similar “stem the tide”.
Business is full of otherwise wildly inappropriate phrases, like “drink the kool-aid” in reference to the mass suicide of nearly 1000 people in the Jonestown cult. I have no idea how that’s considered an appropriate phrase for any situation but I hear it constantly in office settings.
The issue with the word is that implies something that if left unchecked will cause disaster. So 100k people per year have left, and yet "California’s population still grew by about 2 million over this period". I really don't see the problem.
But in areas that do have negative growth, more people leave the tax base gets lower, the government has less funding to address issues that cause people to leave, move people leave, etc.
No?
I think you're right in that it's a common phrase in conversation. It just doesn't seem appropriate for a new outlet that attempts to be more-objective than sensationalist. I do see this is an opinion rather than a regular article, but still ...
"Hemorrhaging" evokes memories of bleeding, indicating severe danger. I pay a lot of attention to metaphors after reading "Metaphors We Live By" (an excellent classic book).
No, it’s quite common in all kinds of media outlets. Serious news, sports news, opinion pieces, left wing, right wing, entertainment, startups, investing... you’d be hard pressed to find a news outlet that doesn’t use the word “hemorrhaging” in reference to non-blood things. Most words have more than one meaning, this one included.
Here’s one from Entrepreneur: https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/284063
New York Times article saying companies are hemorrhaging money: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/25/health/antibiotics-new-re...
CBS Sports talking about how a football team is hemorrhaging players: https://www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/cowboys-vs-eagles-injurie...
Wall Street Journal: https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-investors-dont-care-that-sn...
LA Times: https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-bus-ridership-f...
Fox News: https://www.foxnews.com/world/pope-laments-hemorrhaging-of-p...
The Motley Fool: https://www.fool.com/investing/2018/07/24/without-nest-alpha...
"hemorrhaging money and going out of business" seems a lot more palatable to me (good analogy: humans bleed to death, companies 'bleed' money to 'death').
It feels overly catastrophic to use the word when some people are moving out of a state. I thought America prides itself on "mobility".
>Business is full of otherwise wildly inappropriate phrases, like “drink the kool-aid” in reference to the mass suicide of nearly 1000 people in the Jonestown cult. I have no idea how that’s considered an appropriate phrase for any situation
I'm sorry, I don't see the problem. It's a completely apt metaphor for people buying into group-think, with disastrous results. The Jonestown tragedy is a perfect example of what happens when people don't question what they're told, and we should never forget it.
It was long enough ago that many people have forgotten the origin of the phrase. It's just become one of those sayings that means "buy completely into the idea".
My company did a map like this. The highest percentages in 2015-2016 are HI to CA, WY to CO, ND to MN, DE to PA, NH to MA, NM to TX, KS to MO, OR to WA. A map without neighboring states is more interesting.
Ignoring the age of people in this data seems like a mistake. Considering the age of boomers and the states this article says people are moving to, I would venture a guess that recent retirees make up decent percentage of the people moving. Two 30 year olds moving from California to Nevada so they can afford to raise a family is saying something fundamentally different and in my opinion more important than two 65 year olds moving from New York to retire in Florida.
California my whole life. I live in SF. Considering moving to Washington. I can live on the west side of Puget Sound and take an express ferry across the Sound and get to downtown Seattle for work. What a condo goes for in SF you can get a beach front house with some land. I once saw a property on one of the islands with a dozen acres for less than a million. Farm house on it and it’s still commutable to downtown Seattle via the ferry.
Come to Canada >:] We could use some denser populations to provide a larger tax base and to promote inter-city transit infrastructure.
Sadly, Canada won't let you in unless you're young or rich.
Honestly was being half tongue in cheek, but your comment made me look it up because I never have.
It sounds like we have a program similar to the USA’s TN Visa program:
https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-citizenship/se...
FWIW, it can be expensive here, but Amazon and others are hiring like stink.
Ohio is losing people too, called brain drain. Was reading that a senate report said Ohio's best and brightest are leaving, especially the more educated. I could see how moving to Texas or Florida would be appealing, warmer so no winter blues, friendlier to businesses, less taxes and simpler tax structures and some cities have more tech than others too such as Austin. I know Michigan is in a similar situation too with losing people.
I know after the 2020 census Ohio is predicted to lose at least 1 house seat and lose some of the federal funds. Looks like Ohio is attracting more immigrants from other countries, than people from other states.
Really think it's a shame tech is so centralized in a handful of cities, but I do see things like warm weather and walkability attracting people. I'd love to live somewhere where I wouldn't be far from my office, places to eat and shop without needing a car. I figured maybe around where the domain in Austin would be a cool place to live maybe. Seems like it's cheap to live in Ohio but not much to do other than drinking, playing video games, bowling or doing drugs (Dayton was ranked top city for heroin overdoses) and not that many jobs in tech, and then even huge loss in manufacturing too.
I know people say Austin is the next Silicon Valley, but I feel like the cost of living for housing keeps going up, so sounds like going to have similar problems as in California. I'm surprised tech companies don't invest big in the midwest, Google could probably buy an entire city if they wanted to but not sure if they'd attract a lot of workers. But it's interesting to watch migration patterns, I guess tech is the new gold rush. Seems like sometimes you have to vote with your feet.
I was thinking Utah would be a nice place to live since the mountains are pretty, and was surprised to learn they have only a flat 5% tax rate, and no city income taxes either as I thought every state also had cities taxing people. While Ohio you have state, city, school district(some are done based on income as a %, while other districts use property taxes), and then if you own a business or self employed making enough (maybe you're a lawyer who decided to work independently grossing enough to qualify for paying it) there's a business activity tax. So I think a simpler tax structure would be nice. I kinda feel there should just be one tax only to simplify things, and let the cities or states argue over who gets what. Then some tax software won't even help with city taxes, I think Michigan that's the case since cities haven't standardized on things, I know there was a proposal in Ohio for the state to collect city taxes on the city behalf and redistribute them to the cities while charging the cities a service fee but the cities didn't like that idea. I know some cities go as high as 2.5% percent, I think it's a little insane some cities with less population and square miles of Utah needs to collect half of what the entire state of Utah collects, makes me feel like there's a lot of waste or people are paid too highly working for the city.
> > I'm surprised tech companies don't invest big in the midwest,
You already answered your own question:
> I could see how moving to Texas or Florida would be appealing, warmer so no winter blues, friendlier to businesses, less taxes and simpler tax structures and some cities have more tech than others too such as Austin.
> I do see things like warm weather and walkability attracting people.
People look for cheap when they can’t afford something. People in tech right now can afford to buy what they want, they don’t need cheap.
Considering that Florida is slowly but surely going underwater it is weird to see it as the most popular destination to move to.
That's a very long-term outlook. Unless you own beachfront property, it won't be happening in your lifetime.
Elsewhere in the world, it would only affect beachfront property as the coasts recede. But South Florida is literally built on water, a swiss cheese of porous carbonate rocks such as limestone. As seawater pushes through the porous rock, a process called salt-water intrusion, it dissolves the limestone — causing rampant sinkholes all over the state that already are a big problem today — and raises the water table. The Netherlands model will never work for South Florida.
anecdotally, I only visited Florida for the first time three years ago, and have been back four or five times since. The weather is just magnificent.
I would never buy property there, but I have to talk myself out of trying to get an apartment there all the time.
Lots of Florida will escape sea level rise, and the benefits (lower cost of living, no state income tax, tropic climate with no snow) can be realized immediately. You care even less if you’re a renter or >10 feet above sea level.
Migration numbers don’t lie, lots of folks love Florida, or at least like it enough to move and stay put.
Are you saying that if you are 10 ft above water you'll be fine in Florida even when areas under 10ft flood?
I really doubt that. It is not about actually losing your home, it is about quality of life, the main reason for moving there in the first place.
There will be a big cost of any flooding, borne by all Floridians
Yes, and Florida real estate market fundamentals as well as the mortgage bond market and property insurance support my thesis. I specifically paid for sea level rise models before buying Florida real estate, and will likely sell before I die and sea level rise has meaningfully occurred. I-4 and I-75 will be untouched, and other infra is already designed around the Florida environment (hurricanes, high water table). Stay away from the coast, build to current code, and you’ll be fine. Storm surge is your primary coastal concern.
Miami aquifer sea water intrusion is a different issue, but I’m not in Miami. Due to Florida’s population, federal funds are likely to be requested and paid out to mitigate the worst effects. Plenty of water to desal with cheap wind and solar.
I am curious to see how this works out long term.
There is a lot of alarmism, but mostly where alarmism also sells copies.
There is wisdom in crowds, no question about that - we would be foolish to ignore that. Lots of people move to Florida.
> Due to Florida’s population, federal funds are likely to be requested and paid out to mitigate
It’s Florida’s population and the fact that it’s a swing state. We really need to get rid of the electoral college. I love how the same voters in Florida that vote for candidates that bail out Florida will vote against any measure to provide broad subsidies like universal healthcare or education.
Of course, it just so happens many Florida voters are over 65 and done with education and already have taxpayer funded healthcare (Medicare), and get nice taxpayer subsidies on their flood zone homes (NFIP). But why extend that courtesy to the rest of the country.
The more people your state has, the more representation it has in the Congressional House. This isn’t about the electoral collage, but representation in general. States with more people should have access to a proportional amount of funding.
A swing state’s votes are worth far more than a non swing state. You get the executive branch (president) plus the judicial branch (president picks Supreme Court justices). And almost universally, states with less population receive more in federal tax benefits than states with more population, since they have more congressional power per capita:
https://www.businessinsider.com/federal-taxes-federal-servic...
Curious, what areas did you find most inciting?
Look at cheap states with no state income Tax. The states without income tax are Texas, Washington, Tennessee, South Dakota, Alaska, Nevada, and Florida. Find the one which most fits what you are looking for in a place to live and give it a whirl.
I wonder if there has been an increase in cases of families splitting up, with one (or both) parents living cheaply in high cost / high income areas and sending money back to families in lower cost / lower income areas?
You can do software anywhere you can get a network connection, but if VCs aren't there, then you don't get a job. VCs have to be the first movers on this. So I have a suggestion for any of you reading.
A major reason for SV being where it is, is the climate. A number of studies have been done on this. The best place for high-quality entrepreneurship and general civilization-building is a Mediterranean climate. The Bay is not the only place with this property. Most of coastal California has the same climate. So why don't some VCs move to other places? How about Monterey? Orange County?
Judging by the influx of tech companies , Toronto seems to be a popular destination for Americans.
As an European, what's the difficulty to get a citizenship for the US in 2020?
The situation is really only difficult for a handful of countries with very high migration. You aren't in China, India, or similar. It ought to be pretty easy for you.
Note that this is based on birth country, not your current country.
I think it comes down to one's priorities in life. I would rather rent somewhere that I want to live that has the activities and culture I enjoy than own a big house where I dont want to live that doesn't have those things.
Bay Area native here. The cost of living here has always been high, there have always been a lot of homeless people, and crime used to be worse.
The tech industry has metastasized, overthrown the culture, and drained the soul out of the place. The ethos and pathos of the tech industry have undergone a transformation from creation to extraction. We shot for the moon and got surveillance capitalism and the "gig economy" instead.
Now everybody here is "the right type of people". You can be whoever you want, so long as it's sustainable and organic.
so many catchphrases and clichés in this post.
You hit it on the nose GhettoChild
Come to Montreal
Go Austin!
Detroit. Best place ever.
free homes? (if you don't count the tear-down costs)
Pittsburgh is great.
There was a recent article about a googler who suffered from Industrial air pollution and claims Pittsburgh is not a place to move to.
And about 10 articles debunking it. Pittsburgh's air quality is roughly on par with the bay area. Granted, it ain't great but compared to where else Google is based? shrug
ex: https://weather.com/news/news/2019-04-24-most-air-polluted-c...
Balance this against a growing tech scene (Fintech, robotics, self driving, all sorts of interesting stuff. No VC money but there are orgs like PNC's Numo and CMU investing), a great food scene (Walters makes bang'n brisket but Spork is the best place to eat in the city), pretty good cultural events (the ballet is probably my favorite), easy access to NY/DC/etc, and an excellent cost of living (my 3 bedroom, 1.5 bath was 160k and has appreciated 25k in 2 years).
Clarion coke works to the southeast is absolutely an air pollution quagmire but it has little to no impact on the city (except potentially the extreme east side). Biggest downside is we're stuck in Pennsylvania.
To the Googler's point, Google's office is located in Bakery Square. This is directly next to Penn Avenue which is a major thoroughfare. If you spent most of your time next to bumper to bumper traffic it'd be likely you'd have a poor opinion of Pittsburgh's air quality even though it's entirely unrepresentative of the city as a whole.
One thing I’ve noticed is that expatriates from blue states tend to bring their politics with them when they move. Denver’s influx of out-of-staters was a big part of why Colorado moved from purple to solid blue, and now the same thing is happening in TX as folks flock to Austin and Houston, GA as the black diaspora returns to Atlanta, and NC as the Research Triangle booms. Heck, even Utah’s starting to look more purplish thanks to its tech industry (and the CA imports that inevitably come along with it). It’s going to be exciting to see what happens when Texas reaches its tipping point.
SF and NYC in a nutshell: High taxes to fund entitlement programs like "affordable housing" and the homeless industrious complex, high regulations that only allow mega corps to succeed, landlord unfriendly laws so no chances taken on good borderline tenants, and no firearms for law abiding citizens so criminals are emboldened.
On the flip side: high taxes means access to things like public transportation, meaning that you don't need to own and maintain a car. And crime rates in NYC, at least, are at absolute historic lows. The firearms part of your statement really makes no sense at all.
Some other pluses: a huge concentration of culture, entertainment, dining. Regional transportation hubs to travel to other cities is relatively quick.
This is hilarious, yeah in SF the 55 percent taxes i pay really do provide me great public transportation
lol what? 55% taxes?
I pay 55 percent taxes total if that wasnt clear.
I wouldn't leave California for a million dollars. To quote a famous Californian, "I'd rather be dead in California than alive in Arizona."
Good for you, I totally respect that. Which, unfortunately, isn't something I am able to say about a lot of Californian expats.
Please don't take HN threads further into regional flamewar (or any flamewar).
You got a tough job buddy.
A lot of "Californians" are transplants or foreign born. Many of those are also conservative and don't mind moving to more conservative states.
Native born are typically more loyal.
I probably would. Too bad nobody is giving me a million dollars for that. Except for the weather (which is admittedly pretty nice) and salaries (which are admittedly very juicy even after adjusting for cost of living) I am not entirely sure why California is so much better than other places. I mean, San Francisco has a lot of nice stuff there, but other places do too, and they don't have today's SF downsides... So I am not sure why.
Please don't post regional flamebait to HN. It leads to regional flamewar, which we don't want here.
I got that reference.
I’m sure there are lots of people in Arizona that would love for you to die there as well.
I’m honestly surprised that so many “forward thinking” people can spout off such nationalist bullshit with a straight face.
Please don't take HN threads further into regional flamewar (or any flamewar).
It's a reference to Arrested Development. There's also no need to take it personally -- not to mention that both Arizona and California are in the same country (thus making it by definition not nationalistic to say you prefer one to the other).
Preferring a State over another State is exactly the same as nationalism, even if they happened to be united under the same country at a given time (see Calexit).
The Catalonians wanting to separate is also nationalism, despite the proposed country not existing.
There is something about California that really brings out the whining and hypocrisy in conservatives. They want to move there for the big bucks in tech, but they don't want to be a minority party/culture. CA has lots of problems, but when I hear "housing is too expensive, lots of homelessness and petty crime, AND it's so liberal that they just can't fix anything," I know the last one is the key. They complain about the NIMBYs who keep real-estate prices high (as if that were the only thing), complain that no one is building denser housing, then leave and move to sprawling suburbia with it's HOAs and de-facto segregated zoning. Go try to build a 4-plex in your new neighborhood, then get back to us.
Cue all the complaints about the entrenched residents in their Prop 13 homes or rent-controlled units, building permits and red tape nightmares. Yes, there is a problem. You not making it and having to move away (after moving there 2 or 3 years ago) is not the problem. Look at it this way, the system is working for 80-90% of the long-term residents, and they're aware of the hardships for the disadvantaged among them. Why should they go out of their way to accomodate conservatives who want to undermine their tax-and-spend heaven?
As for the Democrats who leave CA and vote Democrat elsewhere, why not? They didn't get in early enough on this wealth train (OK, jokes about CAHSR will be tolerated), so they're going somewhere else, and trying to get it started there. CA is defined by excess of liberal values, elswhere by lack, so they're just trying to bring some moderation. They won't be very successful, and I will tell them not to go whining about the conservative values in their new home, so there.
California just is. It's the world's 4th largest economy by itself. For good or ill, it's home to so many internet companies (and other industries) that have made so much money in the internet revolution that it has skewed its cost-of-living and real-estate markets off the charts. It has made many of its residents fabulously weathly, both in relative and absolute terms, and they want to stay and enjoy it mostly the way it is. In SF/SV, it has redefined middle-class at around 300K combined income, and that money (at least what's not dedicated to housing) drives a lot of other sectors (public transit, restaurants, and other quality-of-life businesses). Yeah, I know, all those have issues and/or are overpriced, no need to comment to say that. It also leans very liberal in the coastal cities, meaning tolerance, compassion, social justice, sanctuary, etc. It seems like they still have a democracy, and since they're still the majority, they get to keep experimenting. It's not going anywhere, and it's not going to change much, and certainly not because of the whining. Deal with it.