Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Americans are rethinking where they want to live

economist.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

331–340 of 645 posts

Re: Americans are rethinking where they want to live

#331

Post by jermaustin1 »

Jerrrry wrote: post #252
jermaustin1 wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have family in Nashville, friends in Austin, and former co-workers in Toledo and Columbus. They've all experienced the great migration from California, and they all feel very negatively about it. I live in Houston, TX now (and grew up here), and couldn't tell you whether we have any Californians here since we've always been a super diverse city.

Nashville and Knoxville have tripled in operational and pragmatic density in the last 5 years. Having drove to Knoxville last week, the stroads have too many cars.

Only having been to Knoxville on purpose twice, it definitely felt way too busy for how small it was. I-40 was stopped basically on a random friday at noon. Same happens in Nashville, but Nashville is sooooo much bigger, it is expected.

Re: Americans are rethinking where they want to live

#332

Post by CountDrewku »

systemvoltage wrote: post #3

COL/SOL in California is appalling. SOL continues to degrade here to the point where certain parts of Bay Are (Oakland, Hayward) look more like Syria than first world nation. Trash is everywhere, even in nicer neighborhoods. Not a single park here in East Bay without encountering a homeless person. And, then I meet people here that continue to defend 1) Food is amazing 2) SF sucks! Oakland is the best place ever 3) W…

Don't bother with CO. Our front range is well on the way to becoming SF 2.0. There's already a staggering amount of homelessness and the COL is through the roof.

Re: Americans are rethinking where they want to live

#333

Post by NoSorryCannot »

systemvoltage wrote: post #154
ketzo wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay, but you have to understand, when you say things like "Oakland == Syria" it's incredibly hard to take you (and the people who make complaints like this) seriously. I can walk four blocks and buy, like, 19 different lattes. I can walk two blocks and get on a train that takes me to downtown SF in 18 minutes. In a 10-minute drive I can get to literally any cuisine the world has to offer, and it's fucking delicious…

I thought it goes without saying to not take it literally. We don't have bombs falling here. Aesthetically, vast areas do look like Syria. May be not rubble, but very very far away from first-world (Switzerland, Japan). Food is amazing in a lot of big cities. There is no objective measure. New Yorkers say the same and so do people in Portland.

Even after back pedaling, this is still really out of touch.

You don't seem to know what Syria looks like and "aesthetics" can't make something into the third world anyway. Not looking like a wealthy Swiss town or Japanese metropolis doesn't make anything third world.

Re: Americans are rethinking where they want to live

#334

Post by carom »

jstepka wrote: post #17

Silicon Valley / SF have had a stranglehold on the digital economy for the last 20-30 years -- nearly anything that touches electrics or software had a "tax" where some portion of that innovation flowed back as cash. With covid / the great reset, I've seen so many leave the bay area now that they can work remote. It's occured to me that SV / SF will need to reinvent itself and be in a rough patch for a couple years.…

I think the companies there will also need to reinvent themselves. I'm currently interviewing and both Apple and Facebook required in-person or based around a satellite office. I'm in Los Angeles so it shouldn't be a crazy ask. They lost out on a candidate and my labor will go to a business who lets me continue living my life.

Given thoughts like Individuals Matter [1], my speculation is that these companies are currently losing a lot of valuable individuals who can command more flexibility. There are plenty of remote first companies paying competitive salaries.

1. https://danluu.com/people-matter/

Re: Americans are rethinking where they want to live

#335

Post by dragonwriter »

ericmay wrote: post #299
treis wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because cafes and bread from bakeries are (relative) luxuries. Even if it's just $1 more a coffee/loaf that adds up to significant money over a year. That's the thing that I think people miss. Scale makes things cheaper and to have scale at retail you need to pull customers from a large area. You could do the same in a dense area but then you run into housing cost/size problems. I don't see how you get the typical 4/…

> Because cafes and bread from bakeries are (relative) luxuries. Even if it's just $1 more a coffee/loaf that adds up to significant money over a year. That's the thing that I think people miss. Scale makes things cheaper and to have scale at retail you need to pull customers from a large area. I wonder if all those loaves of bread and coffees cost more than tires, having 2 or 3 cars, obesity, and lost productivity f…

> Tear down a house in the suburbs and put in a little market/grocery store and you don't need to drive anywhere you just walk over.

Except everyone with a reliable car still drives to the large grocery store and with a wide selection which has lower prices and better selection on basics but makes it up with lower volume, high margin luxuries that the small market c doesn't have floor space for, and the small market, even if it starts as something else, ends up specializing in alcohol, tobacco, and dry goods, and neglecting general grocery items. Unless it's an area with a particular ethnic concentration and the small market survives by focussing on the unique demands of that ethnic community in a way that the larger store with a wider catchment area doesn't have any real incentive to.

Its not that there aren't enough small markets opened in areas of single-family homes to see this trend; you can't fix it with zoning, at least not in the manner you describe. (You can by driving density to transport capacity to the point where driving to the large grocery is impractical, of course, but that tends to be beyond allowing medium density, mixed use development.)

Re: Americans are rethinking where they want to live

#336

Post by treis »

ericmay wrote: post #299
treis wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because cafes and bread from bakeries are (relative) luxuries. Even if it's just $1 more a coffee/loaf that adds up to significant money over a year. That's the thing that I think people miss. Scale makes things cheaper and to have scale at retail you need to pull customers from a large area. You could do the same in a dense area but then you run into housing cost/size problems. I don't see how you get the typical 4/…

> Because cafes and bread from bakeries are (relative) luxuries. Even if it's just $1 more a coffee/loaf that adds up to significant money over a year. That's the thing that I think people miss. Scale makes things cheaper and to have scale at retail you need to pull customers from a large area. I wonder if all those loaves of bread and coffees cost more than tires, having 2 or 3 cars, obesity, and lost productivity f…

People in Europe mostly choose the suburbs too.

As for the rest of it, I'm not arguing that the suburbs is a good choice. It's just the one people do choose and they choose it because of space and cost of living.

Re: Americans are rethinking where they want to live

#337

Post by gamblor956 »

ketzo wrote: post #128
systemvoltage wrote: post #3

COL/SOL in California is appalling. SOL continues to degrade here to the point where certain parts of Bay Are (Oakland, Hayward) look more like Syria than first world nation. Trash is everywhere, even in nicer neighborhoods. Not a single park here in East Bay without encountering a homeless person. And, then I meet people here that continue to defend 1) Food is amazing 2) SF sucks! Oakland is the best place ever 3) W…

Okay, but you have to understand, when you say things like "Oakland == Syria" it's incredibly hard to take you (and the people who make complaints like this) seriously. I can walk four blocks and buy, like, 19 different lattes. I can walk two blocks and get on a train that takes me to downtown SF in 18 minutes. In a 10-minute drive I can get to literally any cuisine the world has to offer, and it's fucking delicious…

To further your point on the homeless: most of them aren't SF (or even Cali) locals. Their almost all drug addicts from other states who came to SF because they were told drugs were easy to get here and the weather's better than where they came from.

Gov Rick Perry used to brag on national TV that Texas' solution to the homeless problem was to buy them tickets to California. And their director of health services recently admitted that they still do that. Texas didn't solve their homeless problem, they simply made it someone else's problem to deal with.

Re: Americans are rethinking where they want to live

#338

Post by ryandrake »

TurkishPoptart wrote: post #121

And part of it is what public schools are doing to our kids. My 6 year old is required to sit outdoors to eat her lunch in 40ish degree (F) weather, and is not allowed to socialized. My 5 year old has to wear a mask 7 hours a day against an illness that doesn't kill kids. I'm at my wit's end with these school administrators. Hoping to be in Wyoming in 6 months' time.

You might not have heard, but the illness does (albeit very infrequently) kill kids, but more likely, kids can bring it home and infect their older, more vulnerable family members. Which is what recently happened in my kid's school district, when some nitwit parent also "at their wit's end with these school administrators" sent their COVID infected kid to school.

Re: Americans are rethinking where they want to live

#339

Post by say_it_as_it_is »

"A countervailing political force is that some of the people who are moving into Texan, Floridian and Arizonan suburbs from California and the Northeast consider themselves political refugees, fleeing badly-run state and local governments. They may cast votes against Democratic candidates in an attempt to ensure their new locations will not resemble the places they left."

I can't help but wonder whether the people with the means to flee California were partially responsible for its poor state of political affairs, consistently voting for more progressive candidates and policies. They left a mess of their own creation. Just as Mike Tyson famously said, "Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face."

Re: Americans are rethinking where they want to live

#340

Post by gamblor956 »

mdorazio wrote: post #210
gknight wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you dig up sources on that? Not challenging you, but as an Angeleno I've always believed this to be true myself. Curious what may actually be happening.

In LA, 20% of our homeless population last year came from out of state and another 2% from out of country. See slide 24 at [1]. People like to downplay this as “only 20%” which is ridiculous. 20% is a huge portion. As always, though, lack of affordable housing and true social safety nets are the biggest drivers by far. [1] https://www.lahsa.org/news?article=726-2020-greater-los-ange...

LAHSA's statistics are skewed, since they count someone as local once they've been living in LA for a certain amount of time (I think it's a year), even if they have been homeless their entire time in LA.

In 2018, the LA Times ran a series of articles on the homeless situation, and had reporters accompany county social workers. More than half of the homeless were from out-of-state, with Texas being the largest single source of homeless in LA. More than 3/4 of LA's homeless weren't local to LA.

Post reply on HN