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Americans are rethinking where they want to live

economist.com

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Re: Americans are rethinking where they want to live

#361

Post by damon_c »

unexpected wrote: post #84
jacobolus wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Suburbs are very unfriendly for the elderly compared to cities. The ideal suburbanite is an upper-middle-class person in their 30s–50s in good health who really likes driving their large car and has hobbies they can do individually from inside their own home (e.g. woodworking, gardening), and doesn’t mind that life is miserable* there for their kids. Everyone else is more or less a second-class citizen. * Edit: subur…

Why do you automatically assume that kids are miserable in the suburbs? My kids rather like running around in our backyard, use our pool everyday in the summer, and having tons of friends on the block. At the same time, I can't imagine that they would enjoy living in 2 bedroom apartment, having no yard to play in, etc. This disdain for suburbs is quite tacky and out of touch. It's okay to think differently. I'm glad…

I raised (or rather shared in raising) a kid in a 2BR apartment in Manhattan with no yard.

We also happened to have a weekend/summer cottage in the suburbs. It was near the beach and had a yard and bikes and all those wonderful suburban pleasures.

He absolutely begged us every weekend to let him stay in the city where he could see his friends by subway/walking, didn't need us to drive him anywhere, had freedom etc.

Re: Americans are rethinking where they want to live

#362

Post by downrightmike »

larrymyers wrote: post #10

My family and I decided to stay on the north side of Chicago, a very high cost of living location, despite no longer needing to head downtown every day for work. Why not move outside of Chicago where our cost living would be substantially lower? * We wanted to keep our kids in the same school, which is walking distance. * We like being walking distance to the grocery store, doctor's offices, etc. * Our kids can walk…

You like your Strong Town, what living was like before cars ruined everything https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CCOdQsZa15o

Re: Americans are rethinking where they want to live

#363

Post by downrightmike »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #170
jermaustin1 wrote: post #28

I've heard this brought up as a kind of second round of white flight. The middle- and upper-class (primarily) white population is once again moving out of urban centers because telecommuting is something that these high-salary jobs afford them. I think it will rebound a bit (but not much), as moving from urban to suburban is a very difficult transition, but its even harder going the other way once you've adjusted. I…

> and live off a VERY modest retirement (WELL under a million saved/invested) for the next 40 years Do you mind sharing how much? I'm curious why most people seem to think $1M is somehow not enough money to retire modestly on. If previous trends continue, you could easily live on >$4K after taxes per month indefinitely. That's almost 50% higher than median wage (after taxes). Median wage = ~$41,000. Even with $0 stat…

If you also have to look after parents who never saved, you'll need to calculate out a fair bit. One example I saw on reddit was about 40% more than you need for yourself. Then there's teh part that if you don't own a home, you'll be paying that off in retirement.

Re: Americans are rethinking where they want to live

#364

Post by zeku »

jermaustin1 wrote: post #212
ethbr0 wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've got family in Athens, TN and from parts more easterly. That's generally true now and previously, but I wonder about the next decade+ as relocation shifts into higher gear. My historical impression has been that locals are usually okay with a few outsiders... but when it turns into a deluge, and everyone who moves there is wealthier than them... Well, better to be nondescript than driving around east TN or KY wit…

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.

Yes in the Nashville area we are very aware of it.

Most of Nashville Metro and surrounding counties are actually transplants or children of transplants. Once you go to a county that doesn't border metro Nashville the culture and accent change tremendously.

Everyone in the area is aware of "outsiders" and resents it to some degree.

I'm a young SWE from TN. I can't compete with SWE's from the coasts who have immense savings up on me and they're buying up all the homes.

SWE's who are 40+ in the area immediately bought brick 4 bed homes in the burbs in the nicest part of town when they got hired 10+ years ago. SWE's closer to 30 who are local are just able to buy an apartment if single income.

However it's a huge tide, this money coming in, the issue is most locals don't have ships to ride it.

Re: Americans are rethinking where they want to live

#365

Post by vineyardmike »

hagbard_c wrote: post #357
vineyardmike wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of the "California problem" policies work at smaller city sizes and just fail when scaled to major city/metro, so would be great at a lot of those smaller towns. Especially because they can be more humane and well thought out than whatever that town had to start.

> they can be more humane and well thought out than whatever that town had to start. In other words, you'll go to those small towns to teach those hicks some manners. No wonder they're not that keen on seeing refugees from "more humane and well thought out" places settle in their towns and villages. If that is your message to your new neighbours may I suggest you go somewhere more welcoming of those "humane and well…

> may I suggest you go somewhere more welcoming of those "humane and well thought out" policies?

> those places tend to be the ones people are moving away from but that means there should be lots of vacancies.

People have been moving away from those small towns for generations, and I feel like this speaks for itself.

Re: Americans are rethinking where they want to live

#366

Post by nonameiguess »

foofoo4u wrote: post #91

I sure am. I live in San Jose (which resides in the Bay Area). Here’s why I am leaving. - $2,700 per month for a 500 sq/ft apartment. - Homeless people everywhere the moment I step foot out of my apartment. - Smells like urine on many sidewalks. - Literally half of the buildings are vacant or abandoned (in downtown). - Human feces on sidewalks and entrance to buildings. - Political and ideological homogeny. Keep your…

Not a California thing. I live in Dallas and am all for coming to Texas, but don't expect miracles. There are homeless people everywhere, vacant buildings, my catalytic converter has been sawed off twice, trash all over the place, major road out of my neighborhood has had a pothole big enough to knock a wheel off for 8 months and the city has done nothing about it.

These are just city problems.

On the other hand, my mortgage, insurance, and property taxes are $2,500 a month for a 3,000 square foot, 4-story townhome with a private rooftop deck with a downtown skyline view, so there's that.

Re: Americans are rethinking where they want to live

#367

Post by TechBro8615 »

willis936 wrote: post #300
AdrianB1 wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you provide some details on why it is hell?

If you think human feces in public is a problem worth leaving for then try living in a place where you don't know if the water is poisoned, if the power will stay on, or the ground will literally crumble under your home. The local governments are neither equipped nor interested in making those places habitable. It's getting worse and will continue to. Hurricanes and rising sea levels will bankrupt TX and FL each in t…

So basically you’re upset about Florida and Texas for a different set of hysterical political reasons.

Personally, I’d find my daily life more affected by feces on the sidewalk than I would the existential dread of sea level rising half a meter in the next hundred years. Frankly if you want to be scared of natural disaster over that time period, it’s probably more dangerous to live on the fault line in San Francisco than it is to live on the beach in Miami (sudden catastrophe with no warning vs. decades of observably rising sea levels).

Re: Americans are rethinking where they want to live

#368

Post by gnicholas »

cbHXBY1D wrote: post #327
hardtke wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The San Francisco Chronicle has done some analyses of the Bay Area exodus, and the majority are not moving to Texas but instead to places like San Joaquin and Madera county (counties that border the Bay Area). People want the bigger house, but they also want to be able to visit their friends and family.

This is accurate in my anecdotal experience. I'm from the Bay Area (5th generation or so) and so I have a lot of cousins, aunts, and uncles here and the general trend for friends/family has been to move to cheaper areas in the exurbs: Stockton, Tracey, Antioch, Fairfield, Vacaville, Modesto, etc. This is where the working class are getting pushed out to as they can no longer afford to live in the inner Bay Area.

It's not just working class — a corporate lawyer friend of mine did the same.

Re: Americans are rethinking where they want to live

#369

Post by SavantIdiot »

jwolfe wrote: post #118
SavantIdiot wrote: post #51

I'd go South if the politics start to blue-up. I figure if this trend holds as the article says, by the time I'm ready to retire there will have been two censuses. I care about social justice, local produce, and warm weather. The south has 2 out of 3.

Do you care about being around social justice or bringing about social justice? If the former, sure, move to a blue area. If the latter, wouldn't moving to a purple area be more impactful?

I ask myself that every day. Should I be the change? Or should I wait for someone else to do it? I don't have the guts to jump headfirst into a deep red area: I already get harassed for driving a truck with an obama sticker when i go off-roading in the red counties 5 hours from where i live. But I am interested in moving to one of the isolated purpler cities in the south. I'm hoping there's a "diffusion area" where it is safe to be liberal, but still having a net effect of changing a demographic.

Re: Americans are rethinking where they want to live

#370

Post by TurkishPoptart »

CountDrewku wrote: post #323
anarchy8 wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My 5 year old has to wear a mask 7 hours a day against an illness that doesn't kill kids This is misinformation: https://www.aap.org/en/pages/2019-novel-coronavirus-covid-19...

Maybe you ought to pay more attention to what it actually says instead of getting upset at what is obviously a generalization about the overreaction to COVID when it comes to young children- >A smaller subset of states reported on hospitalizations and mortality by age; the available data indicate that COVID-19-associated hospitalization and death is uncommon in children. Here's a more accurate representation - https:…

Thanks for bringing in that hard data. I don't understand why the news media keeps saying "thank goodness kids can get vaccinated now!". Why are they trying to normalize annual or 2x a year shots for these kids, who are more likely to suffer from myocarditis as a result than to actually contract or get ill from this virus? Nobody freaking knows.
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