No, Californians aren’t fleeing for Texas. They’re shifting to unsustainable suburbs
Despite the rumors you may have heard from the conservative media, California residents are not fleeing in droves to places like Texas, where life is good and taxes are low. Yes, the census data released on Monday suggested the state will lose a seat in Congress. However, the same data also showed that we have gained 2 million residents in the past decade.
We are still growing, and neither are some other states.
The myth of people giving up California is cheap Texas boosterism. Those of us who live here – and understand how California works – know that the opposite is true. Most Californians do not flee; They cling to their houses when they own them. And the character of the neighborhoods that surround these houses. This restricts urban housing development and drives up prices in and around municipal employment offices.
The result is indeed an exodus from our great cities. But not to Texas, to the suburbs.
California is not shrinking. It doesn’t grow sustainably.
Dense urban centers such as San Francisco and Los Angeles are experiencing an exodus. But smaller, car-related towns like Fresno, as well as suburban and suburban communities – often in Tierra del Fuego – are booming. In the tiny town of Lathrop, nine miles south of Stockton, a new 5,000 acre parish is underway that will include 11,000 single family homes. Home sales are also skyrocketing in the suburbs of Sacramento, as well as in the drought and forest fire-hit areas of Sonoma County and Inland Empire and desert communities in southern California.
Newly discovered work-from-home options for high-paid office workers are fueling part of this movement. However, these migration patterns were in place long before COVID-19, when these workers’ homes were separated from their workplaces.
Rental prices in San Francisco have fallen slightly, but they are barely affordable. Los Angeles also remains impenetrable. People chase the California dream wherever they can afford it. And right now that’s in the distant suburbs.
There is an old-fashioned word for this pattern of migration and development: it is called urban sprawl. And the state’s fight against climate change is kneeling down.
Of course it doesn’t have to be that way. Big California cities still have room to grow. We need them if the state wants a sustainable future. Dense housing near workplaces, transit, and entertainment has a much smaller carbon footprint than suburban auto-centric homes.
But the way to get there is doubtful. California may not be growing as fast as it used to be, but its future doesn’t look much different than its past: suburban and unsustainable.
This comment was edited by The Chronicle. We invite you to express your opinion in a letter to the editor. Please send your letter using our online form: SFChronicle.com/letters.
