Thousands of New Yorkers are moving to Florida in search of a place in the sun and cheaper homes, according to a recent report on migration by real estate brokerage Redfin.

The report released in late November revealed that the Floridian metros of Orlando, North Port-Sarasota and Tampa are among the most sought-after areas for homebuyers relocating across the country and a top choice for New Yorkers leaving the Empire State.

A total of 3,700 people moved to Orlando from out of state in October, a majority of whom were coming from New York City, according to Redfin. Orlando was the third most popular metro for homebuyers to move to the same month after Sacramento, California, and Las Vegas, Nevada.

A total of 3,600 people, mostly New Yorkers, moved to North Port-Sarasota in the same month, while 2,800 homebuyers—mainly from New York City—moved to Tampa.

While cities like Orlando and Tampa were some of the most popular for homebuyers moving out of their state across the country, the absolute top destination for people leaving New York City was Miami, according to Redfin.

Homebuyers are leaving expensive cities like New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles in droves, Redfin calculated based on net outflow, which measures how many more Redfin.com users were looking to leave a metro than move in. The majority of homebuyers moving to Sacramento in October, a total of 5,000 according to Redfin’s report, came from San Francisco and New York.

According to the real estate brokerage, this is happening because residents traditionally tend to leave “expensive job centers” for other cities and states where they can find more affordable housing.

The median sale price of a home in New York was $762,500 in October, according to Redfin, while in Orlando, it was $385,000. In North Port-Sarasota, the median sale price of a home was even lower, at $378,000, and in Tampa, it was $400,000.

Redfin believes that New Yorkers and other homebuyers moving out of expensive metros are taking advantage of the uncertainty surrounding Florida, which is amid an insurance crisis, and the increased risk posed by global warming.

“Florida is endangered by hurricanes and flooding, and Sacramento and Las Vegas face risk from high heat,” the company wrote in its report. “Insurers have pulled out of vulnerable areas in recent months, which could ultimately lead to a decline in home values in some places.”

Women walk across the Brooklyn Bridge in New York City on December 12, 2023. Thousands of New Yorkers are leaving their state for Floridian cities.
CHARLY TRIBALLEAU/AFP via Getty Images

New York was the top two city homebuyers moved out of in October after San Francisco, according to Redfin. A total of 25,300 people left the city in October—down from 35,700 in October 2022.

This drop is because “housing affordability has become increasingly strained, meaning that while fewer people are moving in general, many of the people who are moving are relocating to different metros to get more bang for their buck,” Redfin wrote in its report.

Are you considering moving out of New York for Florida or any other state? Email g.carbonaro@newsweek.com

Uncommon Knowledge

Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.

Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.

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Jayne Jordan, 61, was a lifelong Californian until August, when she sold her home in Corona and moved to Azle, Texas.

Jordan wanted to stay close to her daughter and grandchildren, who are planning to move from Irvine to the Lone Star State next year in order to buy a home.

When she joined a Facebook group of California migrants to Texas, she found a community willing to help her choose the right moving company and weigh in on which route to take for the 1,360-mile drive.

She soon found through the Facebook group that her neighbor across the street in Azle had also moved from the same neighborhood in Corona.

“It’s a small world,” Jordan said. “A lot of people from California are moving here.”

Jordan’s move is reflective of a larger trend for California, which has seen more residents moving out over the last few years than new people moving in. In 2022, 818,000 Californians left for other states, while 476,000 moved in, resulting in a total domestic loss of 342,000 to the Golden State, according to newly released census data. But some states have been taking in more of California’s former residents than others, with Texas leading in that category.

In 41 U.S. states, more people arrived from California than moved to California last year, according to the data.

More than 100,000 Californians moved to Texas last year, compared with around 40,000 who made the opposite move. Florida drew nearly 75,000 people from California, with 30,000 moving in the opposite direction. Washington, Nevada and Florida each saw around 50,000 Californian arrivals and far fewer people move to California.

Only 42 Californians moved to West Virginia in 2022, by far the lowest total of any state.

New Jersey, the state that most bucked the trend, had around 6,600 more people move to California than arrived from the state.

Experts attribute the exodus from California primarily to the high cost of housing in the state but also to issues such as crime, politics and traffic.

As Texas booms, the state will have to contend with many of the same issues that are driving California to leave, says Mechele Dickerson, a professor of law at the University of Texas at Austin and an expert on the housing crisis.

Texas is appealing to Californians who are looking for lower housing costs and don’t mind the trade-offs.

“We have more land that can be developed,” Dickerson said.

Between July 2020 and July 2022, Texas’ housing stock grew by almost 5% — the third-biggest gain of any state. California’s housing stock increased by just 1.6% during the span.

In raw numbers, Texas added more than twice as many housing units as did California.

“Some people blame Californians for driving up housing prices, particularly in the city of Austin,” Dickerson said.

As buyers “come here with cash in hand having sold their homes in California,” she said, longtime renters are priced out of cities like Austin.

Those renters are pushed to suburbs and exurbs, which are seeing booms comparable to those in California’s suburban and exurban areas.

“We used to laugh at those people in L.A.” because of their long commutes, Dickerson said, “and now that’s what we’re seeing” as people move farther from city centers in search of affordability.

Texas is seeing rising home values that are making some areas less affordable, and cities are also grappling with other social issues Californians are familiar with.

“We have been challenged by what to do with a growing unhoused population” as low-income people are displaced by the cascading effects of a housing crisis, she said.

Though Texas has added a lot of housing, “we’re building more on the high end and not affordable housing,” Dickerson said.

California saw an exodus during the COVID-19 pandemic, as remote work and soaring home values had some residents moving to cheaper locales. Recent data show the so-called exodus — which hit coastal cities such as Los Angeles and San Francisco particularly hard — eased considerably in the last two years. The California recovery has been uneven, with some suburban areas seeing major booms while downtown San Francisco continues to struggle.

But those who have made the move say they are surprised how many transplanted Californians they find in Texas.

Locally, Dickerson said, there is a common joke: “We are becoming California, not just because the Californians are moving here.”

Issues of traffic, homelessness and affordability may have driven people to abandon California, but those issues may not be far behind in Texas’ major cities, either.

Marie Bailey, 44, moved from El Segundo to a Dallas-Fort Worth suburb in 2017. She and her husband built a home for $750,000, while a “tiny fixer upper” in El Segundo would’ve cost upward of $1 million.

The couple quickly figured out that they could capitalize on the niche in the real estate market for California migrants to Texas.

For years, Bailey has administered the Facebook group where Jayne Jordan and 45,000 others swap recommendations on how to make the move. She runs a real estate firm that places Californians all over the state.

“99% of our clientele are people moving from California,” Bailey said. As for why people make the move, “No. 1 is cost of living and No. 2 is politics.”

Texas is Republican red in the same way California is a bastion of Democratic blue, battling on issues including abortion, gun control, immigration and LGBTQ+ rights. The political difference might make some hesitant to make the move, but for others it is a major bonus.

Bailey’s husband, who was previously employed by the UCLA medical system, “wouldn’t even talk about his politics because he was afraid of losing his job,” she said.

“Nowhere is perfect,” Bailey said, “but we fit in a lot better here.”

Though clients miss the beaches and “the weather is more extreme” in Texas, by and large those who have made the move with Bailey’s firm are happy, she said.

Plus, she added, “We like not having to pay $5 or $6 per gallon in gas.” The average price of a gallon of gas in Texas was $2.91 on Nov. 3 versus $5.18 in California.

Back in Azle, Jordan and her husband are adjusting to their new life. Their family home in Corona sold in four days and they now live in a new custom build.

It’s a more rural community than what they had in Corona, so “there’s a lot of really big bugs that we’re not used to,” but otherwise Jordan and her husband are settling in.

“We have noticed people in Texas are far more friendly than in California,” she said, and the cost of living is far lower.

She also likes living in a place with less fire danger and less air pollution compared with the Inland Empire.

“No, don’t miss it at all,” she said of the state she called home for six decades.

The post Droves of Californians are shifting to Texas appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody joins Fox Across America with guest host Joe Concha to shed light on why more and more people are fleeing blue states like New York and California and moving to the Sunshine State.

“It’s no coincidence that New York, Philadelphia, Chicago and San Francisco are among the top cities people are moving from. That means not only is the population declining due to deaths and births and this equation, but people are packing up their families and moving. And it’s no surprise that the same four cities are among the cities with the highest percentage increases in thefts. So in no way has Florida taken some of these crazy measures when it comes to criminal justice across the country. We are a law and order state. We support the blue. We make sure we only gave them raises. We just gave them the opportunity to buy homes in the community where they serve. We just made sure they were better off in retirement. I mean we make no secret of supporting those who sign up to put their security behind our security. And I think you need leaders who do that. You must make policy decisions that reflect this. And you see this breakdown of law and order in these areas. Because in recent years, criminal law policy decisions have been implemented in a targeted manner. And now you see the effects of that.”

To hear what else she had to say to Joe, listen to the podcast!

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The post Florida AG Ashley Moody: Folks Are Transferring To Florida In Droves As a result of We’re A Regulation And Order State appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

Twitter saw a fresh exodus of employees on Thursday as the company hit a deadline set by billionaire owner Elon Musk for remaining staff to commit to being “extremely hardcore” or leave the company.

Departing employees posted on Twitter under the hashtag #LoveWhereYouWorked, announcing it was their last day at the social network. Twitter has been convulsed with chaos since Musk finalized his $44 billion purchase in late October. Many accompanied their posts with a saluting emoji, which has become a symbol inside Twitter of respect for those who are leaving.

Musk already laid off half the company’s 7,500 full-time employees on November 4, reportedly cut thousands of contractors last weekend, and fired several employees who had criticized him publicly.

On Wednesday, in an email to staff entitled “A Fork in the Road,” Musk said Twitter would “need to be extremely hardcore” to succeed. Those who chose to stay should expect long, intense hours of work. Those who left would receive three months’ severance pay, he wrote. Employees were required to choose by Thursday afternoon.

The new wave of departures is adding to fears that Twitter is losing critical expertise in everything from how the site and its servers are run to how it keeps user data safe and complies with regulations to how it handles toxic and illegal content.

Earlier on Thursday, a group of Democratic senators sent an open letter to the Federal Trade Commission urging an investigation of Twitter. They said they were concerned the company may be violating the terms of a settlement with the agency stemming from past privacy violations.

Musk “has taken alarming steps that have undermined the integrity and safety of the platform,” the senators wrote.

Former worker warns cuts will have consequences

When Musk laid off half of Twitter’s employees just days before the midterm elections, Melissa Ingle was left in limbo.

She was a data scientist on Twitter’s civic integrity team, monitoring the platform for tweets that might break its rules against misleading election claims. But she was a contractor, not a Twitter employee. When the cuts happened, she didn’t even know who was left to sign her time sheet.

“My boss was laid off, and my boss’s boss — the head of the department — quit. So I didn’t know who my boss was. I didn’t know what new assignment I had,” she said.

With the end of voting quickly approaching, Ingle and her team worked overtime to flag falsehoods and violating tweets. She says she thinks they did a good job, given the circumstances.

“But at the same time, we’re not really sure if the work we’re doing matters to the new ownership.”

On Saturday, she got an answer: she no longer had a job at Twitter.

“I only found out that I was fired [because] I happened to be looking at my phone at about 5:30 [P.M.]and I got a little pop up that said you’ve been logged out of one or more systems,” Ingle recalled.

Rapid changes disrupt Twitter’s business

Ingle and others warn, Musk’s rapid changes risk compromising Twitter’s ability to deal with toxic content and are already disrupting its business, as chaos spilling over onto the platform threatens its advertising revenue.

“There is a short-sighted view of platforms that can look at trust and safety work and integrity work as a bit of a cost center, and as the people that are trying to drag the company down rather than actually trying to help the company grow for the long term,” said Jeff Allen, a former data scientist at Facebook who co-founded the Integrity Institute, a group focused on online trust and safety.

At Twitter, like other mainstream social media companies, this work relies heavily on people.

There are the staffers who set policies, workers like Ingle who develop automated systems to analyze the 37.5 million tweets posted every hour, and most crucially, a large group of content moderators who constantly review posts. They are almost entirely contractors.

Many of these workers have now been laid off or resigned. The first round of cuts slashed 15% of Twitter’s trust and safety employees, according to Yoel Roth, who led the division. Two days after the election, Roth quit.

The initial round of layoffs also eliminated Twitter’s entire curation team of about 150 people. They played an important role adding context and descriptions to news and events trending on the platform, and curating collections of tweets from authoritative sources to help address misleading or false claims.

It’s unclear how many of the contractors eliminated last weekend were content moderators. Twitter didn’t respond to questions about details of the job cuts.

But losing even a portion of that workforce would be a blow. Ingle said their work is critical to improving the algorithms she wrote, and to understanding things computers can’t, like sarcasm and parody.

Automated systems “need constant input and updating and testing and tweaking, just like any other computer script would need…If there’s not enough people to update the algorithms, they become more and more porous,” she said. “Automation is a lofty goal, and it’s a great goal. But we’re just not there yet.”

Global implications

Cutting back on content moderation could also land Musk in hot water with European regulators. German law, for example, requires social networks to quickly remove illegal content or face fines.

“Either you have content moderation, or you don’t have it,” said Sarah Roberts, an information studies professor at UCLA who briefly worked at Twitter earlier this year. “You don’t just kind of have content moderation. Removing child sexual exploitation material is content moderation.”

Ingle is also worried about the worldwide implications as big events loom, from the World Cup, which starts on Saturday, to elections around the globe.

“We get hyper fixed in the US on the US elections, but we dealt with the recent Brazilian elections and we dealt with elections all over the world: Japan, India, the EU, UK,” she said. “If this global decline in Twitter happens, it’s definitely going to affect democracies around the world.”

– / Twitter account of Elon Musk/AFP

/

Twitter account of Elon Musk/AFP

A screenshot from a video posted on the Twitter account of Elon Musk on Oct. 26, 2022 shows himself carrying a sink as he enters the Twitter headquarters in San Francisco.

The upheaval since Musk took over is already evident on Twitter.

Musk himself tweeted a conspiracy theory. Hate speech surged in the days after the deal closed. Accounts that repeatedly share false claims are getting more engagement, according to NewsGuard, which rates the reliability of online news sources.

Its analysis found while those accounts tweeted just 6% more in the week after Musk took control, they experienced a 57% increase in likes and retweets over the same period.

“The kinds of content they were spreading had disproportionately more misinformation than they usually had, and that is what leads to engagement,” said NewsGuard co-CEO Gordon Crovitz.

Musk’s first big product change — letting users buy so-called blue checks, which previously indicated that high-profile users were who they claimed to be — unleashed a flood of accounts impersonating companies, celebrities and politicians.

White nationalists and far-right extremists also signed up for the checks, according to a review of accounts by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Twitter’s trust and safety team had warned about the potential for the feature to be abused ahead of its rollout in an internal document first reported by Platformer and seen by NPR.

That included “impersonation of world leaders, advertisers, brand partners, election officials and other high profile individuals.” The document warned that “motivated scammers/bad actors” would likely be willing to pay for the increased visibility offered by the blue checks.

The team recommended ways to mitigate risk, most of which were not adopted, according to notes on the document.

The blue check debacle exacerbated Twitter’s business woes, as more advertisers halted spending. Roberts says it’s no wonder big brands are wary — and not just of their messages appearing next to toxic tweets.

“They are concerned about being associated with Twitter itself as a brand,” she said.

Amid the chaos, Twitter paused the paid blue check rollout. Musk said it will relaunch after Thanksgiving, with some guardrails.

Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

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We Millennials are clutching onto our Allbirds and avocado toasts

Photo: Getty Images/photoquest7

ace a cohort, Gen Z has now surpassed millennials as the largest generation, making up 32% of the global population. Though the oldest “Zoomers” are now just twenty-four years young, they still represent a relatively small portion of the US workforce; only 11.6% of them were employed in 2020, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. By 2030, however, 74% of the global workforce will be comprised of Millennials and Gen Z workers — far outnumbering Gen Xers and their Boomer-aged peers, especially in technology and media sectors.

The change is coming; the shift is looming. And for us in San Francisco, the “Zoomer Wave” is coming quicker than in any other large American city, if we were to take apartment rental applications as any indication.

In a report issued by the nation-wide rent listing service RentCafe, the number of Zoomer-aged apartment seekers in San Francisco doubled between 2020 and 2021. Per the online aggregator, San Francisco saw by far the most activity in the nation when it came to interest from young renters during that previously mentioned time.

“Nationwide, the number of applications for apartments from renters of all generations increased by an average of 10% year over year, from 2.9 million applications in 2020 to 3.2 million in 2021,” reads the report from the listing service. “The increase in activity was mainly driven by the youngest renter group, the oldest of whom are 25 years old.”

Moreover: Zoomers were the only generation to record an increase in renting activity in 2021. Of the millions of applications received through RentCafe, it logged a massive 101% YoY increase in the share of rental applications coming from Gen Zers looking for apartments in San Francisco . (The slice of the pie occupied by Gen Z rental applications submitted through RentCafe for San Francisco went from 11% to over 21% between 2020 and 2021, for context.)

By comparison, East Coast metropolises like Manhattan and Brooklyn saw around a 60% increase in rental applications from the same age cohort. And as for which city nabbed the number one trendiest spot to live for Generation Z, according to the study? san francisco

Elsewhere in the Bay Area is also seeing a tremendous uptick in rental interest from Zoomers. San Jose showed a significant YoY jump of 52% in RentCafe’s share of Zoomer-aged rental applications, going up from 12% to 18% over the past year — neck and neck with Seattle.

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Regarding our meme-able affinity for avocado toast—a generational trope waxed by Boomers to comment on Millenial spending habits, nevermind the fact that we’re among the poorest generations ever due to financial factors outside our realms of control— it looks like a staple food source for monounsaturated fats and slow-burning carbs is safe among us thirty-somethings. Well… assuming it doesn’t enjoy the same TikTok fame as these twice-fried tater tots.

The post Gen Z is Coming to San Francisco in Droves appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

How Much Out of Control is the San Francisco Attorney’s Office under DA Chesa Boudin?

NBCBayArea.com reports that at least 51 lawyers have resigned or fired since Boudin took office in January 2020. That’s about a third of the department’s lawyers.

San Francisco AND Chesa Boudin

“Chesa takes a radical approach of avoiding criminal charges in the first place and simply releasing people without rehabilitation and placing them in positions where they are more likely to reoffend,” said a resigned prosecutor, Brooke Jenkins

“As an African American and a Latino woman, I would wholeheartedly agree that the criminal justice system takes a lot of work, but as a district attorney, it’s your job to strike a balance.”

“As an African American and a Latino woman, I would wholeheartedly agree that the criminal justice system takes a lot of work, but as a district attorney, it’s your job to strike a balance.”

Judge criticizes the prosecutor’s office

In September, San Francisco Superior Court Justice Bruce Chan criticized Boudin’s office from the bank for “constant turnover” and neglect of “the basics of competent, professional law enforcement.”

Organizers hoping to call the San Francisco attorney back filed more than 83,000 signatures with election officials on Friday.

A prosecutor’s spokesman said that “District Attorney Boudin has made promoting public safety for the people of San Francisco his priority.” Boudin was previously the San Francisco public defender.

Read more at this link.

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Das erste Mal, als Marc und Layla McGinnis ihr Zuhause in South Austin erblickten, war ein fleckiger FaceTime-Anruf, den sie beim Autofahren auf einer Straße in West Texas entgegennahmen.

Es war im April 2019, und das Ehepaar war auf halbem Weg – sie zogen Sachen von ihrer ehemaligen Mietwohnung in der Nähe von Berkeley, Kalifornien, nach Austin, wo sie hofften, ihr erstes Haus zu kaufen –, als Layla ein Angebot entdeckte, das ihr ins Auge fiel . Sie riefen ihren Immobilienmakler an, der sich beeilte, die Immobilie zu besichtigen und ihnen per Videoanruf eine Tour zu geben.

Die McGinnises schafften es am nächsten Tag nach Austin, besichtigten das Anwesen selbst und machten sofort ihr Angebot: ungefähr 350.000 Dollar. Sie bekamen das Haus, ein Sieg nach einer Wohnungssuche, die Marc als “wahnsinnig und verrückt” bezeichnete.

Heute schätzt er, dass das Anwesen leicht 200.000 US-Dollar mehr kosten könnte, aber die McGinnises haben nicht vor, in absehbarer Zeit zu verkaufen. Sie verließen Kalifornien, weil sie eine Familie gründen wollten, und bekamen im Oktober ihr erstes Kind.

„San Francisco und die Bay Area waren zu der Zeit, als wir über Heirat und Kinder nachdachten, einfach völlig unerschwinglich“, sagte Marc. „Also fingen wir an, über verschiedene Standorte im ganzen Land nachzudenken, die für uns in Bezug auf die Dinge, die wir wollten, sinnvoll waren. Und was immer wieder auftauchte, war Austin.“

Austin scheint heutzutage für viele Kalifornier aufzutreten.

Laut einem Bericht von Texas Realtors, der Daten des Census Bureau analysierte, zogen 2019 mehr als 500.000 Menschen nach Texas, und die meisten von ihnen waren Kalifornier. Austin ist die am schnellsten wachsende Metropolregion in Texas, und dieses Wachstum wird laut der Handelskammer von Austin durch eine steigende Zahl von Kaliforniern unterstützt, die in die Stadt ziehen.

Wieso den? Ein großer Faktor ist die Erschwinglichkeit von Wohnungen, sagte Marvin Jolly, der Vorsitzende der Immobilienmakler von Texas.

Das mag für jeden absurd klingen, der auf die Hitze der Stadt geachtet hat Wohnungsmarkt und schnell gentrifizierende Nachbarschaften. Im September 2021 betrug der durchschnittliche Verkaufspreis für ein Haus in der Metropolregion Austin-Round Rock mit fünf Landkreisen laut dem jüngsten Bericht des Austin Board of Realtors 450.000 US-Dollar. Das ist ein Sprung von 28,5% gegenüber dem durchschnittlichen Verkaufspreis im September 2020 und ein neuer Rekord für den Monat September.

Aber in Los Angeles County lag der durchschnittliche Hausverkaufspreis im September 2021 nach Angaben der California Association of Realtors bei 730.000 US-Dollar. In San Francisco County waren es 1,29 Millionen US-Dollar.

Kalifornier fühlen sich auch von der niedrigeren Einkommenssteuer und den niedrigeren Lebenshaltungskosten angezogen, die Texas ihnen bietet, sagte Jolly. Und im Jahr 2020 hat etwas anderes dazu beigetragen, die Kalifornier nach Austin zu treiben: COVID-19.

Inoffizielle Firmenumzüge nach Texas erhöhen die Nachfrage nach Eigenheimen

„Wir dachten, dass die Pandemie für den Wohnungsmarkt verheerend gewesen sein könnte“, sagte Jolly. “Eigentlich hat die Pandemie den Wohnungsmarkt angeheizt.”

Seit Jahren wird das Wirtschaftswachstum von Austin durch Unternehmensverlagerungen wie dem Softwareriesen Oracle und kürzlich von Elon Musks Tesla angetrieben. Diese Umzüge haben stetig zum Wohnungsrausch beigetragen, sagte Jolly, aber die Pandemie habe eine Art arbeitergetriebener Unternehmensumzug von beispiellosem Ausmaß geschaffen.

“Es ist, als ob eine große, riesige inoffizielle Firmenumsiedlung nach Texas passiert wäre”, sagte Jolly. „Weil wir diese Mitarbeiter haben, die jetzt Remote-Online-Mitarbeiter sind. Und sie haben jetzt die Wahl, von überall aus zu arbeiten, von wo aus sie arbeiten möchten. Und viele dieser Arbeiter haben sich entschieden, wenn sie von überall aus arbeiten können, haben sie sich dafür entschieden, von Texas aus zu arbeiten.“

Das war die Entscheidung von Niraj Jayant und Amanda Negley, einem Ehepaar, das in der Technik bzw. im Betrieb arbeitet. Sie kauften im März 2021 ein Haus in South Austin und zogen Ende Juli aus San Francisco um. Jetzt arbeiten beide von ihrem neuen Zuhause aus.

Mehr:Inmitten der Pandemie gaben ausländische Käufer 634 Millionen US-Dollar für Immobilien in der Umgebung von Austin aus, wie aus einem Bericht hervorgeht

Es ist nicht ihr erstes Mal in Austin. Die beiden lernten sich als Studenten an der University of Texas kennen und zogen nach ihrem Abschluss im Jahr 2016 zusammen nach San Francisco. Obwohl es der richtige Schritt für ihre Karriere war, begannen sie, die Gemeinschaft in Austin zu vermissen, sagte Jayant.

„In San Francisco haben wir uns nie mit unseren Nachbarn unterhalten“, sagte er. „Du freundest dich immer absichtlich nicht mit Leuten in deinem Gebäude an. Und ich denke, wir waren bereit, ein bisschen mehr von diesem Gemeinschaftsgefühl zu haben und uns wie ein Teil einer Nachbarschaft zu fühlen.“

Sie fanden ein Haus im Viertel Westgate, das westlich der Menchaca Road und zwischen dem Ben White Boulevard und der Stassney Lane liegt. Sie zahlten etwa 550.000 US-Dollar – etwa 20 % über dem Angebotspreis.

Das ist typisch für den heutigen Wohnungsmarkt, sagte Jolly.

Jayant und Negley sagten, sie hoffen, Kinder zu bekommen und sie in ihrem neuen Zuhause aufzuziehen. Zurück in San Francisco sei es für das Paar leicht gewesen, diesen Traum aus den Augen zu verlieren, sagte Jayant.

“Niemand hat wirklich Kinder in der Stadt”, sagte er. „Du vergisst tatsächlich. Ich hatte in den Jahren, in denen ich dort war, keine kleinen Kinder oder ähnliches gesehen – es fühlt sich einfach so an, als ob viele Leute in den Zwanzigern und Dreißigern vorübergehend dort sind.“

Ed Choi hatte ein ähnliches Gefühl in Los Angeles, wo er lebte, bevor er 2019 nach Austin zog. Den Umzug machte er aus Liebe: Während einer Arbeitsreise nach Austin traf er sich mit seinem jetzigen Ehemann über eine Dating-App. Das Paar war etwas mehr als ein Jahr auf Distanz, bevor es sich entschied, gemeinsam ein Haus in Austin zu kaufen. Choi sagte, die Wahl zwischen Austin und LA sei „nie wirklich eine Frage“.

„Ich wusste, dass ich ein Leben beginnen wollte“, sagte Choi. „Ich wollte einen Partner haben. Ich wollte ein Haus haben. Ich wollte eine Familie gründen. Und viele dieser Dinge sind in LA wirklich unerreichbar. Die Immobilienpreise sind so unverschämt.“

Choi und sein Ehemann Jordan Suggs erwarben ein Haus im Stadtteil Southwood, das zwischen Menchaca und South First Street südlich von Ben White liegt, für rund 500.000 US-Dollar.

„Es ist lustig, weil wir jetzt darüber reden und sagen: Gott, wenn wir gerade nach einem Haus suchen, können wir uns in keiner der Gegenden, in denen wir leben wollen, etwas leisten“, sagte Choi . genannt. Das Paar hat im September geheiratet und freut sich auf die Kindererziehung in ihrem neuen Zuhause.

Mehr:Die Immobilienpreise in Austin steigen immer noch, aber der Markt zeigt einen „beruhigenden Trend“

Choi vermisst ein paar Dinge an LA – zum Beispiel die Food-Szene. Chois Familie ist Koreaner und er sagte, er habe „noch mein koreanisches Lieblingsrestaurant“ in Austin gefunden. Alles in allem sagte Choi jedoch, dass er Austin liebt und hofft, dass seine Neuankömmlinge mit einer ähnlichen Wertschätzung für die Stadt kommen.

„Ich liebe es, die Geschichte der Leute zu hören, die nach Austin ziehen, weil sie es hier lieben oder die Atmosphäre hier lieben“, sagte Choi. „Wenn der Ort, an den man umzieht, an Wertschätzung fehlt, wird es problematisch. Ich denke, dass einiges davon gerechtfertigt ist, die Rippen, die die Kalifornier von den Austiniten bekommen.“

Austin-Viertel wandeln sich inmitten wohlhabender Neuankömmlinge auf

Kalifornier oder nicht, die Leute, die die Immobilienpreise in Austin in die Höhe treiben, bereiten einigen Austiniten sicherlich Probleme.

Die Stadt gentrifiziert sich schnell, und Langzeitbewohner – insbesondere Schwarze und Latinx-Bewohner – werden zunehmend aus ihrer eigenen Stadt herausgerechnet, sagte Mechele Dickerson, eine UT-Rechtsprofessorin, die Wohnen und die Mittelschicht studiert.

„Viele der bezahlbaren Mietwohnungen werden abgerissen und in einkommensstärkere Wohnungen umgewandelt“, sagte Dickerson. „Und das bedeutet, dass Menschen ausgehen, die überwiegend nicht-weiß sind, und Menschen, die nicht reich sind. Wir werden also zu einer Stadt, die San Francisco sehr ähnlich ist, wo wir eine hochgebildete Stadt mit hohem Einkommen haben, aber nur sehr wenig Mittelschicht.“

Austin ist die teuerste Stadt in Texas. Laut der National Low Income Housing Coalition muss eine Person mindestens 27,58 US-Dollar pro Stunde verdienen, um sich eine Wohnung mit zwei Schlafzimmern in der Gegend bequem leisten zu können. Das ist weit vom texanischen Mindestlohn von 7,25 Dollar entfernt.

Austinites ohne Wohnung unterliegen derzeit dem stadtweiten Campingverbot für Obdachlose, aber es gibt nicht viele bezahlbare Wohnungen, an die sie sich wenden können, sagte Dickerson.

„Wir sind nicht anders als jede andere Stadt, die bei der Planung von bezahlbarem Wohnraum sehr schlechte Arbeit geleistet hat“, sagte sie. „Die Leute tun so, als ob sie schockiert wären, wenn eine Nachbarschaft gentrifiziert wird, was einfach absurd ist. Weil man deutlich sehen kann, wann ein Viertel vor der Gentrifizierung steht, und die Stadtplaner würden es uns wahrscheinlich nicht sagen, aber sie könnten uns wahrscheinlich jetzt sagen, was das nächste Viertel ist, das wahrscheinlich Gentrifizierung macht.“

Der Austin Joe Kirklin, den er als UT-Student kennengelernt hat, wäre für jeden, der in den letzten zehn Jahren in die Stadt gezogen ist, nicht wiederzuerkennen. Kirklin zog nach Austin, nachdem er 1974 seine Highschool in Odessa mit einer Vorliebe für Pink Floyd und Led Zeppelin abgeschlossen hatte. In Austin entdeckte er progressive Country-Stars wie Willie Nelson und Jerry Jeff Walker.

„Das hat mir wirklich die Augen geöffnet“, sagt er. „Und das Tolle daran, die Augen so geöffnet zu haben, ist, dass es auch den Geist öffnet. Es gibt viel mehr Welt da draußen, als du denkst.“

Im Laufe seines Lebens entdeckte Kirklin ein bisschen mehr von dieser Welt. Er hat in Houston, San Antonio, Chicago, Kanada und Kalifornien gelebt, die er von 2000 bis 2020 sein Zuhause nannte. Kirklin und seine Frau lebten die meiste Zeit in einer Stadt namens Paradise, die sie nach dem Brand aufgeben mussten im zerstörerischen Lagerfeuer 2018.

„Wir haben nicht nur unser Haus und unseren Besitz verloren“, sagte er. „Wir haben unsere Stadt verloren“

Kirklin und seine Frau Marilyn hatten immer geplant, sich in Zentraltexas zurückzuziehen, aber das Feuer beschleunigte ihre Pläne. Sie machten den Umzug im März 2020 und sagten, sie hätten „ziemlich einfach“ eine Mietwohnung in Bee Cave gefunden. Das Paar zahlt etwa 2.700 Dollar im Monat, aber ihr Vermieter will die Miete um etwa 20 % erhöhen, um mit dem Markt Schritt zu halten.

„Wenn ich an seiner Stelle wäre, würde ich genau dasselbe tun“, sagte Kirklin. „Sie wollen mieten, was der Markt verlangt. Und im Moment ist es einfach verrückt.“

Mehr:Ein weiteres Eigentumswohnungsprojekt in Austins boomendem Stadtteil Bouldin Creek geplant

Manchmal vermisst Kirklin den Austin, den er in den 1970er Jahren kennengelernt hat. Er erinnert sich, wie der MoPac Boulevard gerade gebaut wurde, als er die Bee Cave Road aus der Stadt nehmen und nichts als Landschaft vorfinden konnte. Jetzt ist alles entwickelt.

“Es verwirrt mich immer noch irgendwie”, sagte er.

Meistens aber brachten ihn die gleichen Dinge, die Kirklin 1974 zum ersten Mal nach Austin brachten, 2020 wieder zurück: die Musik, die Kultur und die Menschen.

„Wirklich, es ist die gleiche Stadt, die sie schon immer war“, sagte Kirklin. „Gleiche Musikszene. Dieselbe Stimmung, auch wenn sie jetzt viel teurer ist als damals. Aber seine Seele ist dieselbe, und das ist trotz aller Veränderungen ermutigend.“

Marc McGinnis vermutet, dass Austins Seele es ist, was Kalifornier wie ihn dazu verleitet, hierher zu ziehen. Seit seinem Roadtrip in die Stadt 2019 mit seiner Frau sagte McGinnis, er habe nicht zurückgeschaut.

“Dies ist ein wirklich großartiger Ort”, sagte McGinnis. „Ich denke, dass die Leute, die Austin aufgebaut haben, wirklich großartige Arbeit geleistet haben, um so viele Kalifornier wie möglich anzuziehen. Es ist deine eigene Schuld, ihr alle.“

The post Californians are shifting to Austin in droves. Here is why they are saying that’s appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

I left San Francisco on a suitably foggy morning – my items, acquired in my 25 years in the Bay Area, were jammed in a U-Haul – in the summer of 2019.

I moved to Southern California, Long Beach, to be precise, to do my PhD in English at UC Irvine. But I also wanted to get away from it, as Joan Didion says when she wrote about her exodus from New York. It was my first move from the Bay Area since I was born, other than a six-month stay in Europe during college.

During my three years at SFGATE before I left, the Exodus became my bread and butter, so to speak. I became the de facto Exodus reporter for the website that recorded people’s journeys from the Bay Area to Austin, to Portland, to the most remote places anywhere else than here.

Exodus has become ingrained in my memory after so many interviews, people keep telling about their familiar problems with the place: it’s too expensive, too technical, too busy. I couldn’t stop thinking that maybe there was something about this Bay Area exodus. Maybe I should try somewhere else for a change.

“Choosing whether or not to leave the Bay Area is not the same as answering a yes / no question,” I wrote at the time. “I knew that as a PhD student in the Bay Area I couldn’t survive without accumulating limitless debt… and finally I realized that I wanted that degree badly enough to leave my home from birth. I had to fill the scales and see which way they leaned. “

“After living in the Bay Area all my life, I’m scared of leaving,” I wrote. “But I am also encouraged by the many come and go stories that I have been able to tell over the past few years.”

So I moved to Long Beach with my two cats and my boyfriend. And so began the adjustment phase.

I am hardly the only person to leave San Francisco in the pre-pandemic and during the period. Big tech started to go – and so did people. According to U.S. Postal Service data received by the Chronicle, churn “rose rapidly” in March 2020 after California was forced to stay home in response to the COVID-19 pandemic (SFGATE and the San Francisco Chronicle are both owned from Hearst, but work independently). In March 2020 alone, the Chronicle reported, there were more than 4,300 address changes out of the city – more than double the previous March.

Although I didn’t move during the pandemic, I suspect my reasons for leaving weren’t dissimilar to those who left when COVID moved through the US – and like those who went after me, there was a major adjustment period going on life across the bay.

SFGATE Feature Reporter Michelle Robertson returned to San Francisco from Southern California in December 2020.

Immediately after the move, everything in Los Angeles seemed to sparkle like it had a brilliant movie – perhaps because it was too close to Hollywood for too many years. I dug up the kitsch and pomp. The 50s bar with the 70-year-old lounge-singing duo. The disguised girls post Instagram of their boozy brunches. The roller-skaters whiz down the beach path in Long Beach. The friendliness of strangers on the sidewalk.

But there were things that felt too different for a longtime Bay Area resident that sometimes I felt like I was suffocating. Driving, for example. An hour and a half from Long Beach to Irvine on a bad day. Two hours to Echo Park. Twenty minutes to the motorway entrance.

And then there was the flatness of it all. The town felt small without the hills. It sounds like a minor criticism, but without any bump, the city felt like it slumped, like I couldn’t see where I was going.

For the first year I couldn’t bring myself to return to San Francisco. Even visits to my parents in the East Bay were too much for me.

I told myself that after so many years I was overwhelmed. Who needed San Francisco, a place where I could never buy a home or put down roots in it? The complaints my sources shared with me while writing “weed is greener” stories suddenly became my complaints. The traffic was bad. Tech culture was tiring. And what about these rents?

At least that’s what I said to myself.

Then the pandemic came and things suddenly took on a different shine. To see my parents in the East Bay, I had to drive for six hours without stopping – careful to avoid the germ-infested toilets and restaurants – and then we spent our visits outdoors, crossing the paths only indoors with great care and attention.

I returned to San Francisco on this visit. Just to check things out, I told myself. Just to look around. But really, I knew I was looking, “Could we maybe come back here?” I wondered. It felt too painful to know that I would be moving to a place where it is so financially difficult to live even to ask.

But the seed was sown. In tears, I waved goodbye to my parents, went back to Los Angeles and noticed that the SoCal shimmer was starting to stink.

There was not a moment that cemented my sudden dislike of Southern California. Rather, it was an accumulation. I started to loathe the little things in LA: the cheesy palm trees, the hot summer nights, the smell of sewage wafting from the garbage-strewn ocean, the driving and the driving and the driving.

However, it wasn’t so much what I didn’t like, but what I missed. For one thing, I missed living close to my parents. Missed my friends who saw me grow up from childhood to adulthood. I missed the smells, salty sea mixed with taqueria mixed with flowering box trees. And I missed the way I knew it, so deep and deep, like a worn out sweater that I had run down – holes and everything.

It happened in December 2020. My current fiancé, cats, roommate, and I moved back to San Francisco, I invited myself in with a new Masters degree and an additional U-Haul of things I had acquired along the way.

Leaving Los Angeles wasn’t a difficult decision. We actually hardly discussed it. It just felt like going back to San Francisco, like it was the right thing and natural, like there was no need to think about it at all.

Despite the masked faces on Valencia Street and the closure of many local shops amid the pandemic, San Francisco welcomed us with open arms. At least that’s what it felt like. The rents were the lowest I’d seen in years. In July, for example, rents fell by 11.8% across the board. Two-bedroom apartments in the mission no longer cost $ 4,000 a month, but were much more manageable at around $ 3,000. We got a month for free in our current apartment, which looks out onto an alley where children ride bicycles and a dog sniffs at the foot of our stairs almost every hour.

It’s not perfect. I wish we had as much space as we did in Southern California. The rents are rising steadily again. Sometimes people throw trash over our entrance. I’ve already got four road tickets. But in the six months we’ve been back, I haven’t regretted coming back once, despite the fact that I miss the friends I made in LA.

It’s a strange time to be in San Francisco. It feels like the city has changed big and small since I left. My favorite bar is closed. I have lost my rental price-controlled apartment. My two best friends moved to New York.

But despite everything that feels so new, it still has that cozy, old sweater feeling. For now, I’ll take it as it is.

The post Folks left San Francisco in droves throughout the pandemic. I moved again. appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.