To escape the closure, fires and the high cost of living
America is witnessing a mass migration from California to Texas
Many people who move to Texas work remotely.
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Austin residents fear for their local culture to disappear.
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The economic situation in Texas is better than California at the moment.
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The demand for housing has increased dramatically in Austin recently.
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With parks and beaches closed, and real estate prices skyrocketing, Jennifer Desio and her husband shortlisted the most desirable places to live in America.
Desio, 43, a senior researcher at Dropbox, a cloud storage service, says her family has been evaluating her life trajectory and asking, “Are we making the right choices?”
It's a question many other Americans are asking, now, in San Francisco, America's tech capital.
The American woman recalled her visit to a music festival in Austin, the capital of Texas, and learned that the city has a great atmosphere, saying, "We visited Austin last October for five days, and we fell in love with it, and we immediately bought a place."
Like Ms. Desio and her husband and two children, many other Californians are flocking with their tech money to Texas, to escape lockdowns, high taxes, and exorbitant living costs;
The mass exodus led to a house price boom in its rival state.
Billionaire Elon Musk's decision to move Tesla's headquarters from Palo Alto in San Francisco's Silicon Valley to Austin is a symbol of the exodus from the West Coast to the "Silicon Hills", in Texas.
Musk's decision is perhaps the most striking example of a record number of people and companies' moves.
Meanwhile, new arrivals to Texas have contributed to a 38 percent increase in home prices in the Texas capital this year, with property prices rising even more in the area where Tesla will settle.
The sharp rightward shift in Texas politics has delayed a number of would-be immigrants from liberal California, but the vast majority of exiles do not seem to regret choosing a low-tax haven with bigger homes and fewer wildfires.
expensive lodging
“One of the great things about working in technology nowadays is that a lot of companies have decided to either work remotely or the hybrid option, and my company is one of the first, so I can live anywhere,” Desio says.
The new family's home has sweeping views across Austin's greenbelt and has a swimming pool.
“I think a lot of Californians have realized that housing is expensive, and we live in a beautiful 3,200 square foot house here in Austin,” she said, adding, “In San Francisco we had a 1,400 square foot cottage with no yard, and we were paying the price.” Himself".
“There has always been a rivalry between Texas and California,” said William Fulton, director of the Kinder Institute for Urban Research at Rice University in Houston, Texas. They are the only two states that were independent states before they were states, and both joined the union at about the same time, and they are the two most populous states. Fulton's research indicates that house prices are the main factor for immigration from California to Texas, explaining, "There is no doubt that Texas is winning the housing game now, and the population of Texas is still clearly rising, and California is starting to decline for the first time, in decades."
Austin has proven to be the most attractive destination for those who have left California, due to its reputation as the most liberal city in the Republican-controlled state of Texas.
Some locals worry that a massive influx of technology wealth is turning a once-quiet university town into a sprawling, soaring city, too quickly.
Google is set to move its headquarters to Texas, to be in its newest building in Austin, a gleaming 35-story tower, on its way to completion in May;
As Apple completes a $1 billion campus, it could double its workforce in the city to 15,000.
Tesla's vast complex of factories is creating an entirely new area of the city on vacant land near the airport, with "eco-friendly" housing powered by solar energy.
Interesting destination
The Austin Chamber of Commerce said 8,628 jobs were brought into the city by 18 companies that moved operations from California last year. And it's not just technology. Kitchenware maker Kangshan Culture announced last week that it would move from Chino, a city near Los Angeles, to a factory in Leander, a small town on the northern edge of Austin, which It provides about 300 job opportunities.
Some of the new jobs will be for local workers, some for recent graduates, and some for people moving from the West Coast. The demand for real estate is also being driven by newly mobile technologists, who discovered telecommuting during the pandemic and then found their way to Texas. Sarah Cockerbaum, 39, an interior designer who founded Slick Design in Austin 10 years ago, said her clients who arrived from California came for reasons other than work. "We have five or six clients who moved from California, but none of them moved here to get a job," she said, adding, "They all moved here because they can work remotely, and Texas is obviously less expensive than California, and people think it's the hub. The liberal is interesting, we have lots of outdoor space and access to lots of natural beauty.A client told me it was a wildfire, and they didn't think California was a sustainable place to live in the long term.”
Noticeable difference
From 2015 to 2019, about 367,000 Californians moved to Texas, according to national census estimates, compared with 197,000 who moved from Texas to California.
Despite recent brutal crackdowns on its southern border, Texas, too, has begun to overtake California in international immigration, which for decades has provided the Gulf of Mexico with a huge pool of engineers, nannies, restaurant workers and other immigrant residents.
With 29.1 million residents spread over 269,000 square miles, Texas is actually the largest state, but less densely populated than California, which has a population of 39.5 million and over 164,000 square miles.
However, California's homeless rate is four times higher than in Texas, non-white students are less likely to graduate high school in California, and necessities like electricity are half the price in Texas. After the unemployment crisis during the pandemic, observers note that California now has the highest unemployment-benefit deficit of any state in the country, thanks to a system that disproportionately taxes employers who employ low-income workers.
A competitive city
"Before, Austin was just a college town with government jobs, and we didn't have a lot of wealth," said Austin-born real estate agent Morgan Smith. "We were a great musical city."
"It's becoming difficult for Texans to move to the city because it's so competitive, and we're not used to getting 20 offers for one home, until this year," Smith, 50, added, referring to the growing demand for housing.
"We see a lot of money coming in from California, and it's annoying for people who live here, who actually have to take out loans," the real estate agent explained.
Smith expresses concern about the spirit of his city, saying, "I understand that people who bring wealth are taking our city to a different level, but the features of Austin are changing and the city may never be the same again."
367,000 Californians moved to Texas, from 2015 to 2019.
8,628 new jobs in Austin, created by 18 companies, moved operations from California last year.
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