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Zorro

(15,691 posts)
Fri Feb 12, 2021, 01:10 PM Feb 2021

The Californians Are Coming. So Is Their Housing Crisis.

Is it possible to import growth without also importing housing problems? “I can’t point to a city that has done it right.”

Statistically speaking, Idaho is one of America’s greatest economic success stories. The state has low unemployment and high income growth. It has expanded education spending while managing to shore up budget reserves. Brad Little, the state’s Republican governor, has attributed this run of prosperity to the mix of low taxes and minimal regulation that conservatives call “the business climate.”

But there is another factor at play: Californians, fleeing high home prices, are moving to Idaho in droves. For the past several years, Idaho has been one of the fastest-growing states, with the largest share of new residents coming from California. This fact can be illustrated with census data, moving vans — or resentment.

Home prices rose 20 percent in 2020, according to Zillow, and in Boise, “Go Back to California” graffiti has been sprayed along the highways. The last election cycle was a referendum on growth and housing, and included a fringe mayoral candidate who campaigned on a promise to keep Californians out. The dichotomy between growth and its discontents has fused the city’s politics and collective consciousness with a question that city leaders around the country were asking even before the pandemic and remote work trends accelerated relocation: Is it possible to import California’s growth without also importing its housing problems?

“I can’t point to a city that has done it right,” said Lauren McLean, Boise’s Democratic mayor.

That’s because as bad as California’s affordable housing problem is, it isn’t really a California problem. It is a national one. From rising homelessness to anti-development sentiment to frustration among middle-class workers who’ve been locked out of the housing market, the same set of housing issues has bubbled up in cities across the country. They’ve already visited Boise, Nashville, Denver and Austin, Texas, and many other high-growth cities. And they will become even more widespread as remote workers move around.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/12/business/economy/california-housing-crisis.html

The NYT does seem to have a thing about California...

People moving from California to other lower housing cost states do bring some benefits to those places. Homebuilders and home sellers certainly appreciate their arrival, and the extra money they bring and spend in those communities helps everyone.

I think local resentment of migrating Californians has more to do with cultural differences; it's the more liberal attitudes they tend to bring with them that is a primary source of the hostility -- it's almost a reflexive response in those areas.
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DonaldsRump

(7,715 posts)
1. It's fine.
Fri Feb 12, 2021, 01:14 PM
Feb 2021

Less traffic and we'll make the other states bluer!

I agree: my RW acquaintances outside of California HATE California. Well, you know what...it's great to have Kamala Harris as VP! I think she's going to help her native state after 4 years of being targeted by trump.

Bradshaw3

(7,455 posts)
2. This migration definitely does NOT help everyone in those communities
Fri Feb 12, 2021, 01:19 PM
Feb 2021

The rapid rise in housing prices, including rent, is pushing out people in middle and lower incomes and increasing the burden on those hanging on - especially the retired and elderly who still have to pay for things like food and medication. Others who leave are forced to find housing in places that are much less desirable in several ways. Also, many of the newcomers in nicer places are second homes where Cali residents may use maybe a month a year. They add little to the local economies.

And where I lived most of the incoming residents did not bring liberal attitudes. They left California to get away from those, and away from people of color.

AllTooEasy

(1,260 posts)
6. I'm liberal, but Californians are effing up Phx's real estate market for local buyers...AGAIN
Fri Feb 12, 2021, 02:47 PM
Feb 2021

I had local friends who went from qualifying to not qualifying for the same house literally overnight back in the 2000s. It's happening again on Phx's west side. Blue-color Californians are selling their mortgaged CA homes and buying custom AZ homes for cash, often before a local AZer can get qualified for the mortgage. Even local AZ liberals are pissed. The resentment is real.

I bought my house before Californians moved in, so my retirement plans look promising, but my conscience still worries for the community at large. California Liberals, and never Trump Repubs, have helped to turn AZ blue and I appreciate that. I've also met Conservative ex-Caly's who moved to AZ because they thought CA was "hopelessly liberal". The Conservative rats are jumping the West Coast's ship.

Bradshaw3

(7,455 posts)
9. I think it is Maricopa county they are turning blue
Fri Feb 12, 2021, 04:00 PM
Feb 2021

Where I was in northern AZ it is the white RWingers who are moving in. And you are right, they are making it difficult for younger and middle class residents to buy or even rent.

Rebl2

(13,309 posts)
10. Some of you need
Fri Feb 12, 2021, 06:51 PM
Feb 2021

to move to red KS & MO and make them bluer. Cost of living is lower as well as housing costs.

Frances

(8,531 posts)
3. Housing prices up 20%
Fri Feb 12, 2021, 01:22 PM
Feb 2021

If you are a local young couple saving up to buy a house, aren’t you going to resent a 20% increase on price?
I live near Santa Cruz, CA within commuting distance of Silicon Valley high paying jobs, close to both the ocean and beautiful mountains
So we have a terrible housing problem for lower income workers who have lived here all their lives

CrispyQ

(36,226 posts)
4. They invaded the CO front range a long time ago.
Fri Feb 12, 2021, 01:22 PM
Feb 2021

Yes they bring in extra money, but most communities aren't good at planning ahead for the extra traffic & it's only after the new developments are built & traffic becomes a problem that city/county/state government put money into new road projects, like traffic lights & new turning lanes. And that's why in Colorado we call summer Construction Season.

Dawson Leery

(19,348 posts)
5. Again, right wing hostility has nothing to do with economics.
Fri Feb 12, 2021, 01:51 PM
Feb 2021

Right wing hostility is purely social. The deplorables of Idaho are afraid these newcomers will turn their communities to the left (and they will do so ).

MicaelS

(8,747 posts)
8. RWs in Texas are furious.
Fri Feb 12, 2021, 03:48 PM
Feb 2021

All these CA folks are moving here are buying up everything in sight since housing costs are low. The big complaint is they are brining their "liberual" CA values with them.



Texas is going to go Blue.

Prof. Toru Tanaka

(1,924 posts)
11. So why don't they head north across the Red River to Okla.?
Fri Feb 12, 2021, 06:54 PM
Feb 2021

Oklahoma is one of the reddest states in the US and they also have pretty affordable housing as a whole.

The conservatives from TX would probably feel right at home unless they were UT Longhorn football fans. They'd be surrounded by rabid "Boomer Sooner" OU fans.

jmowreader

(50,451 posts)
15. Forget that "Californians will turn Idaho blue" line
Sat Feb 13, 2021, 06:07 PM
Feb 2021

I live in Idaho. The Californians we are getting would get kicked out of the Proud Boys for being too far to the right.

I'll give you an example. Last Tuesday I had an appointment. The car next to mine (a BMW SUV) had a set of California plates and a window decal that read, "I'll wear a mask when they shut down the abortion clinics. At least I'll be saving lives." There was also that Mother Teresa anti-abortion quote on a sticker, a "save the unborn babies" sticker, something I don't remember the exact wording of that suggested wearing a mask was giving in to communism, a couple of pro-gun stickers and two Trump decals.

Also remember that the Aryan Nations, a nationwide white supremacist group that was founded near Hayden, Idaho, was formed by people who moved from California to Idaho. Also, the city of Sandpoint (a very pretty little town that has skiing in the winter and a bottomless lake - seriously, it is so deep that the Navy does research on submarines in it - for summer recreation) used to be a reasonably liberal little burg until hard-right Californians infested the place. Now it's so far to the right that a genuine Ku Klux Klan member could run a campaign for sheriff there and be taken seriously.

We also have a significant sovereign citizen problem. They do all the shit sovereign citizens everywhere do, but the cops will go flying to answer their calls because the fuckers will file malicious liens against the entire law enforcement apparatus if the police don't respond to their calls quite quickly enough. I would hazard a guess that there's not one police officer in North Idaho that hasn't had at least one malicious lien filed against his or her home at least once since they joined the force. The longtime sheriff of Shoshone County, which is on the Montana border, retired because he was tired of going to the county clerk once a week to have the latest malicious lien on his house vacated.

The Californian infestation has pushed Idaho even farther to the right than it already was.

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