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How long before all the Californians make Austin the exact same place they fled from?
by rainyMammoth 6y ago
How long before all the Californians make Austin the exact same place they fled from?
- systemvoltage 6y agoConsider this as load balancing. It is freeing up space in the bay area.
- muzz 6y agoOracle's leaving will free up office space for Snowflake to expand into. They're taking business, might as well take offices too.
- war1025 6y ago"They ideas are good, they just happen to be implemented wrong every time. But this time is different"
- nodesocket 6y agoJoe Rogan was talking just about this[1], how he doesn't want to disrupt the culture and environment and hopes all the people fleeing California don't try to impose the same values and politics that caused them to flee California in the first place. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iajyvVaeFS4&ab_channel=JREClips https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iajyvVaeFS4&ab_channel=JRECl...
- birdyrooster 6y agoAverage high/low temperatures in the summer for Austin are: June. 92° / 72° July. 96° / 74° August 96° / 74° Average high/low temperatures in the summer for Cupertino are: June. 75° / 55° July. 76° / 58° August 76° / 58° Austin will never, ever be like Silicon Valley because of this. The freedom you get from cooler weather is great from an energy utilization stand point and for allowing safer and more desirable conditions outdoors. Not to mention you have much more beautiful choices of nature in Northern California. Think about whenever you travel to Austin for conferences, it's oppressively hot and you basically travel from one air conditioned building to the next. Now imagine 10 years time of increased global warming. California will still be coastal to one of the coldest waters in the world at this latitude, which is a natural air conditioner. To me this spells the end of Oracle's supremacy in anything other than selling smaller and smaller volumes of mainframes.
- chaostheory 6y agoThis won't last much longer for the SF Bay Area. The climate has changed already and average temperatures are rising. The place where I live used to be foggy. It hasn't been like that for over 7 years now. It's much worse in the southern part of the Bay Area. Air conditioning is starting to be requirement.
- ntsplnkv2 6y agoIt will get warmer in the bay area, but unbearably hot in Austin. Temperatures are rising there too rapidly: "Austin Makes Top 10 List Of U.S. Cities With The Greatest Increase In Hot Days" -> https://www.keranews.org/2019-08-22/austin-makes-top-10-list-of-u-s-cities-with-the-greatest-increase-in-hot-days https://www.keranews.org/2019-08-22/austin-makes-top-10-list...
- eznzt 6y ago>Now imagine 10 years time of increased global warming. Wow, 0.1 degrees more, that will really tip the scales
- e40 6y agoYou realize this is BS, right? That's an average. I live around Oakland. The number of days, in the last decade where I wished I had AC went up 10x. I literally had days where I camped out in my basement. With a fan blowing on me. That never happened a decade or more ago. Ever.
- jeffbee 6y agoBay Area had 99 straight days of poison air in 2020 and there's no reason to expect 2021 to be any better, especially considering that so far the 2020-2021 water year has been the driest ever recorded in human history.
- testfoobar 6y agoIn the midst of the pandemic, it is easy to overlook California's yearly water supply. The snow-pack numbers this year do not bode well for next year.
- nordsieck 6y ago> How long before all the Californians make Austin the exact same place they fled from? That is a concern. But part of SF's problems is structural: transportation and new construction are constrained by water. That is much less of a concern in Austin.
- TravelPiglet 6y agoIs public transit good in Austin?
- hindsightbias 6y agoJust get a big truck like everyone else and you’ll be fine.
- wavefunction 6y agoNot really but a big transit bond just passed that intends to expand the light rail system, eventually linking the airport to downtown and downtown to more of the central area. There's going to be some sort of huge construction project on the interstate that bisects the town but the particulars have not yet been decided on that.
- toephu2 6y agoWill probably take 10+ years to build?
- jeffbee 6y agoLOL no. SFMTA alone carries almost 10x as many weekday riders as Capitol Metro and that's not even counting BART, which is seems like you'd need to count BART to get to an equivalent service area population.
- fmakunbound 6y agoIt’s brutal.
- tidepod12 6y ago
- raverbashing 6y agoIt's a relevant worry, at the same time I think political inertia is a thing. Just look at NIMBYISM in California, that's not the product of the newcomers, but of people that have been there for 40/50 years. So it takes time. Maybe in SF the turnover is faster, but not necessarily in the whole valley
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- amyjess 6y agoI mean, Austin is pretty close already. Their housing prices have been sky-high for a while now, especially compared to Dallas and Houston.
- enraged_camel 6y agoThis is a popular joke among conservatives, of course, but the reality is the opposite. There are two types of people moving from Cali to Austin: people who can't afford living there anymore, and people who can easily afford it but are tired of paying high taxes. The latter group tends to be on the more conservative side (essentially the FYGM section of the political spectrum) and their wealth does give them the ability to influence local politics. So, if anything, Austin, one of the most liberal cities in America, is more likely to shift to the right as a result of these migrations from California and other blue states. edit: downvotes by conservatives are laughable lol, keep them coming guys!
- majormajor 6y agoYou're confusing supply-and-demand-driven cost of living with liberal vs conservative politics. NIMBYism and desires for high-paying jobs cut across the American political spectrum. (Existing property owners in Austin, however, may be ecstatic if their property is suddenly priced like SF value... but that doesn't mean they're gonna want to relax zoning and increase density and change the shape and character of their neighborhoods, like we're told is the answer for SF.) (And of course, fleeing higher prices by nature means that *demand is overall higher in the place you're leaving. Which makes it hard to say it's been "ruined.")
- hindsightbias 6y agoThe locals have been mostly gentrified. There is no Prop 13 in TX, it’s a low-service state, so it all rolls down to property valuation and tax rate.
- majormajor 6y agoI'm not sure what you're saying. Do you think those things make Austin immune to any problems that could be caused by increased income inequality?
- hindsightbias 6y agoWhen I went to UT, you could be poor. You could be retired and live in Travis Heights. You can’t do those things now, because there’s no rent control, and your 1400 sqft bungalow is valued at $1.5M and your tax rate is $2/$100 valuation and going up 20% next year. The difference is Gov. Abbott will eventually drive those icky poor/homeless under the overpass out by taking over APD and busing them to CA. Progress. /s
- briandear 6y agoI am not sure what you mean by “low service.” I have lived in both places and I greatly prefer not paying $800 a year to register my car. And the roads in Texas? Far better than California. And gas prices? Dramatically cheaper. If low service means that, then yes, sign me up. I don’t see much value in California “services.”
- spchampion2 6y agoWait until they learn about cedar fever. Juniperus ashei pollinates in the winter, starting right about now through February. Pollen levels are still relatively low, but by January the trees explode and people are miserable. Last January they were reporting almost 28,000 cedar pollen grains per cubic meter of air in the Austin area. Misery. Pure misery. https://www.kxan.com/top-stories/cedar-pollen-reaches-highest-levels-of-the-season/ https://www.kxan.com/top-stories/cedar-pollen-reaches-highes...
- warmfuzzykitten 6y agoYou left out scorpions.
- _chris_ 6y agoThere's a reason we wear shoes indoors in Texas...
- hotsauceror 6y agoAnd a reason we turn our boots upside down before we put them on!
- fendrak 6y agoIn 12 years in Austin I have encountered zero scorpions indoors, and maybe a single-digit number outdoors. This despite essentially constantly walking barefoot in both. In my entire life in Texas I've been stung by a scorpion exactly one time.
- lwb 6y agoI’ve lived here 6 months and already found 2 in my house. Depends where you live I guess!
- hotsauceror 6y agoWe get about one or two a month here in the summer, in the house. There’s plenty more in the yard. We found one in our daughter’s crib and another stung my wife while we were asleep in bed. We’ve got brown recluse, black widows, and rattlesnakes too. Welcome to Texas!
- protomyth 6y agoPeople show up in new area because its better than where they left and decide to vote for the same politicians that screwed up their old area. Happens all the time as logic is hard. or to put it like one of the folks here: "you peed in your pool and moved to ours, don't do that again"
- mehrzad 6y agoThe high cost of living in California has almost nothing to do with liberal politics or whatever you're trying to insinuate.
- dragonwriter 6y ago> The high cost of living in California has almost nothing to do with liberal politics or whatever you’re trying to insinuate. It has a lot to do with economic success and the wealth produced thereby. The extent that has to do with the distinctive local politics of the state is another argument.
- mehrzad 6y agoYes, that's a much better way to put it. It just seems ironic to me that after decades of policies leading to a wealthy California the same detractors are claiming that the liberalism was the problem. My most charitable interpretation they think recently the policies have gotten too progressive and that's causing the exodus, as opposed to the wealth causing the high COL.
- cscurmudgeon 6y agoA lot of places are more wealthy or as wealthy as California. Why don't they have the same cost of living or higher?
- mehrzad 6y agoCan you name such places? Someone mentioned Houston, but I honestly don’t know if their zoning laws are more liberal than ours (LA).
- tidepod12 6y ago"Californication" (yes, as referred to in the Red Hot Chili Peppers song) has been a thing for almost a century now. Oregon literally tried to ban immigrants from California back in the 1940s, and Coloradoans have a notorious saying from the 60s "Don't Californicate Colorado" (it used to be a pretty common bumper sticker) due to this effect. Go to Wyoming or Idaho and people feel the same way. California has unfortunately been exporting its ridiculous cost of living and lifestyle to the American west for decades, Austin is just the latest to feel it. Somewhat related, Austinites used to also have a fairly common saying "Don't Dallas my Austin" (also related: "Keep Austin Weird"), referring to wanting to keep the "corporate" feel of Dallas out of Austin. The ship's sailed on that one too, though.
- lotsofpulp 6y agoHow does a state export a cost of living? Or are you referring to price increases due to increase in demand? If so, that does not seem like a notable phenomenon.
- majormajor 6y agoIt's almost like the cost of living is driven by MONEY, and problems result from income inequality, more than left-vs-right policies - and if the Californians getting priced-out of CA still have more money than where they're moving, then it cascades.
- tidepod12 6y agoCalifornians in LA/SF are used to paying $800k for a house, and the Cali salaries are high enough to support it. A Texan in Dallas/Austin is used to paying $250k for that same house, and has a relatively lower salary to match. The Californians, after years of having higher salary, more savings, and a job that lets them move, goes to Texas and offers $400k for that same house. The Californian thinks it's a great deal, because they get the same size house they previously lived in for only half the price! And the seller thinks it's great, because he now suddenly gets a huge premium on his previously-valued-at-$250k-house. All of the real estate responds in kind, expecting to get $400k+ from all the Cali transplants. However, the average Texan, who doesn't have that high paying salary, gets priced out and can no longer afford a house in their city. This has been happening en masse to the northern suburbs of Dallas, as well as many neighborhoods in Austin. It's gentrification, more or less, and it comes with all the same problems.
- KoftaBob 6y agoIf the typical person leaving California for Texas is doing so explicitly for the lower cost of living and lower tax burden, why would they vote for policies that go against that goal? You could argue that it's the longtime locals in the Bay Area, those who bought homes cheaply in the 60s/70s, that are usually the NIMBYs voting for the policies that caused the current state of things. Those same people are the least likely to be the ones leaving for Texas.
- AnimalMuppet 6y agoI think people moving may like the politics of where they're moving to, in the abstract. But they get there, and they decide they'd like something between where they are and where they came from - say, 25% California and 75% Texas. But that's still trying to move Texas, not all the way to California, but in that direction. To those already in Texas, that raises hackles.
- pixl97 6y agoAnecdotally I've heard just that come out of peoples mouths... "It's cheap here in Texas but why don't you have ___thing that costs millions in tax dollars___"
- excitom 6y agoSV resident and former Austinite here: During the time I lived in Austin large developments full of McMansions sprang up. The answer to peoples' question "Who can afford all these places?" was "Californians." Also, if you saw big new house with a wall of glass facing the sunset, an Austinite would ask "Don't they realize how high the A/C bill will be? Who would buy such a place?" The answer" "Californians."
- erichocean 6y agoMigration from California is why Texas is still a Red state. Native Texans vote Blue.
- austincheney 6y agoJudging by the increase and pervasiveness of homelessness, reduced police funding, and rent increase in the city this is already done. Fortunately for Texas it is limited to just Austin.
- jessaustin 6y agoSo sad for the Texans, but they had better not relocate to the Ozarks...
- octoberfranklin 6y agoLiving on the perhiphery of "Mormon Land" a while back had Californication-immunity as a benefit.
- tshaddox 6y agoBut with much worse weather.