As an anecdotal data point, I have lived in Austin since 2014, but my wife and I are planning on moving elsewhere sometime in the next couple of years. Austin i

As an anecdotal data point, I have lived in Austin since 2014, but my wife and I are planning on moving elsewhere sometime in the next couple of years. Austin is a fantastic city if you can afford to live in it. Great neighborhoods, great food, relatively laid back culture. The summers are brutal, but borderline tolerable. However, winter storm Uri was a real eye opener, and the (lack of) legislative response to it, while not surprising, is yet another indicator that no matter how great Austin is, it’s still subject to the state legislature. I can’t see myself staying in a state where the government is trying so hard all the time to insert itself into the culture war du jour and continually failing to actually govern, not to mention the continued assault on women’s and voting rights. We’re lucky enough to have a house here, but for what we paid for it we can get 2x or more land/house in other places. Now that remote work has taken off, there’s a lot less tying us to this city in particular. We’ll probably try to keep the house and become yet another set of out of state homeowners renting out space in the city (which I swear is at least 80% of the purchases I’ve seen in our neighborhood lately).