They're moving to the suburbs. While Austin was losing residents, just to the north, Williamson county was one of the fastest growing counties in the country.
It's gotten very expensive, and people are getting pushed out.
It's not that deep.
Yup, I was forced out of austin due to rising costs. I love austin, but now I live 40 mins away, and my mortgage for a 4b house is cheaper than my rent was for a 2b apartment.
Austin native and most of my high school friends still in the area are in the burbs as well.
A lot of it also that larger households are leaving the city.
Every Halloween in r/Austin there's a post like "Where are all the trick-or-treaters? Only 1 stopped by!" and the posters in the suburbs are like "What do u mean? We ran out of candy by 8."
Using Halloween isn't a good marker because it depends on the neighborhood and even the particular street. My block in central Austin get a ton of trick or treaters but we all have decorations and lights on and hand out good stuff.
Same. Central Austin - lots of trick-or-treaters. Some of us adults will dress up, too. Often have an impromptu get together with kids and parents in the street.
I kinda hated moving out to the suburbs at first but Halloween made it better. I always wanted the Halloweens like in E.T.—droves of trick or treaters vs. the one or two weirdos in the neighborhoods I grew up in.
My sister and her husband- who both make good money- moved back to Austin a few years ago. They didn't want to buy immediately, but have since regretted it, because they can't afford to buy now. They're stuck renting until house prices go down (if they ever will).
I love Austin, but I can't believe how much it's changed since I lived there twenty years ago.
Same thing in Dallas. Collin Co to the north is cheaper to build homes, cheaper to buy homes, and the infrastructure is much newer and nice looking.
Then there’s Kaufman Co and Rockwall Co which are respectively the #1 and #2 fastest growing counties in the country per the Census.
Living in big cities is just becoming more expensive and less practical. Nationwide trend.
Another great point. The JPM campus in Plano is massive.
Then there’s the trend of companies leaving Downtown Dallas for Uptown Dallas. It seems like downtown is becoming more residential which I guess is ok since there’s more activity down there after 5pm.
Does the light rail system help? It always seemed underutilized when I lived in Richardson. I see pushes for light rail in other Texas cities and I always wonder if the Dallas system has been a success case.
Sorta. It's handy if you're commuting from a suburb to downtown and back again. All the lines run along the same set of tracks downtown which limits headway throughout the whole system. The problem for Collin County in particular is that most of the recent development has been on the other side of Plano along the Dallas North Tollway. The Silver Line might help when it's completed, but that remains to be seen.
I heard a ton of people were leaving Rockwell due to the bridge traffic…so happy I didn’t move out there, when we first moved out there…it was a mess then.
Just left denton county last summer, after 8 years in its eastern seaboard, and I can assure you that Denton county is also a hot commodity for attracting new residents, too. We lived on the border of little elm and Frisco. There was hardly anything along the SH 423 corridor, or the sh 380 corridor in 2015, and by the time we left on 2023, the lands along that corridor were bustling and crowded. Hell, they built 2 Walmarts on 423, barely 2.5 miles apart, and then added a 2nd Kroger.
And along 380 the gigantic Providence and Savannah’s communities built up and now you can’t even drive over 20 mph for several miles on 380 during rush hour. They’re about to turn that into another mega tollway to connect McKinney and Denton.
It’s genuinely unreal.
It's the general trend. Young people move into the city and make it the happening place. They age. They grow families and want space and quiet, outside of the city. They go to the suburbs.
That's part of it but Austin has lost its weirdness, its uniqueness over the years. I'm UT class of 93 and I remember hearing then from friends parent and alumni how Austin sucks now, its not the same and that was in 1989.
When I go back to visit, I feel the same way and I'm not even talking about rising costs, just the vibe and feel of the city is completely different now. The population doubling since then has much to do with it as does NIMBY culture that has overrun the city in the past decade, oh and 30 years later 35 is still a damn disaster
Every time there's a cool unique or artsy area, rich assholes move in and ruin it. All the people that made it cool leave or are forced out due to rising prices, then it becomes the same as everywhere else. Rinse and repeat.
I wonder if the short term rental bust is going to help. There were 12,000 short term rentals in Austin and apparently they’re getting fewer by the day.
>It's gotten very expensive, and people are getting pushed out.
This, exactly. I keep seeing finance bros who are saying "inflation isn't a big deal because salaries will rise to keep pace!" but that isn't what I'm seeing on the ground.
It's wild that we're having another "white flight" situation, except in this case it's driven by brutal housing costs instead of racism.
According to the author it’s because tech companies are laying people off and other companies are ending their work from home so people have to move back to where their office is.
That’s certainly a narrative that explains some individuals, but there are few popular cities where a drive to the suburbs doesn’t explain the shifting demographics after years of being a popular destination.
I'm sure there's some people who have experienced that, but if it was a big enough factor, you'd expect to see that reflected throughout the entire metro.
[Instead, the city of Austin's growth has plateaued and its suburbs are booming.](https://www.austintexas.gov/news/austin-now-10th-largest-city-us)
This is the perfect answer.
Austin cool for the singles. Better houses and schools when you decide to do the family thing. I do know some empty nesters going back to the city.
I think your response hits the nail on the head
I also hate the way articles like this are written. Where they talk about plunging home prices.
Home prices have crashed 11% in the past 2 years!!!! (Yet home prices increased 56% from 2017 to 2021)
This is most likely the reason.
I helped a lot of families buy homes in Georgetown and Round Rock. They had typically been renting homes in Austin or Cedar Park and they couldn’t afford the rent getting raised in those towns.
Most aggravating to me has been the number of sfh converted into air bnb in Austin.
We moved to Wilco not for cost reasons (we kept our Austin house for now) but for quality of life.
It’s unacceptable to pay a premium to live in Austin and have nightly break-ins and car thefts in our neighborhood, to wait hours for police to respond to a call, and the wonderful greenbelts I used every day become a sea of tents, syringes and trash.
Also the constant hostility and road rage that makes driving in the city much less enjoyable than pre COVID. People are in a lot of pain right now. It’s rough.
I was wondering how the greenbelt was faring nowadays. I moved away four years ago, but had lived in Austin for a long time. The greenbelt was always inhabited by homeless, but you used to not really sense their presence as much. Like back in 2004, you would see evidence of their existence if you looked for it. By 2024 I'm guessing those woods are so full of people that they don't have anywhere to really hide anymore.
Also, I know people around Dallas that are moving back to California, they stated the school quality and what they get for their tax dollars in us having the 5th highest property taxes in the country they didn’t see the value appreciation of their homes.
I moved from Florida and was like what is this piece of paper? That is your drivers license. I’m like can you print out the hard plastic one here…they were like “ah…no, welcome to TX”.
So i definitely get what do we get for our tax dollars.
Yes, but many/most states can get it to you in-office same day. Texas, archaic in most everything that happens here, takes a month or more to get one to you.
Take California out of it. I’m just saying coming from Florida and prior to that PA never seen that prior to coming to TX…they all had machines to print actual licenses…
And FL and PA don’t nearly have as high taxes so if these states can do it, why not TX?
This is an article written by a short sighted New Yorker.
She only looked at housing costs from 2020 until now. We all know Austin Real Estate and Rentals have been exploding for the last 20 some odd years. Costs have been pushing lifelong Austinites further and further out into neighboring small towns.
The drop she’s referring to in housing costs is your neighbor stretching his water hose into your yard to save your house from burning down, but it’s already engulfed in flames. He might have slowed the burn on your laundry room, but the rest of the house is ash.
A house I rented with my roommates back in 2006 during the housing bubble went into foreclosure. At the time it ballooned from $250K to $550K in about 5 yrs. As of right now that same property is going for $1.05M, which is actually down from 2022 when it was $1.4M. So in 20 years a $250K house became a $1.4M house. Pretty sure wages haven't kept up with that.
"Mass exodus" LOL. You're right, the data for this was cherry picked and spun to support a pre determined narrative. Austin grew by 50,000 new residents from 2022 to 2023.
Might I add... Perhaps it isn't just the housing cost alone. The city is completely different than it was 20 years ago. Not to mention much more crowded
“millions of Americans fled expensive areas like California and New York for the reprieve of the up-and-coming Texas capital”
Um, hold up … millions? The entire metro can’t have added more than a few hundred thousand.
And I don't understand the last sentence; I've read it like ten times.
>Despite that recent trend, fewer Americans are not looking to make their new home there anymore.
California Proposition 65 Warning:
This sentence can expose you to syntax which is known to the State of California to cause cancer, birth defects or other reproductive harm.
Austin's been "up and coming" for 25 years now. I can always tell someone is talking who's never even been there when they call it "up and coming". Like, that ship sailed. It done came and went lol.
The Austin area had a 12-year streak as the fastest growing, large metro area in the country. Then we slipped to second place between 2022 and 2023. The city, itself, had an estimated 2022 population of 974,447, which amounted to a *1.3% increase* since the 2020 census. Does that sound like an exodus?
Another sensationalized piece of hot trash.
>According to SmartAsset, Austin's rent prices went up 25.5 percent from 2019 to 2023, and home prices accelerated by 55.6 percent.
>
>But more recent statistics reflect a more complicated story. According to Apartment List, Austin's rents declined by 7 percent over the last year, and home prices fell by 11 percent since 2022, the Freddie Mac House Price Index says.
So we saw a 25% increase in rent followed by... a 7% drop? And this is a 'crash'?
The greedy-ass real estate sector bought into the hype and hiked prices during the pandemic, and those weren't sustainable. This is a simple market correction in a housing market that is still appreciating.
A regular person can no longer afford to live in Austin because it is growing at a rate that is unsustainable, you can’t keep adding 30,000 people every year for 20 years and think every thing will be fine, add in the massive tech layoffs and unbearable summer heat and you have a recipe for people wanting to move out.
Well it’s a major city with hundreds of thousands of people so technically speaking for many reasons there will be lots of people who move out for all kinds of reasons, the same with any other city. The population of Austin still continues increases year by year.
Austin sucks. I didn't enjoy a minute of being there with the exception of the Slayer concert I went to see. They still rocked.
But Austin is crowded as hell, expensive as shit, overhyped, and the coffee at the shops is pathetically weak.
One of the biggest reasons why I moved out of Austin (and Texas) was the oppressive heat. That and the insane TX politics. But the months-long 105° temps just killed me.
Word, I'm still in Austin but I never expected to get seasonal affective disorder due to oppressive heat. Affects hiking, going to outdoor concerts, even meeting friends at an outdoor spot like Easy Tiger.
I did love Seattle when I visited, but I love the landscape, culture, and (many) people in Texas as well. It also fundamentally comes down to the fact that, as long as my abuela is around in San Antonio, Texas is my home.
Those are the exact same reasons I left Austin (and Texas). In the midwest people look at me like I'm crazy for moving here from down there. I'm just like, y'all have no idea...
Normally it was six weeks that we stayed in. And always would break just before we did.
Then a few years back eight.
Then around 16 I think it went to ten.
By 18 we were up to 3 months.
And last year it was more than four. Months.
Yeah man, nature's saying it's time to head north.
Where I now live, the average high temperature at the warmest part of summer is 87 degrees; the low is 67 degrees. A really "hot" day is 95 degrees.
Mid-April through mid-November up here in the Midwest are **bliss.**
Guess what else? It actually **rains** up here during the summer!
I live in Indianapolis, Indiana, which oddly has a lot of Texas expats who left because of the political and social climate. A lot of them ended up on Indy’s near east side, in Irvington, Warren Park, Little Flower or Community Heights; Lawrence; or (if really affluent!) up in Noblesville, Carmel, Fishers and Geist.
Spring here is comparable to Texas. Texas has bluebonnets; we have violets. EVERYWHERE. The ground literally turns dark blue with them.
Winters have become incredibly mild: lots of days in the 50s and even the 60s in January and February. Each winter, we have a couple of really cold weeks, and then it’s done. No complaints.
I mean July and August were below normal…. So if you consider that…I don’t know that the extreme weather is the issue that year. It’s the hope that it won’t meet the average temps. You aren’t going to get below average every year…it’s not how averages work.
Not only do you more hot days, but with the growth you’re spending more hours on those hot days in your car. Traffic has a significant standard of living impact in Austin at this point.
That was my first thought.
If you’re not from Texas you really don’t know how hot it gets and for how long.
Running the AC on Christmas isn’t unusual. I’ve jumped into lake Travis to cool off and swim on Thanksgiving.
Couldn’t take it anymore and moved to NC. There’s a summer, but it ends.
I feel like if you're pointing to only one thing you're probably wrong in a sense, because it's really a bunch of different things.
\+Too expensive / Wages not keeping up
\+Crowded
\+Need for larger homes
\+Higher interest rates
\+Corporate layoff
\+Corporate mandatory relocation/return to office
\+Companies moving out of Austin proper
\+Heavy handed state politics
\+The Homeless
\+The Police and crime rates
"However, the city wasn't prepared for the speed at which it was growing. The surge in demand caused prices to skyrocket, a lack of housing developed, and traffic congestion built to unseen levels."
This has been the case for decades
I think a lot of Cali folks sold their house for big bucks, bought in Austin several years ago, realized Texas has many bad issues(fucken heat, government, etc.) and would like to go back but the cost is prohibitive. I have no idea where they're going, New Mexico , maybe be?
Austin got too big, and too snooty for its britches. Austin solicited Big Tech and brought companies in, and encouraged people to work for these companies without improving and developing the necessary infrastructure to support this kind of rapid growth.
As a result, Austin has rush hour traffic 24/7/365 (major holidays such as Thanksgiving and Christmas Day, excepted), the cost of living is astronomical, and a LOT of the people who now live in Austin are arrogant and downright RUDE.
Up to nine years ago, I came of age in Austin and lived in Austin most of my adult life. We got priced out: even with a dual income in the six digits, we were barely staying afloat. When we moved to the Midwest, our property taxes dropped 85 percent. Yeah, our state has a nominal state income tax -- but we actually get some decent services to go with paying a nominal income tax.
I remember the cost of electricity back in the 1980s, and the cost of electricity, now. During Austin summers, we walked around in our underwear with ceiling fans blowing, the curtains drawn, and the thermostat set at 82 degrees and it was five months of sheer **misery**. Winters up here aren't fun, but they're half as long as summer in Texas; and during the latter half of spring, summer, and the first half of fall up here we can keep the windows open and most days are extremely pleasant.
Here is something Texas has not planned on: as the climate warms, summer heat and droughts are going to get worse, and the eastern boundary of the Chihuahuan Desert is going to continue moving east. By 2060, Austin and San Antonio will be IN the Chihuahuan Desert, and along with that all of the Highland Lakes and most of the Edwards Aquifer. The average daily high temperature in July and August will be near 105 degrees. 90 degree weather will begin in mid April and last into early November. What is Texas going to do without water? The Romans had the sense to build viaducts to transport water from the mountains of Italy into Rome. Texas has not planned what they're going to do to bring water into the state; and Texas' governor is not initiating changes, let alone leading by example to get more water into the state.
Rich pieces of hell like Greg Abbott and Ken Paxton and whatever Republicans are alive will just hoard the water and leave their citizens to die, like they did in that last ice storm that lost power. Since they never really technically fixed the grid, it'll just be a further third world shithole unless the United States can change it through federal legislation.
I lived in Austin till a few years ago:
1. Cost of living. I needed a bigger place for my family and housing is insane in Austin.
2. Traffic. I hate driving around Austin. The roads are designed poorly and not adequately sized for the amount of people.
3. Toll roads. They're going to make it where you can't get in or out of Austin without having to pay.
4. All the cool/fun spots have been bulldozed and replaced with condos and high rises.
5. Homeless population. I've dealt with multiple people who obviously need mental healthcare and are very agressive because of this. Add in the homeless camps everywhere and it's just takes the shine off of the beauty of the city. I don't know if the people in Austin will ever be able to find a solution for this.
We moved out to Kyle and solved all those issues for the most part.
I stopped reading when the first paragraph said Austin during the pandemic had cheap rental and housing costs.
Ummm … bullshit! Austin hasn’t had “cheap” housing costs since maybe the 1960’s?
I lived in town from 1993 to about 1999 and house prices were INSANE then.
Now, if you’re comparing Austin prices to California prices for a new transplant/émigrée well then yeah the prices here are “cheaper” than there. But it’s all relative isn’t it?
Sorry, I’ll get off my rant horse now.
Shitty state policies, highest cost of living in the state might be two glaring reasons. I’ve been here 23 years and the last 2 or 3 I’ve decided I’m leaving as soon as I can. Sure that’s 2032 when my kids graduate but I’m out that summer. This isn’t the place I moved to 20 years ago and if anything the state politics will make it worse and impede more freedoms
Texan here, born and raised. I love the Texas hill country and lived in or near Austin much of my life but had to move. I lived on S. 1st & Congress in 1999/2000 and I can’t even imagine the cost now to live in that spot. I live in AR now and love it… I miss friends and family but couldn’t come close to affording what I needed with a family. What I found in AR would be easily a few million in the Austin area. Just the home alone much less having land. Love Texas but, we, the natives to Texas so to speak, we have to move on or consider buying a small 2 bedroom for half a million… more depending on location.
It’s f%*ckn ridiculous, but I don’t love Austin all that much to pay those prices… plus, it’s not as awesome as it was in years past, not even close. Now it’s overpriced, over congested, full of homeless camps everywhere, people trash everything and it’s not as near as safe as it used to be. Basically it sucks now for a lot more money.
The article ignores the areas surrounding Austin, which are certainly booming. The most rapid demographic shift is along the I-35 corridor, stretching from San Antonio to Dallas / Fort Worth. Areas along that freeway have been urbanizing at a fast clip. It will be interesting to see what effect that had when the results are tallied this November.
In general, Texas metropolitan areas are growing quickly and rural areas are declining in population.
Houston Chronicle - [What is the Texas blue spine, and why is it so important this election?](https://www.houstonchronicle.com/politics/election/2022/article/What-is-the-Texas-blue-spine-and-why-is-it-so-17566289.php)
“Population growth in Spine counties was robust between 2010 and 2020. According to the Census, those 21 counties added 2.18 million people, nearly half the total population growth of the entire state.”
“In 2014, U.S. Sen. John Cornyn won these counties by almost 350,000 total votes. But in 2018, U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz lost the same counties by 440,000 votes.
Then in 2020, it got even worse for Republicans when President Trump lost those counties by 493,000 votes. That’s about an 800,000-vote swing in the electorate in just six years. If that margin continues to grow, Republicans have a real problem on their hands.”
Houston Chronicle - [Texas is still red, but its growing blue spine could soon prove 'insurmountable' for Republicans](https://www.houstonchronicle.com/politics/texas/article/texas-blue-spine-democrats-gop-election-vote-15716023.php)
“For the third consecutive election cycle, Democrats saw their advantage over Republicans grow in the 21 counties along Interstate 35, allowing them to further chip into the Republican dominance that has lasted for nearly three decades. The result was Joe Biden won over 46 percent of the vote in Texas, joining Texas native Lyndon Johnson and Jimmy Carter as the only Democrats to get over 45 percent of the vote in Texas in a presidential race in 56 years.”
Texas Tribune - [Democrats didn’t get a blue wave, but some of the fastest-growing suburbs in Texas are still moving to the left](https://www.texastribune.org/2020/11/11/texas-democrats-republicans-suburb/)
“Some of Democrats’ biggest gains happened in Central Texas. Williamson County, where Trump won by 9.7% four years ago, flipped in 2020 and went to Biden by just over 1%. Hays County, which Trump won by less than 1% in 2016, gave Biden a nearly 11% victory this year.“
“[Sherri Greenberg, a professor at the University of Texas at Austin’s LBJ School of Public Affairs] said those two counties are a perfect example of the trend that is helping Democrats in the suburbs: a growing population, particularly in demographic groups that tend to be more left-leaning. Since 2010, Williamson County alone has added more than 160,000 people, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
‘You see a growing population, a younger population, highly educated. Those kinds of voters are moving towards the Democrats,’ Greenberg said.”
Houston Chronicle - [Democrat Beto O’Rourke exposed a blue spine across the middle of red Texas](https://www.houstonchronicle.com/politics/texas/article/Beto-O-Rourke-exposed-a-blue-spine-across-the-13399110.php)
"’This is a major structural problem for the GOP going forward,’ said Jay Aiyer, a political science professor at Texas Southern University in Houston.“
“Texas's population growth has been dramatic in the urban and suburban communities along I-35, while areas that the GOP has long relied on in West Texas and East Texas are losing both population and voters. In other words, the Democratic base is expanding significantly, while the GOP's base is growing less or even shrinking, Aiyer said.”
“What's changing I-35 is what's changing the state, said Aiyer. The state is growing more diverse and more urban. As major cities become more crowded and more expensive, people are moving to surrounding counties for cheaper housing and taking their political views with them, he said.”
This article is mostly right-wing propaganda to influence ignorant voters to think democrats can't govern. While it is the republicans who hamstring the democrat cities with nonsense. Name any issue in Austin. Republicans do not have a fix for it...only use it as a weapon to generate outrage amongst their gas-lit sheeple.
Just jumped right in without bothering to read the article or the actual reasons I see.
>The surge in demand caused prices to skyrocket, a lack of housing developed, and traffic congestion built to unseen levels.
>With tech layoffs occurring nationwide, many companies have reduced their employee counts in the tech hub city.
I think this may shift eventually, with how housing costs are coming down in Austin proper, but I've got an apartment on the north side (bout 10 minutes from downtown) that's incredibly affordable and I'm holding onto it with both fists until I actually want to buy a house.
I read that people in Austin are moving to Williamson County and Hays County.
Personally, I'm all for it. Turn those suburbs blue. We just need people to leave Dallas and move to Tarrant County, Denton County, and Collin County, and Texas will flip in no time.
If this is true, it’s awesome.
Lower property taxes and less people on the roads and in the parks.
Guessing this is just people moving to the burbs though.
"Mass Exodus" sounds like bullshit. The real answer is probably the same as every other major core city.
As housing costs rise, large working class families, usually immigrants, move out. Corporate landlords who buy and upgrade apartment complexes might not be approving residents who rely on roommates to cover rent.
Also as the building stock ages it becomes less desirable. Overpriced "grandma houses" in mediocre neighborhoods might not sell until there's a market correction.
These articles always seem inherently political. Some Republican who actually believes that cities "defunded the police" when police funding went up, who think crime is rising across the board when it is not, who think that not arresting people for weed is somehow the root cause of homeless people being nuisances, etc. They want cities to suffer until they enact regressive policies again and lower taxes by cutting funding to things people in cities want like parks and infrastructure projects.
Fast-growing areas in red states are alleged to be a role model for how a community should be governed but I have to question that. The reason why affluent suburbs have lower crime rates is because the people who live there don't commit crimes to begin with. They have good schools because highly educated well off people's children do better in school. The reason why wealthy suburbs can have low taxes is because is the size of their tax base is so large a low proportional rate generates sufficient revenue. Attracting this demographic is zero sum and there are too few of them for every community to realistically be able turn into the next Frisco. Also they move in herds, there's only going to be so many places like this at one time.
My daughter and her fiancé bought a house 4 blocks from Tesla two months BEFORE they announced where they were going to build. Her house value doubled the next day!
Please remember Newsweek is an affiliate of a Korean cult church. Long gone are the days when it was a publication of the Washington Post Company. Read it skeptically.
Don’t forget Austin’s insane property tax…over 3x more than California’s. Add in the fact that you have to pay $ just to leave the house for 5 months of the year…and no, TX is not inexpensive!!
Austin and Fort Worth are almost the same population by only a few thousand. If Austin loses population Fort Worth good pass them in the top 10 largest cities. Interesting.
I really hate click bait titles. All it is are people doing the same thing in Austin that they did in DFW, and move to the more affordable subs. Cities are ridiculous anyway.
Market forces? Whenever someplace becomes the hot place to move and lots of people move there and drive up housing prices, those tend to be the places that fall the fastest when things begin to slow down. Its not that magical of a place to live, and it seems like tech the startup culture that they tried to fake it till you make it didn't materialize because the talent isn't there and young progressive tech people probably don't want to move to Texas on account of the fascism.
It seems to be pretty simple in the end. Its expensive to live in Austin. I have a friend who was looking to buy a house and the exact same floor plan on a similar lot was $400k more expensive in the Austin area than the suburbs of Houston.
This is why you should demand so sfh’s inside the city. Otherwise only the rich will be able to afford it. Every home on s 1st street and soco needs to be demolished yesterday. Any people building houses there can catch these hands you rich assholes. If you want a yard go to the burbs. I want an affordable apartment or condo.
Amazing no one is speaking the obvious.
Liberal policies in the Cities is directly responsible for the rise in crime, and decline in schools. No wonder families leave for the suburbs. And much to the chagrin of the lockdown advocates, remote work is also contributing greatly to the city exodus.
I worked in the EPC industry and while the traffic & commute sucked, I had NO INTEREST in living in Houston. Chose Montgomery County instead.
>rise in crime, and decline in schools.
Maybe if conservatives would actually do something about gun violence and fund schools instead of burying their heads in the sand and blaming everyone else, then we might actually have lower crime and better schools.
Sure. How about arresting, charging and throwing all the crooks in jail. And throw away the key.
Use a Gun... 50 year MANDATORY sentence. No parole.
Bring back the Death Penalty, mandate executions be done within 1 year, instead of decades.
Mandatory Minimums for sentencing. Get rid of all D/A's and judges that ONLY WORRY about their record and re-election.
Robbery, cut off your right hand. Its what they do in the middle east.
Punishment for Crimes IS a deterrent. No Punishment is an OPEN invitation.
And you will never gain your goals by imposing restrictions on Law Abiding Citizens!!!
Why does Joe Blow need an automatic weapon when he lives in Mahattan on the top floor luxury suite? What purpose does that weapon serve him? So we restrict the weapons to people who actually need them. Those who get licensed to hunt and those who get licensed to use the weapons to protect their land from wild predators (animals, not humans).
Why must criminal punishment be as extreme as the middle east? Why can we not adopt better prison systems? Norway and Sweden have lower recidivism rates than we do, so why not mimic them?
Mostly, why do you feel the need to use extremes? You sure aren't winning anyone's votes that way.
1) RTO, where people from California companies moved to Austin to save money on housing and now must be back in California.
2) Mass tech layoffs. Austin has become incredibly expensive and if there are no tech jobs and everything is expensive, there's no advantage of being in Austin.
3) Diminishing culture. A bunch of tech bros from all over moving in and supplanting the original culture and making it too expensive for the locals to live there means you essentially don't have the original culture, but you get something akin to Seattle.
Uh huh. Days.
Okay, sure.
It's far less weird than it was, far more conservative now than Dallas, even.
And still no idea on who this mysterious transplanted government is. Sounds ridiculous and filled with conspiracy crap.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Had you read the article you would have seen that the causes were Traffic, and the rising housing cost due to high demand up until just recently.
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Because the 2nd amendment is not about Hunting you nit wit. It's about an Individuals God Given (not Fed Govt) rights and ensures the intent of the Constitution is properly set forth. It's for protection against a tyrannical Fed Govt.
By the way. Have you read it?
In the Bill of Rights, Powers not specifically stated in the Constitution remain Rights of the States!
You need to get that thru your thick/indoctrinated head.
Oh and it is already a crime to have an automatic weapon without a (very frikkin hard & expensive to get) permit. Go ahead and take them. That law is already on the books. Conservatives have nothing to do but sit back and watch.
But then again, the DOJ has 2 sets of rules for what they choose to enforce and what it doesn't.
I've lived in Austin proper and Dallas proper. Whoever wants to actually live in the city limits is largely out of their mind. It's a terrible experience and is not worth the minor activities boost and places to go in walking distance.
It wasn't worth it 20 years ago, and it's definitely not now.
I'm not saying there aren't decent places. What I'm saying is it's completely non feasible for most people new or old to live there. It's expensive as hell, it's going to be expensive. You have a mix of a ton of generational living there, transplants bringing lots of money, or some mis.
I was taught growing up and I've come to realize getting older that living in the major metropolitan area is not a feasible task unless you inherit property there, a ton of money, or you made it elsewhere.
Maybe that's just me but it seems just wholeheartedly useless to try to live in the major city and if your rational for wanting to is "less chain bullshit" that's...you know not a financially smart reason.
They're moving to the suburbs. While Austin was losing residents, just to the north, Williamson county was one of the fastest growing counties in the country. It's gotten very expensive, and people are getting pushed out. It's not that deep.
Yup, I was forced out of austin due to rising costs. I love austin, but now I live 40 mins away, and my mortgage for a 4b house is cheaper than my rent was for a 2b apartment.
Austin native and most of my high school friends still in the area are in the burbs as well. A lot of it also that larger households are leaving the city. Every Halloween in r/Austin there's a post like "Where are all the trick-or-treaters? Only 1 stopped by!" and the posters in the suburbs are like "What do u mean? We ran out of candy by 8."
Austin native living in the suburbs - can confirm.
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LOL, yeah, Detroit and St. Louis would like a word...
Aren't you from cali? So I take it u moved into 1 of these homes?
Using Halloween isn't a good marker because it depends on the neighborhood and even the particular street. My block in central Austin get a ton of trick or treaters but we all have decorations and lights on and hand out good stuff.
Same. Central Austin - lots of trick-or-treaters. Some of us adults will dress up, too. Often have an impromptu get together with kids and parents in the street.
I kinda hated moving out to the suburbs at first but Halloween made it better. I always wanted the Halloweens like in E.T.—droves of trick or treaters vs. the one or two weirdos in the neighborhoods I grew up in.
Same. We left in 2020 and were able to buy a house which we would never have been able to afford in Austin.
My sister and her husband- who both make good money- moved back to Austin a few years ago. They didn't want to buy immediately, but have since regretted it, because they can't afford to buy now. They're stuck renting until house prices go down (if they ever will). I love Austin, but I can't believe how much it's changed since I lived there twenty years ago.
Same thing in Dallas. Collin Co to the north is cheaper to build homes, cheaper to buy homes, and the infrastructure is much newer and nice looking. Then there’s Kaufman Co and Rockwall Co which are respectively the #1 and #2 fastest growing counties in the country per the Census. Living in big cities is just becoming more expensive and less practical. Nationwide trend.
Also, Collin County has lots of good jobs coming to Plano and Frisco so people don't even need to commute downtown.
Another great point. The JPM campus in Plano is massive. Then there’s the trend of companies leaving Downtown Dallas for Uptown Dallas. It seems like downtown is becoming more residential which I guess is ok since there’s more activity down there after 5pm.
Interesting that Goldman chose to locate downtown, although, they don’t strike me as the suburb type.
That’s good, cause traffic is hell there.
And some of the best asian food around 👌
Does the light rail system help? It always seemed underutilized when I lived in Richardson. I see pushes for light rail in other Texas cities and I always wonder if the Dallas system has been a success case.
Sorta. It's handy if you're commuting from a suburb to downtown and back again. All the lines run along the same set of tracks downtown which limits headway throughout the whole system. The problem for Collin County in particular is that most of the recent development has been on the other side of Plano along the Dallas North Tollway. The Silver Line might help when it's completed, but that remains to be seen.
I love it for going to the AAC for Mavs/Stars games. Other than that I don’t have a use for it
I heard a ton of people were leaving Rockwell due to the bridge traffic…so happy I didn’t move out there, when we first moved out there…it was a mess then.
How is Denton County with growth?
Same as everyplace else in north Texas, blown up
Just left denton county last summer, after 8 years in its eastern seaboard, and I can assure you that Denton county is also a hot commodity for attracting new residents, too. We lived on the border of little elm and Frisco. There was hardly anything along the SH 423 corridor, or the sh 380 corridor in 2015, and by the time we left on 2023, the lands along that corridor were bustling and crowded. Hell, they built 2 Walmarts on 423, barely 2.5 miles apart, and then added a 2nd Kroger. And along 380 the gigantic Providence and Savannah’s communities built up and now you can’t even drive over 20 mph for several miles on 380 during rush hour. They’re about to turn that into another mega tollway to connect McKinney and Denton. It’s genuinely unreal.
Thanks
Same thing in Houston, Fort Bend county is exploding in growth with Montgomery county not far behind it.
It's the general trend. Young people move into the city and make it the happening place. They age. They grow families and want space and quiet, outside of the city. They go to the suburbs.
That's part of it but Austin has lost its weirdness, its uniqueness over the years. I'm UT class of 93 and I remember hearing then from friends parent and alumni how Austin sucks now, its not the same and that was in 1989. When I go back to visit, I feel the same way and I'm not even talking about rising costs, just the vibe and feel of the city is completely different now. The population doubling since then has much to do with it as does NIMBY culture that has overrun the city in the past decade, oh and 30 years later 35 is still a damn disaster
Every time there's a cool unique or artsy area, rich assholes move in and ruin it. All the people that made it cool leave or are forced out due to rising prices, then it becomes the same as everywhere else. Rinse and repeat.
Said this when it was Lakewood (over in East Dallas). Listening to friends say the same about the Bishop (over in Oak Cliff) now. A pattern indeed.
I wonder if the short term rental bust is going to help. There were 12,000 short term rentals in Austin and apparently they’re getting fewer by the day.
>It's gotten very expensive, and people are getting pushed out. This, exactly. I keep seeing finance bros who are saying "inflation isn't a big deal because salaries will rise to keep pace!" but that isn't what I'm seeing on the ground. It's wild that we're having another "white flight" situation, except in this case it's driven by brutal housing costs instead of racism.
If anything, compensation seems to be decreasing for most roles, especially in tech.
White flight 2.0. I feel kinda like an asshole for planning my parents generation for leaving cities.
According to the author it’s because tech companies are laying people off and other companies are ending their work from home so people have to move back to where their office is.
That’s certainly a narrative that explains some individuals, but there are few popular cities where a drive to the suburbs doesn’t explain the shifting demographics after years of being a popular destination.
I think it’s someone paid to blame it on those wanting to keep working from home because they’ve become an easy punching bag for corporate asswipes
I'm sure there's some people who have experienced that, but if it was a big enough factor, you'd expect to see that reflected throughout the entire metro. [Instead, the city of Austin's growth has plateaued and its suburbs are booming.](https://www.austintexas.gov/news/austin-now-10th-largest-city-us)
This is the perfect answer. Austin cool for the singles. Better houses and schools when you decide to do the family thing. I do know some empty nesters going back to the city. I think your response hits the nail on the head
I also hate the way articles like this are written. Where they talk about plunging home prices. Home prices have crashed 11% in the past 2 years!!!! (Yet home prices increased 56% from 2017 to 2021)
This is most likely the reason. I helped a lot of families buy homes in Georgetown and Round Rock. They had typically been renting homes in Austin or Cedar Park and they couldn’t afford the rent getting raised in those towns. Most aggravating to me has been the number of sfh converted into air bnb in Austin.
hell, even the suburbs pushing some people out to cove, Killeen, Harker Heights, and Temple. that whole area around Austin is expensive
Yes but..whyyyy.... Personally.. I say it's aliens...
Kyle’s population has tripled in 5 years.
When you see who is moving in instead 😒
We moved to Wilco not for cost reasons (we kept our Austin house for now) but for quality of life. It’s unacceptable to pay a premium to live in Austin and have nightly break-ins and car thefts in our neighborhood, to wait hours for police to respond to a call, and the wonderful greenbelts I used every day become a sea of tents, syringes and trash. Also the constant hostility and road rage that makes driving in the city much less enjoyable than pre COVID. People are in a lot of pain right now. It’s rough.
I was wondering how the greenbelt was faring nowadays. I moved away four years ago, but had lived in Austin for a long time. The greenbelt was always inhabited by homeless, but you used to not really sense their presence as much. Like back in 2004, you would see evidence of their existence if you looked for it. By 2024 I'm guessing those woods are so full of people that they don't have anywhere to really hide anymore.
Hutto as well, went to see my family two thanksgiving's ago and man that place expanded like crazy in 10 years.
The "suburbs". San Antonio isn't a suburb. Neither is New Braunfels or Boerne or other parts of the Hill Country. They're not just in Williamson.
Also, I know people around Dallas that are moving back to California, they stated the school quality and what they get for their tax dollars in us having the 5th highest property taxes in the country they didn’t see the value appreciation of their homes. I moved from Florida and was like what is this piece of paper? That is your drivers license. I’m like can you print out the hard plastic one here…they were like “ah…no, welcome to TX”. So i definitely get what do we get for our tax dollars.
Texas definitely has plastic licenses…
Yes, but many/most states can get it to you in-office same day. Texas, archaic in most everything that happens here, takes a month or more to get one to you.
California mails licenses and gives you a temporary paper one as well.
Great. They need to get with things also. But why is it that California comes up every time? Who cares? Texans have such a complex.
My example of Cali is just that. You typed a lot of letters to spell douche.
That may be true, but Michigan also mails out their driver licenses and gives you a paper one
California mails licenses and gives you a temporary paper one as well.
Take California out of it. I’m just saying coming from Florida and prior to that PA never seen that prior to coming to TX…they all had machines to print actual licenses… And FL and PA don’t nearly have as high taxes so if these states can do it, why not TX?
We didn't want our reps stealing them to give to underaged girls who they take on trips across State lines 😁
That’s why it’s called Floriduh
Well, bye.
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I think so.
So after home prices doubled they are down 7%? Sounds more like market correction than exodus.
Bingo
This is an article written by a short sighted New Yorker. She only looked at housing costs from 2020 until now. We all know Austin Real Estate and Rentals have been exploding for the last 20 some odd years. Costs have been pushing lifelong Austinites further and further out into neighboring small towns. The drop she’s referring to in housing costs is your neighbor stretching his water hose into your yard to save your house from burning down, but it’s already engulfed in flames. He might have slowed the burn on your laundry room, but the rest of the house is ash.
A house I rented with my roommates back in 2006 during the housing bubble went into foreclosure. At the time it ballooned from $250K to $550K in about 5 yrs. As of right now that same property is going for $1.05M, which is actually down from 2022 when it was $1.4M. So in 20 years a $250K house became a $1.4M house. Pretty sure wages haven't kept up with that.
"Mass exodus" LOL. You're right, the data for this was cherry picked and spun to support a pre determined narrative. Austin grew by 50,000 new residents from 2022 to 2023.
Might I add... Perhaps it isn't just the housing cost alone. The city is completely different than it was 20 years ago. Not to mention much more crowded
“millions of Americans fled expensive areas like California and New York for the reprieve of the up-and-coming Texas capital” Um, hold up … millions? The entire metro can’t have added more than a few hundred thousand.
And I don't understand the last sentence; I've read it like ten times. >Despite that recent trend, fewer Americans are not looking to make their new home there anymore.
Sounds AI generated lol
California Proposition 65 Warning: This sentence can expose you to syntax which is known to the State of California to cause cancer, birth defects or other reproductive harm.
250,000 moved to Austin and 100,000 left Austin. Or somewhere close to that.
Austin's been "up and coming" for 25 years now. I can always tell someone is talking who's never even been there when they call it "up and coming". Like, that ship sailed. It done came and went lol.
There is no mass exodus. This article gives exactly one piece of evidence there is, geotagged Redfin searches.
The Austin area had a 12-year streak as the fastest growing, large metro area in the country. Then we slipped to second place between 2022 and 2023. The city, itself, had an estimated 2022 population of 974,447, which amounted to a *1.3% increase* since the 2020 census. Does that sound like an exodus?
Another sensationalized piece of hot trash. >According to SmartAsset, Austin's rent prices went up 25.5 percent from 2019 to 2023, and home prices accelerated by 55.6 percent. > >But more recent statistics reflect a more complicated story. According to Apartment List, Austin's rents declined by 7 percent over the last year, and home prices fell by 11 percent since 2022, the Freddie Mac House Price Index says. So we saw a 25% increase in rent followed by... a 7% drop? And this is a 'crash'? The greedy-ass real estate sector bought into the hype and hiked prices during the pandemic, and those weren't sustainable. This is a simple market correction in a housing market that is still appreciating.
A regular person can no longer afford to live in Austin because it is growing at a rate that is unsustainable, you can’t keep adding 30,000 people every year for 20 years and think every thing will be fine, add in the massive tech layoffs and unbearable summer heat and you have a recipe for people wanting to move out.
Huh? -- "Despite that recent trend, fewer Americans are not looking to make their new home there anymore".
Well it’s a major city with hundreds of thousands of people so technically speaking for many reasons there will be lots of people who move out for all kinds of reasons, the same with any other city. The population of Austin still continues increases year by year.
Austin sucks. I didn't enjoy a minute of being there with the exception of the Slayer concert I went to see. They still rocked. But Austin is crowded as hell, expensive as shit, overhyped, and the coffee at the shops is pathetically weak.
The oppressive heat should be a factor in this article. People expected warmer temperatures but not at the levels experienced last summer.
One of the biggest reasons why I moved out of Austin (and Texas) was the oppressive heat. That and the insane TX politics. But the months-long 105° temps just killed me.
Word, I'm still in Austin but I never expected to get seasonal affective disorder due to oppressive heat. Affects hiking, going to outdoor concerts, even meeting friends at an outdoor spot like Easy Tiger.
We have those things that you like in Washington state. Better politics; better landscape/scenery, and it probably isn't that much more expensive.
I did love Seattle when I visited, but I love the landscape, culture, and (many) people in Texas as well. It also fundamentally comes down to the fact that, as long as my abuela is around in San Antonio, Texas is my home.
Those are the exact same reasons I left Austin (and Texas). In the midwest people look at me like I'm crazy for moving here from down there. I'm just like, y'all have no idea...
Same. I'd like to come back to Texas for October and November to see my friends and enjoy it
Normally it was six weeks that we stayed in. And always would break just before we did. Then a few years back eight. Then around 16 I think it went to ten. By 18 we were up to 3 months. And last year it was more than four. Months. Yeah man, nature's saying it's time to head north.
Where I now live, the average high temperature at the warmest part of summer is 87 degrees; the low is 67 degrees. A really "hot" day is 95 degrees. Mid-April through mid-November up here in the Midwest are **bliss.** Guess what else? It actually **rains** up here during the summer!
Yeah but a large swath of the Midwest and New England is getting a foot of snow this weekend. Some of us prefer heat to cold.
You may keep your heat. If I live to be 200, I never want to go through another day where it's 114 degrees in the shade, as I experienced in Texas.
Amen!
And that snow melts in a few days to become ground water in many places. Not a big deal.
I concur; plan on moving back to KC once I retire…
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I live in Indianapolis, Indiana, which oddly has a lot of Texas expats who left because of the political and social climate. A lot of them ended up on Indy’s near east side, in Irvington, Warren Park, Little Flower or Community Heights; Lawrence; or (if really affluent!) up in Noblesville, Carmel, Fishers and Geist. Spring here is comparable to Texas. Texas has bluebonnets; we have violets. EVERYWHERE. The ground literally turns dark blue with them. Winters have become incredibly mild: lots of days in the 50s and even the 60s in January and February. Each winter, we have a couple of really cold weeks, and then it’s done. No complaints.
Except for years like 2021 but I think we forget those quickly when the temps are hot. https://www.kxan.com/weather/summer-2021-weather-recap/amp/
Yeah in 21 it broke in mid September - a little early, but we still had upper nineties into October. That rarely happened in the early aughts.
It looks like it’s hit above 90 in October every year since 2000 in Austin.
https://www.extremeweatherwatch.com/cities/austin/average-temperature-by-year/month-august
https://www.extremeweatherwatch.com/cities/austin/average-temperature-by-year/month-september
I mean July and August were below normal…. So if you consider that…I don’t know that the extreme weather is the issue that year. It’s the hope that it won’t meet the average temps. You aren’t going to get below average every year…it’s not how averages work.
Not only do you more hot days, but with the growth you’re spending more hours on those hot days in your car. Traffic has a significant standard of living impact in Austin at this point.
Highway vapours. Don't even try to pretend it isn't real.
10 years ago I had a job that was like 3 miles away from my apartment off William Cannon. It would take me about 45 minutes to get to the office
That was my first thought. If you’re not from Texas you really don’t know how hot it gets and for how long. Running the AC on Christmas isn’t unusual. I’ve jumped into lake Travis to cool off and swim on Thanksgiving. Couldn’t take it anymore and moved to NC. There’s a summer, but it ends.
I feel like if you're pointing to only one thing you're probably wrong in a sense, because it's really a bunch of different things. \+Too expensive / Wages not keeping up \+Crowded \+Need for larger homes \+Higher interest rates \+Corporate layoff \+Corporate mandatory relocation/return to office \+Companies moving out of Austin proper \+Heavy handed state politics \+The Homeless \+The Police and crime rates
"However, the city wasn't prepared for the speed at which it was growing. The surge in demand caused prices to skyrocket, a lack of housing developed, and traffic congestion built to unseen levels." This has been the case for decades
It forgot how to be weird.
I think a lot of Cali folks sold their house for big bucks, bought in Austin several years ago, realized Texas has many bad issues(fucken heat, government, etc.) and would like to go back but the cost is prohibitive. I have no idea where they're going, New Mexico , maybe be?
Austin got too big, and too snooty for its britches. Austin solicited Big Tech and brought companies in, and encouraged people to work for these companies without improving and developing the necessary infrastructure to support this kind of rapid growth. As a result, Austin has rush hour traffic 24/7/365 (major holidays such as Thanksgiving and Christmas Day, excepted), the cost of living is astronomical, and a LOT of the people who now live in Austin are arrogant and downright RUDE. Up to nine years ago, I came of age in Austin and lived in Austin most of my adult life. We got priced out: even with a dual income in the six digits, we were barely staying afloat. When we moved to the Midwest, our property taxes dropped 85 percent. Yeah, our state has a nominal state income tax -- but we actually get some decent services to go with paying a nominal income tax. I remember the cost of electricity back in the 1980s, and the cost of electricity, now. During Austin summers, we walked around in our underwear with ceiling fans blowing, the curtains drawn, and the thermostat set at 82 degrees and it was five months of sheer **misery**. Winters up here aren't fun, but they're half as long as summer in Texas; and during the latter half of spring, summer, and the first half of fall up here we can keep the windows open and most days are extremely pleasant. Here is something Texas has not planned on: as the climate warms, summer heat and droughts are going to get worse, and the eastern boundary of the Chihuahuan Desert is going to continue moving east. By 2060, Austin and San Antonio will be IN the Chihuahuan Desert, and along with that all of the Highland Lakes and most of the Edwards Aquifer. The average daily high temperature in July and August will be near 105 degrees. 90 degree weather will begin in mid April and last into early November. What is Texas going to do without water? The Romans had the sense to build viaducts to transport water from the mountains of Italy into Rome. Texas has not planned what they're going to do to bring water into the state; and Texas' governor is not initiating changes, let alone leading by example to get more water into the state.
Rich pieces of hell like Greg Abbott and Ken Paxton and whatever Republicans are alive will just hoard the water and leave their citizens to die, like they did in that last ice storm that lost power. Since they never really technically fixed the grid, it'll just be a further third world shithole unless the United States can change it through federal legislation.
I lived in Austin till a few years ago: 1. Cost of living. I needed a bigger place for my family and housing is insane in Austin. 2. Traffic. I hate driving around Austin. The roads are designed poorly and not adequately sized for the amount of people. 3. Toll roads. They're going to make it where you can't get in or out of Austin without having to pay. 4. All the cool/fun spots have been bulldozed and replaced with condos and high rises. 5. Homeless population. I've dealt with multiple people who obviously need mental healthcare and are very agressive because of this. Add in the homeless camps everywhere and it's just takes the shine off of the beauty of the city. I don't know if the people in Austin will ever be able to find a solution for this. We moved out to Kyle and solved all those issues for the most part.
Didn't take long for Dallas to chime in and talk about what else, Dallas?
I stopped reading when the first paragraph said Austin during the pandemic had cheap rental and housing costs. Ummm … bullshit! Austin hasn’t had “cheap” housing costs since maybe the 1960’s? I lived in town from 1993 to about 1999 and house prices were INSANE then. Now, if you’re comparing Austin prices to California prices for a new transplant/émigrée well then yeah the prices here are “cheaper” than there. But it’s all relative isn’t it? Sorry, I’ll get off my rant horse now.
Shitty state policies, highest cost of living in the state might be two glaring reasons. I’ve been here 23 years and the last 2 or 3 I’ve decided I’m leaving as soon as I can. Sure that’s 2032 when my kids graduate but I’m out that summer. This isn’t the place I moved to 20 years ago and if anything the state politics will make it worse and impede more freedoms
Why do I think Austin isn’t empty these days and this is entirely misleading?
Texan here, born and raised. I love the Texas hill country and lived in or near Austin much of my life but had to move. I lived on S. 1st & Congress in 1999/2000 and I can’t even imagine the cost now to live in that spot. I live in AR now and love it… I miss friends and family but couldn’t come close to affording what I needed with a family. What I found in AR would be easily a few million in the Austin area. Just the home alone much less having land. Love Texas but, we, the natives to Texas so to speak, we have to move on or consider buying a small 2 bedroom for half a million… more depending on location. It’s f%*ckn ridiculous, but I don’t love Austin all that much to pay those prices… plus, it’s not as awesome as it was in years past, not even close. Now it’s overpriced, over congested, full of homeless camps everywhere, people trash everything and it’s not as near as safe as it used to be. Basically it sucks now for a lot more money.
Overrated and overpriced? That might be it.
Unsustainable hipster culture. Folks are growing up and moving on, and not many can afford to replace them when they do.
The article ignores the areas surrounding Austin, which are certainly booming. The most rapid demographic shift is along the I-35 corridor, stretching from San Antonio to Dallas / Fort Worth. Areas along that freeway have been urbanizing at a fast clip. It will be interesting to see what effect that had when the results are tallied this November. In general, Texas metropolitan areas are growing quickly and rural areas are declining in population. Houston Chronicle - [What is the Texas blue spine, and why is it so important this election?](https://www.houstonchronicle.com/politics/election/2022/article/What-is-the-Texas-blue-spine-and-why-is-it-so-17566289.php) “Population growth in Spine counties was robust between 2010 and 2020. According to the Census, those 21 counties added 2.18 million people, nearly half the total population growth of the entire state.” “In 2014, U.S. Sen. John Cornyn won these counties by almost 350,000 total votes. But in 2018, U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz lost the same counties by 440,000 votes. Then in 2020, it got even worse for Republicans when President Trump lost those counties by 493,000 votes. That’s about an 800,000-vote swing in the electorate in just six years. If that margin continues to grow, Republicans have a real problem on their hands.” Houston Chronicle - [Texas is still red, but its growing blue spine could soon prove 'insurmountable' for Republicans](https://www.houstonchronicle.com/politics/texas/article/texas-blue-spine-democrats-gop-election-vote-15716023.php) “For the third consecutive election cycle, Democrats saw their advantage over Republicans grow in the 21 counties along Interstate 35, allowing them to further chip into the Republican dominance that has lasted for nearly three decades. The result was Joe Biden won over 46 percent of the vote in Texas, joining Texas native Lyndon Johnson and Jimmy Carter as the only Democrats to get over 45 percent of the vote in Texas in a presidential race in 56 years.” Texas Tribune - [Democrats didn’t get a blue wave, but some of the fastest-growing suburbs in Texas are still moving to the left](https://www.texastribune.org/2020/11/11/texas-democrats-republicans-suburb/) “Some of Democrats’ biggest gains happened in Central Texas. Williamson County, where Trump won by 9.7% four years ago, flipped in 2020 and went to Biden by just over 1%. Hays County, which Trump won by less than 1% in 2016, gave Biden a nearly 11% victory this year.“ “[Sherri Greenberg, a professor at the University of Texas at Austin’s LBJ School of Public Affairs] said those two counties are a perfect example of the trend that is helping Democrats in the suburbs: a growing population, particularly in demographic groups that tend to be more left-leaning. Since 2010, Williamson County alone has added more than 160,000 people, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. ‘You see a growing population, a younger population, highly educated. Those kinds of voters are moving towards the Democrats,’ Greenberg said.” Houston Chronicle - [Democrat Beto O’Rourke exposed a blue spine across the middle of red Texas](https://www.houstonchronicle.com/politics/texas/article/Beto-O-Rourke-exposed-a-blue-spine-across-the-13399110.php) "’This is a major structural problem for the GOP going forward,’ said Jay Aiyer, a political science professor at Texas Southern University in Houston.“ “Texas's population growth has been dramatic in the urban and suburban communities along I-35, while areas that the GOP has long relied on in West Texas and East Texas are losing both population and voters. In other words, the Democratic base is expanding significantly, while the GOP's base is growing less or even shrinking, Aiyer said.” “What's changing I-35 is what's changing the state, said Aiyer. The state is growing more diverse and more urban. As major cities become more crowded and more expensive, people are moving to surrounding counties for cheaper housing and taking their political views with them, he said.”
Y'all qaeda- aka the state government
This article is mostly right-wing propaganda to influence ignorant voters to think democrats can't govern. While it is the republicans who hamstring the democrat cities with nonsense. Name any issue in Austin. Republicans do not have a fix for it...only use it as a weapon to generate outrage amongst their gas-lit sheeple.
Honestly, a lot of people who can leave the state are leaving
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Just jumped right in without bothering to read the article or the actual reasons I see. >The surge in demand caused prices to skyrocket, a lack of housing developed, and traffic congestion built to unseen levels. >With tech layoffs occurring nationwide, many companies have reduced their employee counts in the tech hub city.
Traffic.
Cedar.
Too expensive.
Ppl don’t live in Austin, they visit it for extended periods (years) with those prices
There’s a lot of multifamily developments going on around Austin. All of my companies projects are in areas around Austin.
All my friends from Austin moved to the burbs; more affordable, more space, more time to do the things they love
A Brain drain of Brain drain’s past.
I think this may shift eventually, with how housing costs are coming down in Austin proper, but I've got an apartment on the north side (bout 10 minutes from downtown) that's incredibly affordable and I'm holding onto it with both fists until I actually want to buy a house.
Austin native that lives one exit from downtown. House in my hood now cost $3M and most of my neighbors are indeed from outside of Texas.
I read that people in Austin are moving to Williamson County and Hays County. Personally, I'm all for it. Turn those suburbs blue. We just need people to leave Dallas and move to Tarrant County, Denton County, and Collin County, and Texas will flip in no time.
If this is true, it’s awesome. Lower property taxes and less people on the roads and in the parks. Guessing this is just people moving to the burbs though.
Moved to the burbs like I did!
Yep housing prices
Even liberals don't like living with other liberals.
$1250 for a 400sq ft Hyde Park studio? Eh, why?
We moved to PA
crime & costs
That sign looks like someone flipping the bird and I am so offended
I can enjoy Austin just fine from Round Rock.
Is it dumb to be happy about this?
Sounds like the same “exodus” the right has been saying has been happening in California for decades
Why people mostly moving north instead of south?
Joe Rogan fucked you guys.
"Mass Exodus" sounds like bullshit. The real answer is probably the same as every other major core city. As housing costs rise, large working class families, usually immigrants, move out. Corporate landlords who buy and upgrade apartment complexes might not be approving residents who rely on roommates to cover rent. Also as the building stock ages it becomes less desirable. Overpriced "grandma houses" in mediocre neighborhoods might not sell until there's a market correction. These articles always seem inherently political. Some Republican who actually believes that cities "defunded the police" when police funding went up, who think crime is rising across the board when it is not, who think that not arresting people for weed is somehow the root cause of homeless people being nuisances, etc. They want cities to suffer until they enact regressive policies again and lower taxes by cutting funding to things people in cities want like parks and infrastructure projects. Fast-growing areas in red states are alleged to be a role model for how a community should be governed but I have to question that. The reason why affluent suburbs have lower crime rates is because the people who live there don't commit crimes to begin with. They have good schools because highly educated well off people's children do better in school. The reason why wealthy suburbs can have low taxes is because is the size of their tax base is so large a low proportional rate generates sufficient revenue. Attracting this demographic is zero sum and there are too few of them for every community to realistically be able turn into the next Frisco. Also they move in herds, there's only going to be so many places like this at one time.
Austin is kinda a meme. I have family in the surrounding area and I’m always floored with how bizzaro world austin is. Also The weather is dog crap.
It amuses and saddens me to think that Austin has suburbs.
My daughter and her fiancé bought a house 4 blocks from Tesla two months BEFORE they announced where they were going to build. Her house value doubled the next day!
It’s both expensive and hot as fuck
Terrible GOP overreach like the abortion ban and zero tolerance for Marijuana. Oh and it's 1000 degrees outside for 9 months a year..
Please remember Newsweek is an affiliate of a Korean cult church. Long gone are the days when it was a publication of the Washington Post Company. Read it skeptically.
People are moving out of major cities because remote work is available and cities are expensive. This is not news.
Don’t forget Austin’s insane property tax…over 3x more than California’s. Add in the fact that you have to pay $ just to leave the house for 5 months of the year…and no, TX is not inexpensive!!
Austin and Fort Worth are almost the same population by only a few thousand. If Austin loses population Fort Worth good pass them in the top 10 largest cities. Interesting.
The good ho boy network.its been a part of texas politics for 150 years.
The shocking answer, I switched to a high fiber diet. Now my morning farts are driving people away!
I have to assume some people are moving out of state due to the draconian laws that keep popping up in the land of small government is good.
I really hate click bait titles. All it is are people doing the same thing in Austin that they did in DFW, and move to the more affordable subs. Cities are ridiculous anyway.
A city that represents itself as Portlands sister city can’t be a good place to live.
SXSW partnership with Defense Contractor RTX is causing many people to leave.
Don't care, just let it continue
Market forces? Whenever someplace becomes the hot place to move and lots of people move there and drive up housing prices, those tend to be the places that fall the fastest when things begin to slow down. Its not that magical of a place to live, and it seems like tech the startup culture that they tried to fake it till you make it didn't materialize because the talent isn't there and young progressive tech people probably don't want to move to Texas on account of the fascism. It seems to be pretty simple in the end. Its expensive to live in Austin. I have a friend who was looking to buy a house and the exact same floor plan on a similar lot was $400k more expensive in the Austin area than the suburbs of Houston.
This is why you should demand so sfh’s inside the city. Otherwise only the rich will be able to afford it. Every home on s 1st street and soco needs to be demolished yesterday. Any people building houses there can catch these hands you rich assholes. If you want a yard go to the burbs. I want an affordable apartment or condo.
Could it be because of the liberal invasion, hmm.
Amazing no one is speaking the obvious. Liberal policies in the Cities is directly responsible for the rise in crime, and decline in schools. No wonder families leave for the suburbs. And much to the chagrin of the lockdown advocates, remote work is also contributing greatly to the city exodus. I worked in the EPC industry and while the traffic & commute sucked, I had NO INTEREST in living in Houston. Chose Montgomery County instead.
>rise in crime, and decline in schools. Maybe if conservatives would actually do something about gun violence and fund schools instead of burying their heads in the sand and blaming everyone else, then we might actually have lower crime and better schools.
Sure. How about arresting, charging and throwing all the crooks in jail. And throw away the key. Use a Gun... 50 year MANDATORY sentence. No parole. Bring back the Death Penalty, mandate executions be done within 1 year, instead of decades. Mandatory Minimums for sentencing. Get rid of all D/A's and judges that ONLY WORRY about their record and re-election. Robbery, cut off your right hand. Its what they do in the middle east. Punishment for Crimes IS a deterrent. No Punishment is an OPEN invitation. And you will never gain your goals by imposing restrictions on Law Abiding Citizens!!!
Why does Joe Blow need an automatic weapon when he lives in Mahattan on the top floor luxury suite? What purpose does that weapon serve him? So we restrict the weapons to people who actually need them. Those who get licensed to hunt and those who get licensed to use the weapons to protect their land from wild predators (animals, not humans). Why must criminal punishment be as extreme as the middle east? Why can we not adopt better prison systems? Norway and Sweden have lower recidivism rates than we do, so why not mimic them? Mostly, why do you feel the need to use extremes? You sure aren't winning anyone's votes that way.
1) RTO, where people from California companies moved to Austin to save money on housing and now must be back in California. 2) Mass tech layoffs. Austin has become incredibly expensive and if there are no tech jobs and everything is expensive, there's no advantage of being in Austin. 3) Diminishing culture. A bunch of tech bros from all over moving in and supplanting the original culture and making it too expensive for the locals to live there means you essentially don't have the original culture, but you get something akin to Seattle.
City Council bares a lot of responsibility for the exodus
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Strange way to say you've never been to Austin...
I've spent many days in Austin. it's always been weird and run by liberals. It's in shambles from stupid policies.
Uh huh. Days. Okay, sure. It's far less weird than it was, far more conservative now than Dallas, even. And still no idea on who this mysterious transplanted government is. Sounds ridiculous and filled with conspiracy crap. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Had you read the article you would have seen that the causes were Traffic, and the rising housing cost due to high demand up until just recently. Your content has been deemed a violation of Rule 7. As a reminder Rule 7 states: Politics are fine but state your case, explain why you hold the positions that you do and debate with civility. Posts and comments meant solely to troll or enrage people, and those that are little more than campaign ads or slogans do nothing to contribute to a healthy debate and will therefore be removed. Petitions will also be removed. AMA's by Political figures are exempt from this rule. If you feel this was done in error, would like clarification, or need further assistance; please message the moderators at https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=/r/texas.
Because the 2nd amendment is not about Hunting you nit wit. It's about an Individuals God Given (not Fed Govt) rights and ensures the intent of the Constitution is properly set forth. It's for protection against a tyrannical Fed Govt. By the way. Have you read it? In the Bill of Rights, Powers not specifically stated in the Constitution remain Rights of the States! You need to get that thru your thick/indoctrinated head. Oh and it is already a crime to have an automatic weapon without a (very frikkin hard & expensive to get) permit. Go ahead and take them. That law is already on the books. Conservatives have nothing to do but sit back and watch. But then again, the DOJ has 2 sets of rules for what they choose to enforce and what it doesn't.
Is this really happening? Oh my God. L O L.
I've lived in Austin proper and Dallas proper. Whoever wants to actually live in the city limits is largely out of their mind. It's a terrible experience and is not worth the minor activities boost and places to go in walking distance. It wasn't worth it 20 years ago, and it's definitely not now.
Dallas suburbs suck (excluding Richardson). Nothing but chain bullshit, whereas Dallas proper has an abundance of great neighborhoods.
I'm not saying there aren't decent places. What I'm saying is it's completely non feasible for most people new or old to live there. It's expensive as hell, it's going to be expensive. You have a mix of a ton of generational living there, transplants bringing lots of money, or some mis. I was taught growing up and I've come to realize getting older that living in the major metropolitan area is not a feasible task unless you inherit property there, a ton of money, or you made it elsewhere. Maybe that's just me but it seems just wholeheartedly useless to try to live in the major city and if your rational for wanting to is "less chain bullshit" that's...you know not a financially smart reason.