More and more Americans are giving up the warm weather and culture of California in favor of affordable housing and a lower cost of living in the Midwest. This New York Times article details the trend and features a family that moved from San Bernardino, Calif., to Lee’s Summit, Mo. In Missouri, the couple could afford a home twice the size of the one they left behind in California.
Wichita should capitalize on this trend and focus on attracting big-city dwellers who are fed up with exorbitant housing costs. Forbes magazine recently ranked Wichita No. 1 in the nation for affordable quality of life. We need to make sure other people know what we have to offer.
Posted by Melissa Cooley
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10 Comments
No offense, but you’re not going to attract too many Californians if you guys keep playing the role of Nutcase Capital, USA. First we learn that you keep gays in jail longer than straights for the same crime, and now you’re forcing science teachers to teach Christian dogma? That kind of intolerance is bad for business no matter how cheap your houses are. Get real people.
Melissa
Bigger is not better. Dallas was a nice place to live until it started to import yankees.
Now kids can’t spell cat, and the new, new, new jail is already overflowing.{ processed over 70,000 the first 6 months}.
Be careful what you wish for.
Erect a sign: We’re full, move on.
My husband and I moved here from Orange County California, where we both grew up in 1994 when we were young and had two small children. We were able to afford a tiny but wonderful house we could call our own for $47k. The same house if plopped in the middle of Huntington Beach would have been $300k.I think all of our friends that decided to stay there are stupid. None of them own their own home and they are now in their 40’s. Very few were able to continue a college education because you spend so much time commuting in California, you can’t even take night classes. You would be too exhausted and you would spend too much time away from your family.The weather just wasn’t enough of a concession to keep me there.I have a handful of friends and family that took the leap and left Cali for the midwest and east coast and they are all very happy they did so.But the truth is that the people that live there think they have it so much better than we do. They won’t be coming in large wave’s. So no one needs to panic about growing populations.For all our problems here in Kansas, it is still a much better place to live than many areas of the US.
Having left Riverside CA two years ago and eventually winding up in Wichita, I can attest to the vast improvement in housing options! Selling a 3 bedroom, 2 bath slab (no basement) for almost $300,000 made it possible to buy a nice home in Wichita for a lot less money.
California has its share of nuts and flakes like everywhere, as does Kansas. It is just that they seem to stand out so much more in Kansas.
I love Kansas. I’ve been to every major city in the USA and I wouldn’t trade places for anything or anyone. We have the big skies and wide open spaces that allow us to breathe, very manageable commutes, none of the traffic congestion, or pollution. Housing is so affordable and people are friendly and helpful.I agree with ED, bigger is definately not better.
Careful, folks! 70% of the people in this country live within 100 miles of a coastline. That leaves the whole middle to us 30-percenters! Let’s don’t give up our elbow room and cheap housing by trying to attract everybody here!Of course, if we were successful in tricking them all to come here, then we could move there, and have room to spread out a towel in front of that newly devalued beachfront home! Hmmmm…….
Jed you can still blog from CA.But maybe us rednecks won’t read it if you start acting like a CA native!
As a Seattleite happily transplanted to Wichita, I speak from experience about what to do when one’s city is ranked at the top of a favorable list in a national magazine:
Move.
CF, Are you referring to your move from Seatle or do you think that you should move from Wichita because it made the top of the list?
Tracy,I’ll act just like I always have; take more that a change of scenery to affect that! I’ll just do it more comfortably from a warm beach, with the ocean on one side, the mountains on the other, an avocado tree in the front yard and a Starbuck’s on every corner!