Places to move to, elsewhere in USA or world

In My Humble Opinion
1

Related to all the burnings, and the City of Oakland’s long-term failures that so many other cities have too. Many of my friends keep talking vaguely about “buying some land” and “getting away from it all”. One friend actually bought 10 acres sight unseen in Modoc County, utter northeast of CA, 8,000 people in the county, 15 inches of rainfall a year, they grow alfalfa. He got it from an online tax default auction so land was very cheap. It’s 6 hours from Oakland where I live. We don’t even know if it’s buildable, livable, or what. Could be full of dioxin for all I know.

I’m not so keen on building from the ground up in remote areas, having almost no fix-it skills or experience living remote where the nearest hospital is 2 hours off. Don’t want to live like the Unabomber. Prefab homes range from awful to great, custom homes are expensive and not for faint heart or small wallet, and the usual tract-home options are terrible.

I can work remotely if there’s Internet - which I might have to design and build myself. I could acquire skills of course, in the usual painful manner. More likely I’d lose my shirt and waste a lot of money and time on poorly researched wild goose chases.

There are also “surprises” in new areas that locals might know about but outsiders don’t. I’d rather live near infrastructure or have some access to it, and be able to participate in a real-world cultural and intellectual life even if it’s a smaller circle.

California fire season is just starting. Areas I would have considered a few years ago have now been evacuated multiple times the past 2 summers. Minneapolis had been listed as a great city to live, but now… hmm. My family’s from NYC and I could squeeze into their apartment by tossing out 3/4 of my books and artwork and sleeping on a cot.

But if I were to just pull up stakes and relocate, where? Big city, college town, small town, way out there? Arkansas, upstate New York, New Mexico, Virginia… I tend to shy away from things I don’t already know which I’d like to stop doing. I want to visit an area first, which is a problem right now and maybe I should just drop all my savings on a whim because that’s what Brave and Bold Pioneers must have done, right?

I’m not asking you all to tell me the right answer. What do you like about where you live now? More, what factors would you consider that I might not have thought of. What features of your area are most important to you? Are there any “gotchas” that you wish you’d known about sooner?

2

I moved from coastal Ca to a Western Massachusetts hill town. Feel like I woke up in paradise. What do I like? Everything except the deer flies, pretty much. It is a liberal, educated area but there’s no industry here except colleges, so no metastasizing growth. Its heyday was about 1825. It’s like living in the ruins of a civilization, which is frankly a dream come true. It’s also rife with artisan cheese makers, blacksmiths, maple sugar houses, and there is a big library in every tiny town, and usually a wonderful independent bookstore as well. Everything is at least 200 years old (my house is older than that). I have numbers of neighbors whose families have been here since the eighteenth century on the same land.

it is not particularly cheap to live here, and if you are used to California property taxes you are in for a big shock.

My advice: If you do not already have some practical life skills like carpentry, plumbing, electrical, can handle a chain saw, repair an engine, stay near infrastructure or be wealthy. It’s a long climb.

3

I love living in LA. It has no majority ethnicity, the food is amazing, the weather very friendly with little humidity nor annoying mosquitoes. It has culture, sport and a vast number of food and drinking options. There are a wide variety of biking and hiking options; Will Rogers State Park in the heart of the city offers hundreds of miles of wilderness trails. There is really no center city so there are many different and diverse communities spread out over hundreds of square miles.

The bad: Traffic, snobbery and our tendency to burn and loot every thirty years or so.

4

Think about just how far “away from it all” you could live, versus how much “in the thick of it all” you care to tolerate. Think about what the right compromise might be for you.

I can tell the story of the last 30 years of my life.

I live the first half of my adult life in congested areas (S. F. Bay Area various places). I ran away from that to live in a cinder-block room at a research laboratory with dolphins, almost on the beach in Honolulu, for 3 years.

I really wanted to go be a hermit somewhere. I fantasized about running off to live quietly on Mars. Then, getting a bit more realistic, I fantasized about living on the moon. Then in an ice cave in antarctica. Then on a homestead where I might build my own log cabin in some northern Canadian territory, where homestead land could be got for $1/acre. (I found a book by a guy who really did that.)

When the shit got real, I asked myself the questions in the 1st paragraph above. I decided that I’m really too domesticated and not feral enough to really live in the wild. I need to be within a reasonable driving distance of markets, doctors, a bank, etc.

After two years of searching for a “small town” that was far enough out, small enough, but near enough to civilization, I discovered San Miguel, CA ( Wikipedia page. Additional information. ) It’s about a 5 hour drive down 101 from San Jose, I guess. About 10 miles north of Paso Robles, the medium-smallish city I needed to live near.

Got a little apt there (something like $400/month in 1989) for a few months. Then I found a guest house on a 50 acre ranch about 5 miles out in the farmland, where I lived for 10 years.

That ended because the owner died and his wife eventually sold the place. Then I found my favorite place of all – a 40x10 trailer on a 120-acre ranch in a mountainous oak-and-pine forested ravine up a back road (St. Route 58) out of Santa Margarita, a bit south of Atascadero, for (IIRC) $450/month from 2000 to 2003. This place I have pictures of on-line! Consider if any of these places seem about right for you.

Since then, through various health and other issues, I lived with kinfolk in San Fernando Valley, and a convalescent home in North Hollywood, then I lived in Fresno then Rohnert Park then in Modesto, and then . . .

. . . Now I live in a smallish town (pop. about 10,000 in 2010) in San Joaquin Valley about 1 1/2 hour drive from Bay Area. I have a one-bedroom apt of (I estimate) 500 sq. ft. or maybe 600, for $725/month. It has a front yard and a little back yard. Nice quiet little town. This complex is for people 55 years and older. Just a 35-minute drive from “the Big City” (Modesto). Consider if this sounds like the right kind of place for you. (Hint: The unit next door to me is vacant now. The old-like codger who was there died about three weeks ago.)

5

I often get the question if I will move back to the U.S. someday.

What has been reinforced recently is that my small town has most of the amenities I need for daily living. Bank, post office, grocery stores (each one much smaller than a typical U.S. grocery store), a few restaurants, a tiny garden shop are all within walking distance. And the train station is also just 5 minutes walk. From that train station I can go anywhere in Europe which is reachable by train. I can also get to the airport, so I don’t even need a car.

Where can I get this in the U.S.? Nowhere. Any place that’s big enough to have decent public transportation is far out of the range of the cow bells.

What’s my point? Decide what you want to be able to do daily (walk/bike/short drive), weekly, monthly? I have friends who live rather close to a hospital. But the nearest Costco is over an hour’s drive. How flexible are you? How lonely will you get, if you’re in the outback?

Then think about the weather. Parts of the U.S. are rather difficult in winter. And hurricanes are no fun.

Then start looking. I miss being near saltwater. If we do move, I will try to be some place close (< 2 hours drive) to saltwater.

6

It is obviously more efficient and convenient to live in a city. There is a reason millions choose to live in NYC, Tokyo, Lagos, etc. If you are one of those rare individuals who can survive 20 years on a deserted island, or even something less extreme, sure, it’s been done, but most people have absolutely no idea what they would be getting into physically or mentally. Even a couple of weeks at a beautiful beachside resort can mess with your head if you are used to a different pace of life.

7

Relevant story. Stealing stuff is not cool, though. There is obviously some tension between being an absolute total hermit and having to work or barter or trade, which will being you into contact with other people.

8

OP, I notice your alternatives are all US based. But I suspect a lot of the factors you find negative with your present location are symptoms of issues that will follow you around the US.

If I were you, I’d sit down to work out exactly what the objections to the present location are, and what to look for. Prioritize what is a deal-breaker and what you can live with. Preferred climate and culture. Look at your budget. Employability, if you are not self-employed. I suspect something would end up close to the center of the Venn diagram.

9

Living far out is not for the faint of heart.

10

I wanted to leave California increasingly desperately for about twelve years before I actually got to. I’m married to someone who hates change of any kind, and regards large decisions with fear and loathing, so that was a big hurdle to overcome. I made a questionnaire for both of us with questions like What Do You Need To Live Near? What Do You Need To NOT Live Near? Climate: what can you tolerate, not tolerate? Etc. It went on for some pages.

For me, I need a LOT of space around me, preferably agrarian, water that comes from the sky more or less year round, and liberal politics. I much prefer snowy winters to hot humid summers. This reduced the United States choices to northwestern Oregon and western Washington, college towns of the upper Midwest, and New England. Our daughter settling in Massachusetts decided the issue for us.

I could also live in a lot of parts of Canada, particularly the Maritimes, which I love. But emigration is not easy nor simple; moving house after fifty years in the same place was hard enough.

11

He’s got this dream about buyin’ some land
He’s gonna give up the booze and the one night stands
And then he’ll settle down, there’s a quiet little town
And forget about everything

It was difficult to decide between “Baker Street” and “Luckenbach, Texas” for official thread theme song.

12

This is a common trope among those frustrated with their jobs or just fed up with work in general. I fell for it back when I was working for the State Department, and went so far as to buy a piece of property in Haines, Alaska. Beautiful spot up on a bench overlooking the Lynn Canal, which I later sold.

The problem with the notion of living remote is that once the novelty wears off, and the view becomes ordinary, boredom is likely to set in. Then there are the problems inherent in living remotely: hiring tradespeople to fix things, driving long distances just for a pound of butter because you forgot to get it last time around, no restaurants, no concerts, etc.

Most people confuse job frustration with being sick and tired of their environment. In fact, if not for the crappy work situation, living where you are may be just fine. When I took an objective look at Haines after some time had passed, I realized that we would be desperately unhappy there in pretty short order. It’s a tiny town with nearly zero entertainment options. Not even a movie theater. And when it isn’t raining, it’s probably snowed in. No city of any size within easy driving distance, either. Whitehorse, in the Yukon Territory, is over three hours away.

I would suggest that the OP think very carefully about what is driving this desire to move elsewhere. Perhaps eliminating the source of frustration would be a whole lot cheaper and easier than making an ill-advised move.

13

Wasn’t it Jewel Kilcher’s brother who said they grew up in a drinking village that had a fishing problem?

Mrs. L was telling me about this:

If a lot of people leave, what will your current situation look like? If X% leave, will property taxe rates rise (for those who stayed) to make up the difference? Will property values drop as demand falls and supply rises, allowing you to get a better place for the same money?

14

You live in Oakland California. Pretty much anywhere else will be better. It consistently ranks in the top 20 for crime.

Here are 2 links that may help you:

https://www.areavibes.com/ It ranks places on various metrics such as crime, cost of living, amenities, etc. Just enter a town name or look at their lists, then click on the overall score for a breakdown.

https://decisiondata.org/coverage/xfinity-availability/ Enter a zip code and it will tell you which companies provide what types of internet there.