Hopefully, me and my son will be leaving Ohio this winter.
We don’t like cold winters.
We are looking for a city which is either a city or a suburb near a big city; i don’t want to be out in any boondocks.
Affordable apartments are important, yet not too much crime.
We’re thinking Texas, Florida, N Carolina, Virginia, Tennessee, or Maryland.
If you live there and your city meets my odd specifics, lemme know about it. Recommend it.
Snow is okay, but not 20 degrees.
Most places north of Columbia, SC (except the coastal strip) will see 20-degree temperatures every winter.
Well, I just moved to the Nashville area from Chicago about two years ago. I can give you a pretty objective critique, since I still feel mostly like an outsider (having been a Yankee all my life).
First the good things:
Nashville is a fast growing city with a relatively good economy. The big industries here are Music (duh), Health Care, Chemicals, and maybe some others.
I miss having Major League Baseball, but there is a decent Triple-A team (the Sounds) and of course the Titans of the NFL. We also have an NHL team, a pretty nice art museum, and the Country Music Hall of Fame.
The weather is nice, if you like the temperature range between “slightly chilly” and “hotter than hell.” Personally, I miss the snowy winters. The area outside the city is beautful - lots of parks, farms, rivers, etc. My wife and I went canoeing on the Duck River a few weeks ago and it was great. You don’t have to go to far out of the city to be out of the city.
It’s the south – people are plenty friendly. Too friendly for me, sometimes (I don’t always feel like chatting with the checkout girl at the supermarket)
Finally, housing costs are GREAT. We bought a house last year for at the most, half of what it would have cost me in the Chicago suburbs.
The Downside:
Well, it’s Tennessee. There is no state income tax but the sales tax approaches 10% on nearly everything. And I don’t know where it goes – the schools are relatively poor (both the quality of the education and the actual buildings) and other state services aren’t much better. There was some reasonable attempts to provide a balanced tax plan a few months ago, but the local radio DJ got everyone frothed up and the legislature was intimidated into hiking the sales tax again.
There’s probably more, but those are my main impressions so far.