A recent list published by the EIU, a research group with Economist magazine, claimed Honolulu to be the United State’s “most liveable city” on the somewhat arbitrary scores of health care, culture and environment, education, stability and infrastructure.
Those factors seem pretty incomplete to me - why not add cost of living, taxes, job situation, weather, some measure of “good people” like volunteering and charitable donations and such like, traffic, crime, perceptions, yada yada. But this is about you.
My mom was a secretary at Glibbs Flying Service in San Diego. She said she knew a lot of helicopter pilots who wanted to fly in Hawaii. After working there for some time they were like, ‘Wait. I’m on an island!’ Apparently the novelty wore off.
My wife lived in Hawaii as a child. I’ve only been once, a few years ago, to the Big Island. I could get used to it, but I understand the cats would have to be quarantined for six months.
My cousin was stationed in Hawaii while she was in the Navy. She hated it. Everything is expensive since it has to be shipped in from the mainland. She hated that there are no real seasons. Some people (especially those who hate winter) might disagree with her on that one, but she hated the lack of changing seasons, other than “rainy season”.
You’re also stuck on an island. If you want to go anywhere, you need to fly. Your day trips are limited to what is on the island and that’s it.
There are also tourists everywhere, which makes things more difficult for folks who just want to live their lives there.
Sounds like absolute misery to me. The general impression I have is that it would be nice to visit, but no way in hell would I live there.
That’s a big one to leave out. I’ve read that you need to make at least $100k per year just to have a livable wage, due to the high costs of everything. Ignoring that in their list of “most livable” is pretty idiotic since the high cost of living is one of the things that makes Honolulu unlivable for many.
The Economist’s readers don’t care about silly things like cost of living. They’re doing just fine, thank you.
Money magazine OTOH runs an annual list of most affordable cities. A veritable treasure trove of small cities / overgrown towns in shithole states with miserable weather. But Waffle House has cheap breakfast there.
Bottom line:
Different lists for different audiences.
Island. I don’t mind the size of the island(s), but you can’t just drive away from danger. Was once caught in a flash flood on Oahu and barely made our plane after hours of following instructions on AM radio to try to navigate around it.
Love the food. Don’t love the cost of groceries.
I like seasons.
Cost of living.
Already live in the Ring of Fire and don’t need to be closer to more active volcanoes.
All of my family, and most of my friends, live within 200 miles of me today. If my wife and I moved to Honolulu, we’re suddenly an 8+ hour flight, and five time zones, away.
Related to the above: my parents, and my wife’s mother, are all elderly, and not in good health. It’s important to us that we be able to be there for our parents, quickly if need be.
I’m nearing retirement age, and I’m confident that I can retire comfortably here in the Midwestern U.S. I’m not as confident that I could do so in a market with a significantly higher cost of housing and cost of living.
Why would I move to Honolulu (#4) when I already live in Vancouver (#2)? Better ask why I don’t move to Calgary. (Answer: Alberta political and social culture.)
I don’t care for the tropics. I like Northerness, like C.S.Lewis.
But, I visited a world class awesome public swimming pool on the Big Island when I was there probably 20 years ago – on one end, a hot springs gushed in, on the the other, the ocean, baffled and channeled by a lava structure, washed in and out. The walls of the pool were black lava bricks and the floor was pure white sand scattered with shells. The walls were all alive with bright red crabs. Best swimming pool ever.
It was destroyed in a lava flow a couple years ago.
Never went to Honolulu. Because cities make me mentally, physically, and spiritually ill. Nothing there for me. Cool swimming with the sea turtles however.
Don’t like to move, don’t want to move, can’t afford to move, don’t need to move. Plus if everyone moved there “livable” would not be the way to describe it anymore, I’m sure.
There are a lot of nice places on Oahu that aren’t Honolulu, but try to afford owning one anywhere on the island. Plus, the last thing the island needs is more people moving in and raising housing prices for the people who already live there.
There aren’t that many jobs that aren’t low-paid service industry, unless you work remotely.
Oahu also has the highest rate of homelessness in the US.
(I also like seasons; can’t afford it; don’t like cities except for brief visits; and don’t know anybody there. But I ain’t going anywhere, I like it here. And yes I’m on high ground.)
Honolulu is not a big city. I live in the vicinity of Rochester, NY which is only slightly larger than Honolulu. But here I can easily travel to other places. In Honolulu, you can’t drive even thirty miles away. I would get bored being in the same place all the time. This would be even more true in Hawaii, where the seasons never change.
Plus reasons others have mentioned; high cost of living, high taxes, high homelessness, high crime, high tourism.
This is no longer true. It’s a “nudge, nudge, wink, wink” home quarantine. The hassle is in getting the blood test (which has to be analyzed by an approved lab; there is only one in the US, I think, in Kansas, though that may have changed) and all the paperwork from your vet. So it’s a PITA, and not cheap, but nothing like leaving your cat in a quarantine facility.
Uh, because my job is here? Unless you’re retired, or in a career field where you can be confident of finding work anywhere, that tends to be a pretty big limiting factor.