“Don’t California my Texas” is a common refrain of Texans who don’t want an influx of Californians to influence the traditional Republican values of the state.
The California-to-Texas migration trend is hard to ignore, especially after the pandemic led to a wave of West Coasters exiting for more affordable cities like Dallas.
One out of every 10 people moving to Texas comes from California, according to a recent study by the Texas Real Estate Research Center at Texas A&M University. Companies like Charles Schwab, Tesla and Oracle are just some of the latest to relocate their headquarters from the Golden State to the Lone Star State.
Cullum Clark, director of the Bush Institute-Southern Methodist University Economic Growth Initiative, considers himself a student of what’s driving Texas’ explosive growth.
Clark, 55, worked in the investment industry for 25 years before earning his Ph.D. in economics at SMU with the aim of a second career in economic policy research and engagement, he said.
Shortly after graduating, he joined the Bush Institute to lead a program called “Blueprint for Opportunity,” which focuses on creating “inclusively prosperous, opportunity-rich” regions, cities, towns and neighborhoods, he said.
From his research, Clark has found that Californians are almost exclusively moving to Texas’ four large metro areas — Dallas-Fort Worth, Houston, San Antonio and Austin. He said that means big-city leaders need to figure out how to make urban communities more livable as they get more crowded.
“I compare Dallas to how Dallas was when I grew up here. It feels a lot bigger,” he said. “Yes, it feels sometimes a little bit more crowded. On the other hand, it’s a whole lot more interesting.”
Clark sat down with The Dallas Morning News to discuss why people are moving from California to Texas and the impact it may have on the state. His answers are edited for brevity and clarity.
Why are people leaving California for Texas in droves?
People are moving to Texas primarily for economic reasons. They want good job opportunities and to be able to afford the type of lifestyle they want to live.
When you look at the West Coast compared to Texas, there’s a gigantic difference in housing prices. And that is by far the biggest driver. But I think people are looking at the whole package when they decide where to live.
If people were single-mindedly focused on cheap real estate, they would go to rural places, maybe in the Rio Grande Valley or the Appalachians. But that’s not where they’re going; they’re leaving those places.
You want to be able to get the job, make the income you’re aspiring to, and afford the lifestyle that you’ve been wanting to achieve. The big metropolitan areas of Texas are offering that package about as well as any place in the United States today.
Who is better off in California?
If you work in software, you have very in-demand skills and can probably not only make more money in the Bay Area, but you likely can even have a higher quality of life after adjusting for housing costs than you could anywhere else.
For a particular specialized person, that’s the case. But for the vast majority of people, they won’t actually make very much more money in the Bay Area than they would have made in Texas.
What is California doing to slow the exodus?
The governor is very much out there in the public eye trying to make a case.
What he’s primarily doing is putting up billboards and so forth blasting Texas for the state’s conservative social policies. And saying that California is a progressive paradise. We’ll see how well that works.
I’m just fairly doubtful that will move very many people. I’m sorry to say that I don’t think California has succeeded in implementing policies that will solve what ails California.
The housing cost crisis is discussed ad nauseam, but not addressed. Bills that at least would begin to make a stab at it always seem to fail in the California State Legislature.
It’s visible in the number of housing units being built, which is extraordinarily small relative to other parts of the country, and relative to the state’s own history.
They’re not solving problems. If anything, they’re turning the screws and making it harder for businesses to operate. In addition to ordinary people wanting to leave, businesses are kind of being run out, too.
Do social policies have a big impact on where people choose to live?
I think there’s basically no evidence that the kinds of social policies we’ve seen implemented in either red or blue states have any meaningful effect on people’s migration decisions.
Do you think Texas’ stance on abortion in a post-Roe world will lead to movement into or out of the state?
Overturning Roe v. Wade means states essentially make whatever rules they want to make. That in itself probably doesn’t move people very much. But it’s all about the details of what each state implements.
For example, it’s hard to imagine that there wouldn’t be a reaction if the state of Texas makes it difficult for employers to include a travel benefit in their health care plan, because so many employers have been doing that.
And if you make Texas a bad place to do business, you undermine the very foundations of the Texas miracle.
Do you think Californians will make Texas bluer or change its demographics?
It’s too early to say. We don’t have really good data on the political leanings of people leaving. Some would say it’s the people who lean a little more right who come to Texas. We don’t know.
What we do know is this: moving across long distances, especially for work reasons, skews young. The people coming to Texas are on the younger side. And young people, on average, have more progressive views on a number of social issues.
A reasonable bet is any place that attracts a bunch of younger people is going to shift a little bit toward their views.
Did COVID speed up migration to Texas?
The COVID lockdown provided a giant experiment where we got to see where people would move if they were untethered from workplaces for a time.
The flow of people was very, very clear. It was out of the biggest coastal areas to places like North Texas and the fast-growing metropolitan areas around the Sun Belt and mountain states. There was also a great big movement out of core cities into suburban places.
Does Texas have enough housing to support its exploding population?
We’re struggling. Keeping up with the growing demand is a Herculean undertaking.
We almost kept up, but we haven’t quite kept up, and that’s visible in the fact that home prices have been going up faster in North Texas than in most cities and metropolitan areas around the United States.
I think in North Texas, and in the major Texas metropolitan areas, we’ve gotten more right than wrong. Hopefully, we can start to pull up on the areas that have been weaker points.
Everything around public transit for lower-income people and everything about making the place environmentally sustainable have not been our strengths. We’ve got to work on those in the future.
