California is essentially gentrifying at the state level with wealthy transplants, pushing working and middle class people who grew up here out of the state.
[1] https://www.latimes.com/politics/la-pol-sac-skelton-income-t...
No individual, be it in a state or a city or neighborhood, is to blame for gentrification. By definition gentrification is a collective movement — one billionaire with a ski chalet on a private mountain in extremely rural Montana does not gentrify the entire region, nor does it really raise the property values of any home near it.
Gentrification is systemic, and approaching California’s population loss and gain through this framework explains pretty much everything that is wrong with California at a policy and macro level.
The reason for this “gentrification” at the state level would confirm everyone’s priors: the cost of living is simply too high for most people. That would be greatly alleviated by building more housing to increase the supply for the bottom 90% of people who struggle with their mortgage payments, rent, or scraping enough money for a down payment together and realizing they can buy a home outright twice the size in Texas for what is just the down payment in California.
Sometimes I think about buying a place back near where I grew up, but my parents don't live there anymore and it's really not that much cheaper than my current house for losing out on a lot of things, so...I don't know why I actually would. It's just more lawn-mowing.
Rural Texans who left home to seek their fortune are said to favor Dallas/Fort Worth more than here, and that feels fairly true, but again: no data. I know more people from out of state (or other countries) than I do from elsewhere in Texas.
