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I do not get the haves and haves not comment. I find Cincinnati to be more homogeneous than other big cities.
It's the highest out of the big Ohio cities and Over the Rhine was at one time the highest income inequality area in most if not all of America. Although I haven't been in Cinci for a while now so that may have changed.
A) If you've left Ohio, where did you leave from, why, and was it a good decision?
I left from a suburb of Dayton, Oakwood where most of the kids were well-off and their parents cared about their college experience, so they all went to schools out-of-state or nice in-state schools like Oberlin or Miami as 1977 graduates.
I worked and paid all my bills at Wright State. WSU is a good school, but when I graduated with an accounting degree, I wanted to go somewhere else. Places like Denver were booming and I liked the mountains and better weather, so I walked the city - looking for a job. Then, the Rolling Stones did a concert at Red Rocks and there were no hotel rooms available for a week. I investigated Cheyenne, CO Springs, Pueblo and Albuquerque ( ABQ ). ( Phoenix too hot and CA too expensive. )
I found a job in ABQ and learned to love the New Mexican food and chile. The mountains are not as high as CO mountains, but they are snowcapped for much of the year. You can go up and ski down a mountain at the East side of town that often gets 100+ inches of powdery snow.
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why
I hated DAY summer humidity. ABQ is slightly hotter with humidity below 30% mostly and often just 15%. When the sun goes down, it's comfortable right away and even if the daytime temp was 102° the sun comes up in the morning just like a fall day in OH. Most summers I went without ever getting a mosquito bite. Sadly, no fireflies though.
Winter in OH is weeks of no sun, snow that hangs around for weeks and turns to ice that you can't drive on and turns grey. Typical winter days are 45° for a high and 15° for a low with gobs of sun. If it snows, it "burns off" ( sublimates ) usually in a day or maybe two. Winter in OH can swing from below zero to pretty warm with humid Gulf air. ABQ weather from day-to-day is pretty boring, it's so consistent.
Fall and spring are just as nice as they are in OH, but summer and winter are waaaay easier to take.
I also left because I didn't like paying income tax to a city that is in such decline. I think that tax is like hanging a sign up saying "We don't need your stinking factory or office or jobs. Go somewhere else ..." like Denver or Albuquerque or Phoenix.
Oakwood gets away with the income tax because you know where your money is going and keeps the place exclusive.
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was it a good decision?
Kinda-sorta. I abandoned accounting and got an engineering degree at UNM. I worked at Intel and later at equipment suppliers that allowed for travel to Japan and China where I studied both languages in my spare time. I don't know how I would have gotten that opportunity in DAY. I don't know if I would have gotten a BSEE in DAY. I might be working at WPAFB if I did. I had a life and a career.
In ABQ, someone stole my ID and made me a 3-time felon. The DA and police were totally fine with me having that on my record, so while I lost my career, I spent more than half my retirement savings trying to hang on till a $5,000 legal bill got my record cleared after 4 years. I don't know if that would or would not have happened in OH, so I have soured on a place I really liked.
The problem with possibly going back to OH is that while I know about DAY and its history, when I go back, nothing looks like home anymore - even where I used to live. I'd like to take a month and ride all the new bicycle paths that have been laid out since I left. WSU gives tours to alumni. I've sent them hundreds of $$$ in donations, so somehow I feel entitled.
I used to ride the bus a lot, so I'd like to take the trackless trolley route #5 and the #3 to WSU and try to hold back the tears when I see 3rd street - which used to be an urban canyon of economic activity - replaced by parking lots and rotting homes.
I moved to the Bakken - where they hired felons during the boom. I don't know where I will go next.
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Originally Posted by Jane0218
C) If you know of neighborhoods that are STRONG, not teetering on becoming neighborhoods of vacant homes, please let me know, ...
You can start by looking at aerial shots on the mapping software and then going to google street view.
There are areas of the cities in Ohio, and I'll use Dayton, since that's what I know, where you can see the snaggletooth-looking area and there are areas of homes built even more than 100 years ago that have nothing but well-kept homes and yards. South of 5th street, the historic Oregon district is pretty-much solid 'nice' and homes there date back to the early 1800s. Most of the other historic districts are pretty 'nice,' but don't have the buffers from the boarded-up homes just a few blocks away.
Watch out for the synthetic government homes where they build cheap new homes that nobody wants to buy and give them out to low-income residents who have no idea how to take care of property. Here is an example bordered by 1st-2nd-Jersey-McGee.
It's like building pre-fab slums. They are tearing down stately old homes ( in many cases ) with solid oak floors and such and putting up cheap, cookie-cutter junk in places where it would be better to just plant native trees and create green space. If you live in a 80-90-year-old well-kept home and a home was torn-down next to you and one of those junk homes was put in that space, your home just became worthless instead of more valuable with green space next door.
I left Dayton(Huber Heights) for Battle Ground, WA.
A few reasons: Climate: If I'm going to be hot I want a beach. If I'm going to be cold I want a mountain to ski on. Dayton was just miserably hot in summers, could not stand that humidity. I like the winters in the 40s-50s here with the option to go visit snow whenever you want on the mountains.
Taxes: Dayton area isn't the highest in any specific tax but it has high levels for all of them. State income tax, local income tax, sales tax, property tax. Levies every year attempting to raise it apparently using Detroit as a model for taxes. Compared to where I am now in WA with no state or local income tax and no sales tax across the border in Oregon I'm saving hundreds every month. There were even 2 ballot initiatives this year to reduce taxes. As well as getting better gov't services for that lesser amount.
Air Quality: Some of the worst in the nation pollution wise as well as many allergens that had me popping allergy pills daily.
Crime: Was starting to become an issue ever since the bus lines went in. Attempted break-in at our house despite having a sheriff's car parked across the street. Some serious violent crime in the neighborhood.
Career Opportunity: I'm in software development and while I was able to make a good living I had grown tired of the stagnant innovation in defense contract and insurance/financial firm work common to the area.
Dayton-Cincy commute: I had been driving from north dayton to north cincy for years as I found better career opportunities down there. Of course could have solved that by moving to Cincy area. But if we were moving didn't want to just move an hour down the road.
Air Force Brat gypsy syndrome: Grew up moving every 3-4 years with my father in the Air Force. That filled me with some wanderlust. I had been in Ohio since college in '96 Moved around to different apartments pretty regularly before buying a house and being "stuck" there for 10 years when the housing bubble went boom. Always wanted to explore the Pacific Northwest so jumped at the opportunity when my company acquired an office out here.
Family left: All of my family members have left Ohio over the years for warmer climates. Had no more ties to the area.
Couldn't be happier out here. Every weekend we're out exploring the coast or hiking around the mountains. It is spectacularly beautiful here in the northwest. Even in the overcast winter with a drizzle of rain 6 days a week.
A) If you've left Ohio, where did you leave from, why, and was it a good decision?
I left from the NW Ohio are near Toledo. Opted to join the military based on the employment opportunities available when I left (late 80s). Turned out to be a great decision. Was able to live all over the world, including places like Germany, and the UK. Decision was validated in the mid 1990s when I got stationed back in Ohio as an Army recruiter. I was in east-central Ohio, and the situation there was even worse than in NW Ohio.
I left Dayton(Huber Heights) for Battle Ground, WA. ...
It really is amazing how some jurisdiction are able to offer comparable (or better) services, with substantially lower combined tax-rates. The answer, I think, is have a larger number of upper-middle-class people, and therefore a broader tax-base. In poorer areas, a higher-income person is going to pay high taxes (because the rates are higher), and may experience a higher effective cost of living than in a more "glamorous" city. Similarly, if real-estate remains stagnant (or outright declining), the low price of houses is illusory, because it strips us of potential capital-gains from real-estate appreciation. I'm not suggesting that we should all move to Mountain View or Bel Air, but once again, for a more affluent person, the effective cost-of-living is lower in a more thriving (i.e., more expensive) market.
Coastal Washington State is at present my target retirement area, in part because of the mild climate, and in part because of the low taxes, and in part because of long-term trends in real estate.
As to the person who commented about snow in Detroit - I hate to argue over the weather, which presumably can be looked up and therefore brooks no argument... but when I was in college in Ann Arbor (basically a suburb of Detroit) we'd have the first snowfall in early November, and from late November though late March, snow-cover was more or less permanent. Dayton, on the other hand, has enough cycles of warming/cooling, that melted snow can rapidly turn to ice, creating insidious driving-conditions. This of course isn't unique to Dayton, or to Ohio; it happens in all semi-cold climates, from Germany to South Korea and so forth. But what's especially unpleasant about the American Midwest, is the winter inrush of Canadian/Arctic air in winter, that penetrates quite far south; and a complementary effect from the Caribbean, in summer. Why can't we get Arctic air in July, and Gulf air in January?
Yeah, as has been said the Portland metro area is the last affordable city on the west coast. And people are flocking to it in droves as it's currently the #1 destination for moves. If you want to move here better sooner than later. We were initially looking 3 years ago and a new construction 3 bed/2.5ba house could be had for $150k. Now that same house is $230k. I know that we all learned our lesson that real estate values can indeed drop and bubbles form. But the influx of people will keep this upward trend going for the foreseeable future.
We were looking at the coast in the Long Beach area(to preserve the sales tax free shopping in Astoria across the bridge). But sadly poor internet service killed that idea of a beach house. I can work remotely from anywhere...that has good internet. The coastline is dominated by a monopoly with slow speeds and low monthly data caps.
As to the person who commented about snow in Detroit - I hate to argue over the weather, which presumably can be looked up and therefore brooks no argument... but when I was in college in Ann Arbor (basically a suburb of Detroit) we'd have the first snowfall in early November, and from late November though late March, snow-cover was more or less permanent.
You should get up to date with current events. There is no snow on the ground in Detroit right now. It was 52 degrees in Detroit on Saturday. Some people were out riding their motorcycles.
I left Cleveland Ohio area after living there for 28 years because of a job opportunity in south MS.
I was told that MS was the most obese, poorest, least educated state in the US.
I then took a job in Columbus OH 4 years later to be close to family and friends that lived in CLE, while still being able to experince a new city. I left MS:
- In the best shape I have ever been
- More educated
- With a lump sum of savings because the cost of living there was so cheap
Stayed in Cbus for a year, and decided that I wanted to enjoy even less snow and be 10 degrees warmer on ave than CLE, but still wanted to live in Ohio so I moved to Mason, a suburb of Cincy.
When life tries to throw you a curve ball just step up to the plate and knock it out of the park instead of waiting for a designated hitter. You'll be glad you did.
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