It turns out that the (shorter) (rounder) (late middle-aged) (white) woman who sold me my yearly bus pass is a cost-of-living refugee from Austin, Texas.
She's a Texas native and had lived in Austin for just years, but she finally moved three years ago, when rents were getting to be too much. She said that the small 2BR she had was just okay, but they were actually going to raise the rent up to $1500, and that was too much, and her best friend lives in the college town we're in because of their spouse's job, and they invited her up to come check it out, and so she did, and she moved.
I told this by text to one of the profs who ended up serving on my dissertation committee, who lives in Austin, and she said that the rent problem is actually even worse now.
I also just came across an article that the city I had lived in has been experiencing net population loss, but the county I moved to has been experiencing net population growth.
I totally get that. If you're not set up with money and it's increasingly hard to make ends meet in a city, why wouldn't you move to someplace like I am now?
It's really astonishing to me what major economic changes have taken place across the past ten to twelve years or so; just great swathes of existence simply aren't comparable, from professional sectors to livable places.
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