Midtown/East Sac is honestly the only place I would live if I were to go back. I have a major problem with the culture outside of the city itself:
1. People are very closed-minded. They're against education, labor, the government, LA, other countries, etc. Anti-vaxxers/homeschoolers are for real in the surrounding metro. I knew very few people who went to elite colleges and institutions from my high school. I just recently spoke with someone who threw a birthday party for their kid, no masks, no social distancing.
2. Homelessness. My barber's neighbor, a hair salon, recently went on Fox News to talk about property damage because the city won't do something.
3. Desperate poverty. You described the nice areas, Granite Bay and Folsom are hella rich. Go to Del Paso or where I grew up playing baseball on Watt Ave. Drugs, domestic abuse, shootings. Prostitution is basically an open secret.
4. Tech is nowhere to be found. I learned to code at the Hacker Lab, a local tech meetup non-profit, and got the hell out as soon as I could. There are literally no employers.
Yes, you can find a "cheap" place but for what you're getting the cost is way too high. I'm glad I left and I'll do my best to never go back.
1. I agree that the opinions are pretty wild in the surrounding metro. It seems that as you get to more of the affluent areas, the politics tend more to the right. I still think that the downtown/midtown areas are pretty liberal. At least from what I hear from friends living in that area.
2. I’m sorry that your barber’s neighbor had to go through that. The homelessness doesn’t really seem all that bad to me compared to SF though. My experiences are from my passing observations and I’ve never really been accosted by the homeless.
3. I didn’t grow up in either of those areas but I did grow up in a middle class area so my biases might be showing here but to me it seems like most larger metros have pockets of deep poverty. Yes, Granite Bay and Folsom are the upper class areas but I think there are more middle class areas than there are impoverished areas. I’m not super in tune with how local government is doing in the impoverished parts either.
4. In the context of working remotely I’m not sure how much this matters besides I guess being able to meet other people in tech. There’s also a decent amount of tech transplants moving to the area from what I’ve heard.
Most of your points here are generally applicable to... anywhere. The homeless problem does seem pretty bad, but again... it's not great in many cities. Anti-vaxxers and closed-minded people are to be found everywhere too.
The tech scene might be "nowhere to be found" compared to the bay, but there are plenty of tech jobs. Folsom is practically founded by Intel, HP has a campus in the area, Cisco has something here, there's an Apple presence in Elk Grove, and there are also plenty of smaller companies.
1. People are very closed-minded. They're against education, labor, the government, LA, other countries, etc. Anti-vaxxers/homeschoolers are for real in the surrounding metro. I knew very few people who went to elite colleges and institutions from my high school. I just recently spoke with someone who threw a birthday party for their kid, no masks, no social distancing.
2. Homelessness. My barber's neighbor, a hair salon, recently went on Fox News to talk about property damage because the city won't do something.
3. Desperate poverty. You described the nice areas, Granite Bay and Folsom are hella rich. Go to Del Paso or where I grew up playing baseball on Watt Ave. Drugs, domestic abuse, shootings. Prostitution is basically an open secret.
4. Tech is nowhere to be found. I learned to code at the Hacker Lab, a local tech meetup non-profit, and got the hell out as soon as I could. There are literally no employers.
Yes, you can find a "cheap" place but for what you're getting the cost is way too high. I'm glad I left and I'll do my best to never go back.