American Migration Wave Continues To Pound Florida
The pandemic-led trend of people moving to Florida in 2020 has continued into 2021 as former residents of large, metropolitan areas seek more comfortable living in the Sunshine State.
"I'm one who told myself when I was younger, 'I am never moving to Florida. That's where people go to die,'" Paula Miller told Fox News Digital. "But I've changed my mind, and it really didn't have so much to do with the weather."
Miller used to live in Evanston, Illinois — just 12 miles north of Downtown Chicago.
"The taxes I was paying in Cook County … were getting really insane. My property tax went up $1,000 in one year. And I realized that that trend was going to continue," she explained, adding later that she is paying less for a three-bedroom condo in Florida than a two-bedroom condo in Evanston.
Miller is also happier with the politics in her new Florida town. In Evanston, a majority of the city council voted in June 2020 to strip funding from the Chicago suburb's police department. The city council also voted in favor of paying reparations to Black residents in March 2021, becoming the first US town to do so.
Former Chicago resident Lauren Callahan said something similar. Callahan was robbed in Chicago in October 2019 and became increasingly concerned that the city was not the right place to raise a family in the future.
"Our plan was to reassess in the summer of 2022 where we wanted to go," Callahan said, "but with COVID and city life in general … we decided to come to Florida in November."
The top driving forces behind Callahan's move were Chicago's COVID-19 protocols, which kept her and her fiancé inside a "small, one-bedroom" apartment for a long period of time as city businesses and restaurants shut down, as well as "out of control" crime.
"It was creeping up into the North Side, which is where we lived. … You know, it's a city, so everywhere has its issues, but it's typically one of the safer areas. Carjackings, robberies — just to the point where I didn't feel safe alone outside if it was dark out," she said. "It just isn't a good way to live."
The majority of respondents in a Dec. 9 survey from Move.org, a moving assistance company, of 1,000 U.S. residents who moved in 2021 said they went to Florida. Nearly half of overall respondents said they moved in 2021 for affordability reasons, while 43% said they moved to experience a better culture, and nearly 40% said they moved for political reasons.
Warren Cohn, the owner of a New York City-based digital advertising business, recently moved to Miami from Bergen County, New Jersey — just across the river from Manhattan. He moved to Florida to avoid the high taxes of New Jersey and New York and embrace outdoor living.
"It's an opportunity to live outside, as well as get some tax benefits," he said. "And also, it's a state that has …various freedoms. … I think that the governor has done a good job here allowing people to decide what's comfortable or not for themselves."
Florida's Office of Economic and Demographics Research (EDR) predicts that between April 1, 2021 and April 1, 2026, the state's population will grow by an average 309,867 net new residents per year, or 849 new residents per day, which is "analogous to adding a city about the size of Orlando every year," according to a Dec. 16 report.
