I’m not going to criticise the authors choices because each situation is unique. But if you’re both working from home then I do wonder if your money is better spent moving out of the Bay Area and thus somewhere you can have a 3 or 4 bedroom house. Rather than trying to suffer through an ineffective home office.
This is what I did. I had two young children (still young but not as young as when this anecdote happened) and we ended up moving to accommodate for working from home. Before we moved I was finding my home office space (a literal garage) was freezing during the winter and boiling during the summer. And like the author, it was affecting my ability to work. So my options were go back to the office, or buy something more suitable for working from home.
It also came with the bonus of a bigger garden for our kids to play in.
I think for many the decision to live in a HCOL metro area has never really been about proximity to work.
I moved to Los Angeles without a job simply because that’s where my partner and I wanted to live. We were both made remote, but that doesn’t change anything.
Some of us certainly do love city life. My current job is remote, and my family could live anywhere; we chose to give up our spacious house in a charming small town, with a lawn and a garden and separate home offices for me and my wife, and move back to the city, where we now live in a two-bedroom townhouse. No more home office - I visit a coworking space instead - but we're in a lovely walkable neighborhood near the heart of it all. We are much happier here and wouldn't go back.
I’m not being passive aggressive in the slightest. If anything, I have an appreciation for how hard their situation is because I’ve been there myself.
Let me rephrase my original point: I was in a similar situation and realised that hacking my house wasn’t going to cut it. But I also understand that my personal circumstances might have been different from the authors in ways that aren’t publicised.
What is disappointing is that you felt you needed to create a burner account to post your criticism.
I was in the same situation as the author and the purpose of my comment was to share my experiences. It’s hard working and raising kids. So I fully appreciate their position.
And that’s the last I’m going to say on the topic.
This comment makes a lot of sense if you're a time traveler from several decades ago, but a lot has changed since the 1960s. There are plenty of very diverse suburbs in any sense of the word and suburbs now also run the gamut across all levels of income and affordability from the top to the bottom. If you wish to live in a suburb in America, you can, regardless of income level and regardless of what you look like and whether you want to live around people who look like you.
If there is a particular area you're thinking of where this isn't the case, it's probably an outlier -- you'll want to explore the US a bit more. Houston, St. Louis, Philadelphia, Las Vegas etc are all examples of "second tier" cities (not the new yorks, LAs, SFs of the world) that while less attractive to the wealthy who can live anywhere, have plenty of room for regular working families of all sorts.
Then there's the third rate smaller cities and large towns, where you'll also find both plenty diverse places and plenty not so diverse, and you'll find even more affordability -- but possibly not as good a job market.
I think living in a "second rate" US metro area is the sweet spot for raising a family on working incomes -- jobs are available, unlike lesser areas, but housing is affordable, unlike fancier areas.
Black Americans primarily live in the southeast.
Oftentimes when you see online disparagement of the south as poor and uneducated, they’re describing predominantly black communities.
Florida and Texas are bastions of Hispanic culture, for obvious reasons.
California is certainly diverse with respect to kale options in the grocery store, though, I suspect.
Orlando is 32% Latino, 22% black. Miami is 70% Hispanic, 12% black.
Florida is a large state, and denying its huuuge cultural centers is misrepresenting it. If you can’t speak Spanish in major Florida cities, you’re not in for a good time.
I am white born and bred (with British parents) but I did actually originally move here to live with my brother who's a part of the LGBTQ community and was excited to be in an area with supportive folks.
Part of the reason I stay here is because I love to be around non-English languages, particularly Spanish and Portuguese. My kids first words have always been a mix of Spanish and English (thanks to our awesome spanish-speaking nannny), which I think is awesome. I hope they can continue to hear many accents and languages in their childhood.
That seems incredibly hyperbolic. You might want to consider broadening your news sources or travelling a bit.
For starters, the US as a whole is less than 60% white. And California, while big, only accounts for ~20% of the non-white population of the US. In other words, there's about 120M people that exist outside of your "99%" bubble.
What? There’s definitely wide sprawl in culture across the US, but it’s bonkers to suggest that the Bay Area is the only place for people who aren’t “white-born-and-bred”.
This is what I did. I had two young children (still young but not as young as when this anecdote happened) and we ended up moving to accommodate for working from home. Before we moved I was finding my home office space (a literal garage) was freezing during the winter and boiling during the summer. And like the author, it was affecting my ability to work. So my options were go back to the office, or buy something more suitable for working from home.
It also came with the bonus of a bigger garden for our kids to play in.