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Comment by Trisell | Hacker News Reader

Boise is a prime example of political refugees running to a place because they love the current policies. And then voting in people who enacted the types of policies that they ran away from. The district I live in went completely Democrat for the first time in its history.

It’s also making house unaffordable. My small 1100 sq ft house has appreciated almost 60% in 4 years. I couldn’t afford to move into something bigger even if I wanted to.

Oh and traffic that’s getting fun because our city planners are about 10 years behind on city planning.

But it’s still better then San Francisco or LA. And our crime rate is still super low...For now.

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Are you sure they run there because they love the current policies? Do you know that they didn’t move there in spite of the current policies? The housing policy that is causing a lot of distortion in California was enacted decades ago. The people migrating to Boise aren’t old folks are they? People younger than 50 didn’t have much to do with the famous property tax proposition in California.

Most of them are under 45 I would say. Most I talk to are coming here running from either California’s political policies(guns, taxes) or Portland because it got to weird and crime is to high. We have some of the lowest metro crime rates in the US. So that’s a big draw to.

But Boise is definitely moving blue. Which is what’s cause the rub between the people who have lived here and those moving in. Even though a lot of people see Idaho as a backwards messed up state(and trust me it is in a lot of ways). The people who have been here outside of the last 5 years when it has exploded are pretty resentful of the growth.

For all of these issues it’s still a wonderful place to live. But that might change in the next 10 years.

Is it moving blue or have the GOP just moved deeper (crazy) red?

Maybe “blue” really means they’re more left-libertarian and don’t feel the GOP is a sane choice?

> Boise is a prime example of political refugees running to a place because they love the current policies.

No, it's not; the people fleeing to Idaho for political reasons aren't going to Boise, the people going to Boise largely aren't doing it for political reasons.

> And then voting in people who enacted the types of policies that they ran away from.

That's pretty solid evidence that they aren't running away from the policies.

> The district I live in went completely Democrat for the first time in its history.

That's happened a lot of places recently, and has little to do with migration.

> It’s also making house unaffordable.

What's making housing unaffordable for people not participating in the boom is the inpouring of money chasing housing and the fact that the real housing market—everywhere, not just in Boise—has friction, creating supply limits in the short run that don't represent long-run capacity.

Maybe this is a form of NIMBYism? If the issue is primarily housing prices, then it seems the new homeowners start benefiting from the policies they previously suffered from as renters, so it's not hypocrisy, but rather a change of circumstance.

Also, it can be difficult to isolate the will of voters per-issue, given the limited number of representatives on the ballot.

> And then voting in people who enacted the types of policies that they ran away from

And thanks to the population moving to places like Austin, it looks like Texas is going the same way. A lot of people moved to Texas to get away from what they considered to be overly liberal/Democrat policies, only to find that the liberal/Democrats moving to cities like Austin are going to outvote the rest of the state.

It's basically a purple state now. Cruz did win, but barely.

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