I moved my family from California to Austin, Texas, and regretted it

Absolutely, any Californian contemplating moving to Austin or Texas in general will experience at minimum most of the friction listed here.

Colorado doubles duty as Texas’ escape hatch / natural amusement park due to the ski slopes in Texas being privately owned.

It depends. It sounds like the author of this article valued things (public parks, wide access to nature, liberal politics, a warm, comfortable summer, a big airport with cheap travel options) that Austin doesn't provide. Denver would have been a better choice. In my opinion, this person doesn't sound like they did their research before buying. Home ownership aside, these things would've been uncovered had he and his family did a week-long stay in Austin.

To answer:

> Is it really this bad?

I don't think so.

On housing: The author chose to live near downtown in a luxury neighborhood, so his complaints about things being "expensive" are invalid, IMO. In Dallas (where we live), land in Colleyville (a luxury suburb) is ~$200/sqft. Since the average house there costs ~$800,000, they tend to be on the gigantic side. (Author chose to live in a 4,000 sq. ft. house.) The author does acknowledge that property taxes in Texas are high but lower than larger cities. However, if you rent, the property tax is factored into the already-low rent.

Speaking of rent: you can rent a two-bed apartment in a luxury building in downtown Austin for $2,400-$3,000/month. That's expensive, but not even close to being as expensive as something comparable in SF or NYC. The difference is that these prices will probably not increase as badly as they did in these cities since there's so much more land surrounding it. (We were planning a move to Austin last year for a job. Currently, we are paying $1,800/month for a 1,200 sq. ft. two-bed in a 2019-built luxury apartment 30 minutes away from Dallas and Fort Worth (by car) or ~1 hour away by public transit.)

On electricity: Electricity in Texas is much cheaper than the rest of the nation since they source their own power, though it's not as cheap as it was in the past. In NYC, we paid $0.17/kW for powering our apartment; we are currently paying about $0.09/kW. Looking at sedge.com for San Diego, the "Standard Plan" is $0.28/kW at Tier 1 (non-peak) hours. This complaint tends to surface from people coming from cooler climates because they don't factor how much more often their ACs will be used.

Another thing I like about electricity here is that even though power "comes" from two providers (TNMP and Oncor), it can be sold/redistributed by third parties as they see fit. There are a _lot_ of power vendors in Texas. We even have our own website where people can compare vendors (http://powertochoose.com). Energy Ogre is a service that handles picking and switching for you based on price fluctuations. It's pretty neat. I don't think any other state has this nice perk.

On airports: Austin-Bergstrom (AUS) is a relatively small airport that wasn't designed for the explosive growth the city has experienced within the last 10-15 years. While some international airlines service AUS, many flights connect at DFW or Houston/George Bush (IAH) since those hubs are close and those airlines can binpack their flight plans more optimally. AUS is expanding, so this is changing, but until an airline makes AUS a hub, flights are always going to be more expensive than flying direct out of DFW or IAH.

On nature: "nature" sucks in Texas unless you move out West, where there is _really_ nothing. Anyone coming from places that offer more on that front will be disappointed. I personally don't care about that; therefore, it doesn't bother me. That's probably why a bunch of Texans hit up Taos, Aspen, et. al. (that and it's a quick flight away).

I'd like to close this with a rant.

I understand why Austin is the new tech hotspot (all of the VC is in Austin thanks to Trilogy birthing some billionaires that were crazy and decided to stay), but I honestly think it's the wrong city to center this activity around. Dallas and Houston are much bigger metros with more space to offer, bigger airports to fly out of, significantly more developed road and public transportation networks, and more cool communities surrounding it (but more suburbs as well).

(A small rant about Austin's public transportation: Austin only has buses. They are unreliable and slow. Dallas has slow, unreliable buses as well, but they also have extensive light rail (DART, TEXRail, DCTA) and commuter rail (TRE) networks and a trolley in Downtown Dallas. Houston has a light rail (that's small but in active growth) and a bus system (that's pretty good, IMO).)

I think when people think of Austin, they think of 6th Street and food trucks on Congress (i.e. downtown Austin). Outside of this area, I don't understand why people think Austin is some liberal mecca. Most of the cities around Austin are super conservative, and (opinion) I think diversity in Austin is as bad as it is here in Dallas (i.e. mostly white).

My wife and I have been living in Dallas as renters for the last four years. We originally came from NYC. We love it here, though we are considering Houston for our next move.

I was taken aback, but not very surprisingly, when I was asked which church I visit in an Uber ride in Dallas several years ago. Religion (specifically Christian baptist or evangelical denominations) is massive here.

Briggs did a video on the times this was attempted [1] if you would like a summary.

[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=549hAQCHF7c

I think a lot of people will leave or be forced to leave if they can work remotely and if taxes go up even more, especially if they start taxing "wealth."