Do you know people that moved to Florida?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We moved to an Orlando suburb in summer 2020. It is much more family friendly. Our whole neighborhood is filled with young kids. When we lived in MoCo, our neighborhood had only one other elementary school boy- a 4th grader who threw rocks at passing cars and dropped the occasional F bomb. Our new neighborhood? Eight kids in my 1st grader's grade alone- one of whom still takes an afternoon nap Plus our kids got go to school in 2020!

+1 Also bought a home in an Orlando Suburb. I love the neighborhood feel. Every morning a bunch of kids walk and ride their bikes past the front of my house on their way to school. Occasionally a mom/dad in a golf cart follows up 5-10 minutes later with something a kid forgot. It's hilarious. In the afternoon the whole street is a giant playground with bikes and balls everywhere. Parents sit on their driveways chatting with each other. On the first day we moved in, three different neighbors stopped by to introduce themselves.

+2 Orlando suburb here too! The impact on my kid has been wonderful. We found a good school district (granted, that took a ton of research) and found our place here in Orlando. The neighborhood is fantastic, people are friendly. It is hard with the political climate the way it is, but I have many republican friends. They don't challenge me and I don't challenge them, and we just stay friends. I'll go head-to-head with acquaintances, but I try to protect my true friendships from politics. It's just "better" that way. I'm not changing their minds and they're not changing mine. But I'm here and I vote.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We moved to an Orlando suburb in summer 2020. It is much more family friendly. Our whole neighborhood is filled with young kids. When we lived in MoCo, our neighborhood had only one other elementary school boy- a 4th grader who threw rocks at passing cars and dropped the occasional F bomb. Our new neighborhood? Eight kids in my 1st grader's grade alone- one of whom still takes an afternoon nap Plus our kids got go to school in 2020!

+1 Also bought a home in an Orlando Suburb. I love the neighborhood feel. Every morning a bunch of kids walk and ride their bikes past the front of my house on their way to school. Occasionally a mom/dad in a golf cart follows up 5-10 minutes later with something a kid forgot. It's hilarious. In the afternoon the whole street is a giant playground with bikes and balls everywhere. Parents sit on their driveways chatting with each other. On the first day we moved in, three different neighbors stopped by to introduce themselves.

+2 Orlando suburb here too! The impact on my kid has been wonderful. We found a good school district (granted, that took a ton of research) and found our place here in Orlando. The neighborhood is fantastic, people are friendly. It is hard with the political climate the way it is, but I have many republican friends. They don't challenge me and I don't challenge them, and we just stay friends. I'll go head-to-head with acquaintances, but I try to protect my true friendships from politics. It's just "better" that way. I'm not changing their minds and they're not changing mine. But I'm here and I vote.

+3. We're not in Orlando but a few friends moved there in the last couple of years and love it, quality of life has improved exponentially. Both D and R. Granted, none were consumed by politics.

[Anonymous]

Ugh, you go “head-to-head,” really? Didn’t your parents tell you never to discuss money, religion, or politics with people you don’t know well? It’s so tacky.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s a healthy family environment where the American dream is still possible and government interference is muzzled.

um.. ok. Guess that depends on how you define 'healthy". Florida health systems aren't that great; childhood obesity is like 35%; infant mortality is fairly high; Desantis is meddling in education.

I guess they are better off than, say, LA, but not compared to placesl ike MD.

LOL! Who needs facts when you have conjecture?

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/sosmap/infant_mortality_rates/infant_mortality.htm --> FL Infant mortality is lower than Maryland's

https://stateofchildhoodobesity.org/children1017/ --> as is childhood obesity

good catch, but at least MD expanded medicaid so low income people can get healthcare. I guess FL doesn't care about poor people.

Check your logic, seems that FL people, including the poor ones, have better health.

This.

But the poor ones don't have access to healthcare, and usually, they are the ones who need it most.

Check your logic. If the poor people in FL, who you claim have no access to healthcare, have better health than those in MD, who do have access to healthcare - what doe that say about the health implication of living in MD?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I know a few of my friends that moved to Florida, and only one of them are Republicans, is this an outliers? Are more Republican's moving to Florida than Dems?

FL had a boom during the pandemic, take a guess why. Take a guess why tax free red states like FL and TX had an influx of overtaxed citizens of NY and CA whose states had the strictest Covid restrictions and mandates and most radical social/equity justice reforms. This isn't even about republicans migrating or those who used to be democrats switching their political leaning. It's probably more about opportunism, finally saving on state taxes and RE prices (when you come from most expensive places in the USA) started to make sense with remote work, and unfavorable changes to QOL brought on by their states local Covid policies and going a bit too far to the left in other aspects had pushed them to make that move for greener pastures.

A huge factor was that FL had open schools during most of the pandemic. Florida man is smarter than often assumed

+1. Have any of you tried to get a child therapist in the DMV in the past year? It’s almost impossible. None take insurance. Huge waiting lists. The blue cities have set their kids back several years.

Even if that were true, the red state kids were so far behind, the blue state kids are still ahead.

Do hush up. This, from Thomas Kane’s Harvard study, quoted on NPR recently:

“For example, in the quarter of states where students spent the most time learning remotely, including California, Illinois, Kentucky and Virginia, "high-poverty schools spent an additional nine weeks in remote instruction (more than two months) than low-poverty schools," the report says.

On the other hand, in the quarter of states where overall use of remote instruction was the lowest, including Texas, Florida and a host of rural states, the report says, high-poverty schools were still more likely to be remote "but the differences were small: 3 weeks remote in high poverty schools versus 1 week remote in low poverty schools."

The report says, "as long as schools were in-person throughout 2020-21, there was no widening of math achievement gaps between high-, middle-, and low-poverty schools."

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Ugh, you go “head-to-head,” really? Didn’t your parents tell you never to discuss money, religion, or politics with people you don’t know well? It’s so tacky.

I do when my daughter is gay and is experiencing the fall out from the bill where people tell me that there is absolutely no difference in how "they're" experiencing school on a day to day basis. Yes, I do. I will correct them all day long. Sorry if my choice of words offends you, but I actually don't care, I will go head-to-head with anyone who tells me that bill has no negative effect. That's my main issue because I care about my daughter. The rest I really don't care about it. They're entitled to their opinion. But they're not entitled to tell me what my daughter's experience is.

[Anonymous]

Okay, sure, understood. Not offended at all.
But how does this issue come up in conversations with people you barely know?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Okay, sure, understood. Not offended at all.
But how does this issue come up in conversations with people you barely know?

I didn't say barely know. I said acquaintances. I don't consider them the same thing. Friends are friends, acquaintances are people definitely in my friend "circle," but not my primary friend and I wouldn't independently hang out with them, yet I seem to find them in my orbit on a regular basis. This being Florida (cue the jokes, often merited despite the fact that I like our life here), it comes up more often than you'd think. People casually drop into conversation very regularly about how great our governor is, how much better the school districts are because of him, how much freer they feel sending their kids to "DeSantis's school" because they heard there are "litter boxes in the high school bathrooms for those identifying as a cat and now that won't be true anymore." You better believe I will go head-to-head with that level of ignorance and hate. I just don't stand for that, and when it comes up, I defend my daughter and any and all gay folks. But yeah, they bring it up.

But other than that, those "bad seeds" that I find myself interacting with on the regular, it's otherwise fine here. Besides the horrible bill, she loved her school but is now feeling very much under attack and refuses to go to Pride Club anymore. It's been horrible, right out of the starting gate this year. I feel this will pass but it's been a bumpy start.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Okay, sure, understood. Not offended at all.
But how does this issue come up in conversations with people you barely know?

I didn't say barely know. I said acquaintances. I don't consider them the same thing. Friends are friends, acquaintances are people definitely in my friend "circle," but not my primary friend and I wouldn't independently hang out with them, yet I seem to find them in my orbit on a regular basis. This being Florida (cue the jokes, often merited despite the fact that I like our life here), it comes up more often than you'd think. People casually drop into conversation very regularly about how great our governor is, how much better the school districts are because of him, how much freer they feel sending their kids to "DeSantis's school" because they heard there are "litter boxes in the high school bathrooms for those identifying as a cat and now that won't be true anymore." You better believe I will go head-to-head with that level of ignorance and hate. I just don't stand for that, and when it comes up, I defend my daughter and any and all gay folks. But yeah, they bring it up.

But other than that, those "bad seeds" that I find myself interacting with on the regular, it's otherwise fine here. Besides the horrible bill, she loved her school but is now feeling very much under attack and refuses to go to Pride Club anymore. It's been horrible, right out of the starting gate this year. I feel this will pass but it's been a bumpy start.

Adding on - we might talk about real estate, which in our area of Florida is basically going bananas. One of my actual friends is a real estate agent, and she might be talking about her business and how it's just nutty busy and someone will chime in "that's because everyone wants to move here because our schools were open. People love our governor." They just drop this crap all the time. I don't say anything in those instances. ONLY if the school stuff comes up. And the litter boxes. Came up twice in the last two weeks. Unbelievable.

[Anonymous]

I have a lot of friends who moved to FL; most are very happy. I know a couple of boomerangs- various reasons. We chose TN and couldn’t be happier.

[Anonymous]

My grandparents moved to Florida from NY decades ago and became extremely racist and narrow-minded. it was horrifying to see the transition, especially in my grandfather, who was a union man who worked with all races, creeds, and colors. They've passed on, but I stayed away from Florida for a good long while.
When my office went fully remote, my boss moved to Florida because he hated the covid restrictions and he could buy a bigger condo down there (Miami) than in DC. We tell him to fight climate change so his condo doesn't go underwater any time soon. I might visit him.
I know people (mostly gay) who have left.

[Anonymous]

I moved to FL in 2020. I love it here. I'm a voting Dem and I choose to use my vote to try to improve things politically. It amuses me that people avoid FL because of politics, did you also move out of the US in 2016 because the politics didn't align with yours?

Florida can be a great place to live, that's why so many people are moving here and it's also why the housing market here is still good and staying stable, it's in demand.

I find the people here to be friendly, welcoming and easy to get along with. The heat doesn't bother me, it's about as bad as a DC August but it lasts longer. All in all, I'm all in on Florida.

[Anonymous]

I'm enjoying the number of DCUM posters who are "authentically" posting from Orlando suburbs in quick succession.

I have older family friends who are Republicans who lived in rural-ish Indiana who moved to the panhandle because their daughter (who had been living in Wyoming) got a job in Alabama near Florida.

As retirees - the move was very good for them.

My friend's daughter graduated from University of Florida a couple of years ago and since that time has had a good job for a Sr. Dem in the Florida senate - but friend's daughter is very politically engaged & understandably wants to spread her Dem political wings elsewhere. She found Florida kinda boring - but obviously Gainesville & Tallahassee aren't the most representative living locations.

[Anonymous]

I know 8 couples of families that moved there in the past few years. EIGHT. I haven’t even counted up how many individual people that is since some have children. Two couples are gay. All love it and tell me constantly we should move there. They love the weather and how beautiful it is. They are really happy with the quality of education their children are getting compared to what they had there.

One family are Republicans. The rest are very liberal Democrats.

[Anonymous]

*what they had here.