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The most active thread yesterday was titled, "NYTimes: College educated workers are leaving DC due to high housing costs" and posted in the "Real Estate" forum. The original poster linked to an article in the New York Times which reported that several major cities have become too expensive even for those with college degrees and, as a result, those cities are seeing a net outflow of college-educated residents. Washington, DC was one of the cities discussed in the article. The article addresses a concern that is discussed almost constantly in the Real Estate forum — the high cost of housing. For years, posters in the forum have posted their predictions that real estate prices would drop any minute now. But, prices continued to rise. It is perfectly understandable that some would eventually give up on the housing market and look elsewhere. For some reason, a number of posters in the thread were under the impression that those leaving DC were choosing rural areas instead. As a result, there are a number of posts comparing and contrasting rural areas to DC. But, as several posters pointed out, the outflow was mostly to other cities. One of the points in the article was that those making the move were still able to access that same amenities they enjoyed in DC, but more affordably. While some posters were quick to attribute the migration out of DC to crime and the increasingly visible unhoused population, others pointed out that the time period that the Times analyzed was during the pandemic, a time when urban amenities were much less available and working from home was prevalent. Both of those developments decreased the attractiveness of living in DC. Many of the posts in the thread are from posters describing their own personal experiences, several of them having moved from DC to other cities. Those posters seem generally happy with their choices. Other posters, many still living in DC or the environs, use the thread to describe a number of things that they dislike about DC. When it comes to complaints about DC, I understand dissatisfaction with crime or the high cost of living. Those are things outside an individual's control. But one of the most common criticisms I see is about DC residents who the posters describe as "pretentious", "materialistic", or "social climbers". This only describes a very limited subset of DC residents and people with those traits can be found nearly everywhere. If those are the only type of people to whom you are exposed in DC, you need to broaden your horizons. But, regardless of the posters' feelings about the friendliness of those living in DC, the discussion always returned to the cost of housing. There is a sort of "nobody goes there anymore, its too crowded" phenomenon going on. I suppose that as prices continue to grow out of reach of more and more people, they will either have to stabilize or even drop. The constant predictions of exactly this notwithstanding, it doesn't seem to be happening yet.