America needs the Florida model
Washington Examiner
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Nationally, housing starts are down, home prices are falling, and the commercial real estate market is on the brink of collapse. But not in Florida.
As documented by the Washington Examiner’s series on the Sunshine State, housing starts there are up. Home prices are soaring even now. And commercial rents, plagued by the rise of remote work, continue to increase.
CHAOS IS COMING TO THE SOUTHERN BORDER
“Business is booming,” Steve Camposano, the owner of a Naples company that weatherizes homes, told the Washington Examiner.
While the tiny historical downtown of Naples still has less than 20,000 residents, the surrounding Collier County has grown by 6% since the coronavirus pandemic began and by more than 17% since 2010. Collier County’s story is typical of the state that has seen its overall population rise almost 15% since 2010.
“It’s a continued flow, and a lot of it’s because of the way the economy is run in the state of Florida,” Naples real estate company owner Chris Spina said. And it isn’t just retirees, either. “The average age is getting younger,” Budge Huskey, CEO of Premier Sotheby’s International Realty, told the Washington Examiner. “We are seeing more young buyers with families.”
The families moving to Florida aren’t just coming for the weather. Yes, New York City lost almost 200,000 residents during COVID-19, and surely some of them were fleeing the damp and cold weather. But California lost more than 500,000, and no one has ever left California because of its weather. Los Angeles County alone, where the weather fluctuates between a comfortable 60 degrees and a sun-drenched 85, lost more than 290,000 people.
People are abandoning blue states for red states because the blue states are terribly run and consequently mired in intractable social decline. Blue states have become a nightmare for working families thanks to byzantine business regulations, high energy costs, environmental laws that make it impossible to build, schools more concerned about teaching students the United States is evil than teaching them to read, and, of course, high taxes.
Consider that, after paying some of the highest taxes in the country, Californians still have to suffer through the nation’s highest poverty rate, the nation’s highest number of homeless people, and some of the lowest reading and math scores in the country in its schools. Watching the sun set over the Pacific Ocean from Los Angeles is nice, but it is a lot cheaper to watch it set over the Gulf of Mexico from Naples — without any homeless people assaulting you.
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Some commentators claim that blue state refugees are only flocking to the blue cities in red states, confident that Democrats provide the schools, social services, and “diversity” that attract highly educated workers. But that’s just not true: The fastest-growing counties in red states like Florida are counties that vote Republican. Second, it is the red state governors who often have to step in and stop blue city governments from making the same mistakes that are creating blue state refugees across America. In Florida, for example, the governor has the power to overrule local reductions in law enforcement budgets and get rid of soft-on-crime prosecutors. Texas has similarly overruled local government bans on energy production.
While many states were locking down their economies, Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) kept his state’s economy open. And thousands of people voted for this policy with their feet by moving to Florida. The fact that they are still coming even after COVID-19 has ended shows just how well the Florida model works. It is a model the rest of the country needs desperately.