Today, Explained - Everybody’s moving to Florida

Episode Date: September 19, 2023

We’re not just talking snowbirds. The Sunshine State is the fastest growing in the nation despite, you know, climate change. Vox’s Marin Cogan and Umair Irfan explain why. This episode was produced by Haleema Shah, edited by Matt Collette, fact-checked by Serena Solin and Laura Bullard, engineered by Patrick Boyd, and hosted by Noel King. Transcript at vox.com/todayexplained Support Today, Explained by making a financial contribution to Vox! bit.ly/givepodcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Florida Man is responsible for a large percentage of abnormal incidents that occur in Florida. No one knows his true identity, date of birth, what he looks like. That's why headlines always say Florida Man. Florida Man won $2 million from scratch-off lottery ticket. Different Florida Man busted with cocaine cookies, while other Florida Man torched car belonging to girlfriend who also his cousin. No. Yes. No. Yes, it's true. Those are real headlines, and it may sound a mess, but there's a great migration underway to the land of, in God we trust, Florida motto. Vox reporters have been covering an exciting and

possibly significant demographic movement in the U.S. And coming up on Today Explained, we find out why does it seem like everyone is moving to Florida? BetMGM, authorized gaming partner of the NBA, has your back all season long. From tip-off to the final buzzer, you're always taken care of with a sportsbook born in Vegas. That's a feeling you can only get with BetMGM. And no matter your team, your favorite player, or your style, there's something every NBA fan will love about BetMGM. Download the app today and discover why BetMGM is your basketball home for the season.

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If you have any questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connex Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. Florida, Florida, Florida. It's Today Explained. I'm Noelle King. Maren Kogan, senior correspondent at Vox. Of all the things to write about in the state of Florida,

Ron DeSantis, Donald Trump, Disney World, you wrote a story that's just about Florida itself. Why is that? Because to me, Florida is fascinating. Florida is, you know, one of the biggest states in the country, obviously one of the most populous, but I find that so often it's on the leading edge of so many different trends, whether they're economic or political, cultural, certainly climatological. So it's really representative, but also it's very singular. So much of what makes Florida, Florida is that it's this fascinating mix of like beach bums, Disney fans, people who live in Miami and have this sort of very urban lifestyle,

people who love nature, residents of Margaritaville. And also my family is a part of this trend I was writing about of people moving to Florida. So over the last 10 years, my entire family moved to South Florida. My parents, my brother and his family. So my brother and sister-in-law and my nephew all lived down there. Why did your parents move? You know, I think they were going mostly for warmer weather. We're from a really snowy part of the country. You can't do too much outside for many months of the year. And it's like a big thing in my hometown, which is a small town in northwestern Pennsylvania.

Everyone goes down there. And so there are certain communities near where my family lives. And in fact, my family lives in one of these communities in Florida where there are like a bunch of people from my hometown who are in the neighborhood. No kidding. Yeah, it's a huge movement. You wrote this piece for Vox, not just because your own family moved to Florida, but also because many other people are doing the same. How significant is the migration into the state? What kinds of numbers are we talking about? Yeah, so it is really significant.

So just to give you some context, from 2021 to 2022, according to the Census Bureau, the state's population grew by 1.9 percent, making it the fastest growing state in the nation. Now, Florida's population has been growing faster than the national average basically since the advent of air conditioning. If you ask people why they moved to Florida, there's one answer you'll hear a lot. Because I hate being cold. Everybody loves sunshine and palm trees. We have the sunny weather. You know, we call ourselves the sunshine state. My parents are from the Caribbean, so they use the warm weather.

So that part is not necessarily new, but what is really impressive about the change is that Florida is already the third most populous state in the country. So for it to also be the fastest growing state requires a huge surge of people moving there. Nationwide, the median home price declined. But here in Florida, competition is so steep, prices are up. According to the population estimates, about 440,000 people moved just between July 2021 and 2022. That's like adding another Miami in 12 months. Where are people coming from and why are they going to Florida? They're coming from all over.

The data shows that in recent years, most people came to Florida from New York, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and California. Time to kind of get out of California with the wildfires and the high cost of living and get a lot more for your dollar around here. For younger people in particular, in 2022, Florida was, for the first time, had more jobs in the state than New York. My name is Andrew Ford. I'm 35 years old, and I work for the Atlanta Braves Spring Training Facility in Northport, Florida. The main reason that I left Nashville to come to Florida was I needed basically a full-time job at that point. So a lot of the younger people are moving for jobs or because their spouse got a job.

I was cautiously optimistic about moving to Florida. I don't know that I was expecting it to be overwhelmingly amazing, but I thought maybe I'll try something different. And what I found for older people is that the pandemic sort of accelerated an existing trend of people moving to Florida. It is still a existing trend of people moving to Florida. It is still a lot of older people moving, but some of them are just moving up their timelines. They always thought, oh, I'll move here after I retire. And then the pandemic happened and they thought, you know, why wait? I might as well go now.

A lot of these people experienced in the state they were living in a really hot housing market during the pandemic, and they thought, I'm just going to go for it. And they really took that opportunity to, you know, start their Florida lifestyle early. Tell me about the economic boom. What's at the center of it? How's it working? I think the state's leadership has been very aggressive about courting business. Florida's here. We've got capacity, and we also have incentive packages to make it worth your while to be able to bring your business through our ports. You hear Ron DeSantis and Republican leaders in the state talk about this a lot.

They're really trying to court businesses away from places like California and New York, and they're really pitching it as a more business-friendly state, a state where the tax burden is lower. And so it's really happening on multiple fronts. And then there's also a big health care boom. There's tons of need in Florida for healthcare professionals, particularly nurse practitioners. So you see a lot of different things happening. And then on top of that, the state is just growing and growing. So many of the fastest growing metropolitan areas are in Florida. And that just draws more people of all kind. And certainly the real estate market is booming as well. In progressive circles, you hear every time Ron DeSantis slaps Mickey Mouse or, you know, tries to change a school textbook, you hear people say everyone's going to move out of Florida.

The governor can't keep behaving this way. But, of course, Ron DeSantis' politics do appeal to some people. Do we know the political leanings of the people who are moving into Florida? We don't have a perfect measure of this, but we have a pretty good sense. There is good reason to believe that the people moving there do lean heavily Republican. I got some data from L2, which is they keep a really good voter registration database. And they found that of 535,000 people who moved there between basically March 2020 and May 2023, about 45% of them registered as Republican. Only 22.5% registered as Democratic. And almost 30%, the remainder, registered as nonpartisan, meaning they chose neither party.

So that is a huge advantage for Republicans. Now, one thing to know about this number is this is just people who were registered in the state they came from, moved to Florida and registered again. So this is not everyone. But it does suggest that the newcomers have a strong contingent of people who are highly motivated to vote Republican. Now, for the first time in state history, according to the latest numbers sent by election supervisors to the State division of elections, there are more registered Republican voters in Florida than Democrats. The state really kind of established itself, much like Texas, as a almost petri dish for hard right policymaking. And I was just sort of wondering, what is going on with everyone

down there? How do they feel about it? Do they not care? Are they just at the beach? Do they feel like, you know, it's happening in a different realm from the Florida they know? People had sort of unexpected positions

on different things. So I talked to a young woman in her 20s who was into food blogging. I'm Rebecca Pytel. I'm 27, recently turned 27 in June. I was born and raised in New Jersey my entire life. and I moved to Florida, and it's been two years, and now I'm in Boynton Beach currently. She's the one person I talked to who didn't have any real connection to the state. She just kind of moved their sight unseen. She was just ready for a change. She was like, well, I love it because I'm a Trump Republican and I feel better with conservatives in charge of the state. I am a Trump girl. I worked on his campaign in 2016. I definitely didn't want to stay in New Jersey with, you know, just the crazy

policies and taxes and just all the politics there. The conservative politics of Florida was a deciding factor for me. And that's why I was looking at Texas and Florida. Obviously, I was really looking for that beach culture, though. And that's, you know, Florida. After COVID, she said, you know, I don't want to be in a state that's not run by Republicans. I wouldn't move to California for this reason. I think the best example of this is that I was swimming in the there's a little pool in my parents' retirement community. And I was swimming there one day after work reporting the story. And I heard two older people, a man and a woman talking beside the pool. And, you know, both very classic conservatives clearly watched Fox News. We're talking about different things liberals were

doing. And the woman brought up abortion. And the man said, now, see, that's one area where I disagree. A woman has to have the right to make that decision on her own with her doctor. I talked to a few gay men who were like, listen, I'm not actually that liberal, but DeSantis' war on LGBTQ people is pushing me in that direction. But that is Florida in a nutshell. You cannot predetermine someone's politics or assume anything about them because people are not necessarily committed to an ideology down there. Growth is often good, but we have covered on the show this year insurance companies

refusing to insure new homes in places like California and Florida, places that are getting hit hard by climate change, places where some would argue people shouldn't be moving. Can Florida sustain this level of growth, especially as year after year it gets hit with bigger and bigger hurricanes, bigger and bigger storms, more and more capital B, capital W bad weather? Last November when Ian hit, I mean, that was scary. Like, I remember that night, I didn't put my hurricane shutters up remember that night, I didn't put my hurricane shutters up either. Like I didn't really know what to do. And I was living in my house at this point. So I'm concerned about like the insurance that is going up a lot. You know, the insurance companies

are actually like leaving Florida because they're insolvent now. I know this year, my property taxes went up a lot and everyone's did. Everyone is like, what? This is crazy. We've never seen this before. I think anyone who is paying attention to what is happening with the weather and with the environment are looking at some of these developments, especially in coastal areas, and are going, you know, is this really what we want to be doing as the sea levels are rising

and hurricane season appears to be getting worse? You know, for the person, Andrew, who is the lead of my story, he had lived there for just one year and evacuated twice already. I don't like hurricanes, being at the mercy of Mother Nature. And I left and went up

to stay at my mom's house in Georgia. I had basically two days where I was like, well, if all my stuff's gone, I guess that happened. I think it is going to have to be something that everyone takes much more seriously. I will say when I spoke to the people who moved down there, all of them were aware of climate change, of course, and some of them were very concerned about it. But it didn't stop any of them from coming. That was Vox's Maren Kogan. Coming up, if climate change isn't going to stop people from coming, Florida's going to have to adapt. And in fact, it is. Support for Today Explained comes from Aura. Aura believes that sharing pictures is a great way to keep up with family,

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She's got 10 grandkids. And so we wanted to surprise her with the AuraFrame. And because she's a little bit older, it was just easier for us to source all the images together and have them uploaded to the frame itself. And because we're all connected over text message, it was just so easy to send a link to everybody. You can save on the perfect gift by visiting AuraFrames.com to get $35 off Aura's best-selling Carvermat frames with promo code EXPLAINED at checkout. That's A-U-R-A-Frames.com, promo code EXPLAINED. This deal is exclusive to listeners and available just in time for the holidays. Terms and conditions do apply. Miami is nice, so I'll say it twice. Miami is nice. Miami is nice. Miami is... Wait a minute. Wait a minute. You put in an extra...

Today Explained, I'm Noelle King. While Florida has been growing, some much discussed data from the Census Bureau last month showed that Miami-Dade County, where the city of Miami is located, is actually losing population. 80,000 residents have left in the last two years. Vox's Umair Irfan was recently there to report on how that city is preparing for the effects of climate change. And Umair says it does not look like Miami-Dade is shrinking. Well, it looks like a lot more development in some of the wealthier and more financially prosperous areas. Miami is soaring to new heights.

But I think it's a good thing since a lot of people are coming to Florida and Miami especially. More than a dozen skyscrapers will build out this skyline in the next couple years. But also more residences. Miami is also trying to make itself into a financial hub in addition to a tourist destination. This is Miami, the city that wants to lure tech from Silicon Valley and finance from New York, all by embracing crypto. It's creating hundreds, if not thousands, of high-paying jobs.

They're trying to lure in big banks and other big businesses. And we're seeing that kind of reflected in the level of construction there. You see the beach, you see the sun and you see the water but you also see these tower cranes peeking out between the skyline and there's definitely construction going on almost in any direction you look from downtown you can see that there's been some development, there's something new that just finished or something new that's going up. Three, two, one. Before construction of the new tallest commercial building in Florida can officially get underway, demolition crews first need to do their work.

So there's definitely a lot of activity here, and it seems like it's a city that's poised for a lot more growth. We're in hurricane season now. Miami is a place that is getting hit very hard by climate change and by what comes of climate change. When you talk to people in Miami, is there a sense that this city is going to keep growing? Or that at a certain point, people will have to bow to some of the realities of what's happening with climate? Everyone that I've talked to is pretty clear-eyed about the risks of climate change, not just extreme weather and disasters, but some of the more slower moving things, particularly sea level rise. Miami is expected to see 10 to 17 inches of higher water levels by the middle of the century or thereabouts. And that means a few inches of sea level rise can lead to more clear day flooding. We're already

seeing that now during king tides. But also when there are storms that do happen, a few inches add up to a few feet of storm surge and flooding when those disasters do occur. That means that the area that is going to be inundated with water is going to grow in terms of the total area, and then the depth to which they're going to be inundated is also going to increase as well. So there's sort of a moving target that they have to prepare for. You were in a position to see some of how the city builds differently in response to climate change. What are some of the specifics here? What does this look like? Miami has some of the most sophisticated measures to deal with extreme weather. One thing you notice walking around Miami, particularly in the business district or in downtown, is that

you rarely enter a building right at street level. And that's because with the newer buildings, they're elevated above the ground level. Their lobbies are five, six, even 10 feet above the ground. And you have to either take a ramp to go up to the main door, or you have to walk up a flight of stairs. And that's because these buildings were built and designed after these new floodplains were revised. And they're designed to basically have that ground floor above where they expect the water levels to come up. At the ground level, you'll often see actually things like entrances to parking garages or vents for things like HVAC systems that are actually on the ground level rather than actually having these big glass front lobbies. So you see these kinds of adaptation techniques kind of present just from the ground level, even though the skyline is the main thing that catches your eye.

It's these subtle changes where you start seeing the adaptation starting to take place. You know, I was in New Orleans about a decade after Hurricane Katrina reporting on the recovery there. And it was so interesting that lots of these houses, little-ish to medium-sized houses, had just kind of been put up on blocks, raised six feet off the ground. And that will absolutely work as long as the water doesn't get above six feet. When we are talking about Miami, is there a sense that this will work until there's a great flood? Or is this being built to work no matter what? These buildings, you know, almost every structure you see is going to last for decades. Now when it comes to elevation, you know, I think

50 years ahead is typically where you set the mark, basically looking at where you expect sea levels to be, and then trying to make sure that one that you either elevate above that level above that threshold that you would expect, or come up with a scenario to route that water around or to recover from that very quickly. Should that water levels actually get that high. That's still an ongoing challenge, basically determining what is the future that you're building for. So they're planning for 50 years into the future. Absolutely fascinating. But whoever is putting these buildings up is paying for it now. Where's the money coming from? Well, there's a lot of money floating into Miami. It is still a

very wealthy city. And because it's such a powerful draw, there's a lot of investors who are willing to put money into it. What I feel that Miami has to offer is real simple. It becomes a platform and a springboard for all the companies down in Latin America that Silicon Valley, Silicon Alley or Silicon Paradise may not pay attention to right now. And certainly, yes, all these adaptations are raising costs, and that's reflected in the development you're seeing. You know, last year, Miami broke ground on what's going to be the tallest building in the state of Florida. This is a Waldorf Astoria Hotel and residences. At 1,049 feet tall and precisely 100 stories, welcome to the brand new Waldorf Astoria Miami. I think it speaks volumes that this is going to be a very high-end luxury development because it's this kind of wealth that's necessary to build a defensible structure, to build something that can actually withstand a hurricane and stay standing decades into the future.

How much does all of this cost? Well, there's a lot of adaptation that has to occur now. There have been a number of different estimates, but one of them was that, you know, Miami proper, in order to cope with sea level rise, it would cost the city about $4 billion by 2016. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers also looked at a proposal for building gates and seawalls around Miami and Miami-Dade County, and that was a project that was estimated to also cost $4 billion, but a lot of local residents objected to that proposal. And so right now they're going back to the drawing board and trying to come up with a solution that's more acceptable to local residents,

but it's not going to be cheap to keep the water out as it keeps rising. One of the challenges for any city with respect to climate change is that you have to worry not just about the people who have money to hurricane-proof a new building or to lift a house up on its structure.

You have to worry about communities that are low-income that can't afford this. Is Miami-Dade accounting for its poor residents in all of this development? To an extent, but a lot of advocates and campaigners would say not enough. You know, you can build a building to be a fortress that can withstand a hurricane, but what happens when the street is flooded days after the storm? It's not like you can order DoorDash. You still need people to be working at grocery stores, at hospitals, at pharmacies. And where are those people going to live if they can't afford to live in these luxury high-rises? You can't think about buildings just individually. You have to think about how they fit into this urban ecosystem, how they work

not just as standalone structures, but how they work with the street, how they work with local housing, how they work with public transportation. we're going to continue to exacerbate them and make these gaps wider, or if we can close these gaps and make sure that many of the benefits of building a more resilient city redound to everybody rather than just the wealthiest people. Is anybody making the case that Miami should not be building? That given the challenges approaching with climate change, the city should simply stay the same size or maybe even shrink. There are some people who say that. I mean, very few of them are actually in Miami itself. And no one takes them seriously. Right. I mean, from the outside, it's easy to look at a city like Miami and say, like, why are these people continuing to build skyscrapers near the beach? And a lot of people in Miami would say, well, first of all, like, this is a city that exists for a reason. It's

not just that it's a popular tourist destination. It's an important hub for shipping, for cruises, for transportation. The Miami International Airport is a gateway to the Caribbean and Latin America. And people in Miami could easily look at other parts of the country and say, like, you know, why do people live in California when the fire risk is so high? Why do people live on the Gulf Coast in places like New Orleans when they're below sea level? At the same time, they say that, you know, it is possible that with proper planning, with proper engineering, you can survive in a situation like this and even thrive. That was Vox's Umair Irfan. Today's episode was produced by Halima Shah and edited by Matthew Collette with help from Amin El-Sadi. Our engineers, Patrick Boyd, and our fact-checkers are Laura Bullard and Serena Solon. I'm Noelle King. It's Today Explained.

Ha-ha. Smith and 30ard and Serena Solon. I'm Noelle King. It's Today Explained.