Church, family, oil industry? Texas has long had more to offer: many young people are drawn to the conservative US state where they see more prospects for themselves than in California.
Downtown Houston in the state of Texas: A screen is set up between the steep high-rise buildings. The University of Houston basketball team plays against the Texas A&M University team this evening. As a Houston fan, 25-year-old student William wears a red jersey. He moved from California to Texas two years ago: because of the friendliness of the people, as he says, and also because of the cultural diversity, the lower cost of living and the future that you have here as a young person. Things are different in California, he adds.
Rent, electricity, gas, gasoline, groceries: According to the data collection platform Statista, the cost of living in Texas is around eight percent lower than the national average. That’s why the predominantly conservative state is particularly popular with young people. The average age here is 35.6 years – making the so-called Lone Star State the third youngest state in the USA.
Student Josh Martin particularly likes the cultural differences in food. There are so many different cuisines and cultures in Houston, he says: from typical Southern food to Mexican cuisine to the restaurants in Chinatown. Around 30 million people live in Texas – in an area that is twice as large as Germany.
Economic boom and Population growth
Texas is the fastest growing of all 50 US states. Last year alone, around 473,000 people moved to Texas – primarily from states such as California, Florida, Louisiana, New York and Colorado. In particular, the Houston, Dallas, Austin and San Antonio metropolitan areas are bursting at the seams.
The town of Texas City with its 60,000 residents is just a 30-minute highway drive from Houston. According to city marketing director Jennifer Laird, Texas City is currently experiencing a huge population boom. The city is growing twice as fast as the national average, she says. 8,000 new houses are currently being built in the community. New restaurants and shops opened, companies expanded – without a doubt a major growth phase.
Texas City not only benefits from its proximity to Houston, explains Jennifer Baird, but also offers plenty of job opportunities: for example, in its deep-water port on the Gulf of Mexico, in the petrochemical plants, oil refineries and chemical companies.
Real estate prices in metropolises are increasing
The entire state of Texas is also an economic powerhouse: taxes are low and government regulation is hardly noticeable. Many US companies have therefore moved their headquarters to Texas; including the electric car manufacturer Tesla, the software company Oracle and the IT group Hewlett Packard.
Another factor makes Texas attractive for many US citizens: the amount of space and therefore the cheaper real estate and land prices. The average cost of a house is significantly lower than in California or the northeastern United States. Sometimes they cost half or even less than half, says Jennifer Laird’s colleague, Jon Branson.
However, the run on real estate is not without consequences in the boom region of Texas: since the pandemic, prices have also risen in sought-after locations there, notes Rogelio Saenz, a sociology professor at the University of Austin. Gentrification occurs primarily in the largest cities in Texas: Austin, San Antonio, the Dallas-Fort Worth metropolitan area and Houston.
More and more conservative Hispanics are immigrating
More than half of the population in Texas are Hispanic. And more and more Latinos are moving into the state, even though the Texas government is considered anti-immigrant and strictly conservative.
The new citizens are coming not despite but because of the conservative political climate, claims 24-year-old Joel Castro. He is a member of the city council in Alvin, Texas. “People know that the right to own guns is never questioned here,” he cites as an example. “You can openly carry weapons here. That’s enshrined in the constitution.”
The demographic changes of recent years have clearly not made Texas more liberal. This is probably because many young Latinos are becoming more and more conservative. Castro, a Republican himself of Mexican descent, sums it up like this:
Texas is the best place to raise a family, build a business and go to church.
Claudia Sarre, ARD Washington, currently Houston, tagesschau, April 10, 2024 8:17 a.m