Moving to Dallas/Ft. Worth
Parent Q&A
My daughter just moved to Dallas/McKinney this year. She likes it except for the heat and the cold. But she did say there is a very strong anti-Calfornia invasion tone with SOME people. If they know she is from California they aren't nice to her at all. They see "us" as driving up home/rent prices, bringing liberal values, changing the political climate. She has found a lot of non-mask wearing/covid is a farce Trump supporters. One the plus side, prices for things are lower, but they are increasing.
Hope this helps in making up your mind.
Archived Q&A and Reviews
May 2013
My husband and I are looking at out of state locations for a move in the next 1 - 2 years. After a lot of research by my husband in terms of which states will be most hospitable to his growing business, we have come to the conclusion that we may need to move to Texas. We have had to look at areas where it is doable for me to switch over my professional license, he can get his business moving in the right direction and we can afford to live (buy a home, send our kids to good schools, etc.). We are now actively looking at the Dallas, Tx area since it looks like the main office for my husband's company will be located there.
Even though my mother's side of the family is from the south, Texas was not exactly what I had in mind. We know very little about what it will be like to raise out 2 young kids there (5 and 18 months) and only know the bad reputation Texas has among California liberals.
Anyone have recent experience living in Texas, especially helpful to have family friendly and positive info about the Dallas area, ie. neighborhoods, schools and other resources? Thanks a million! Anonymous
We lived in Dallas area for a couple of years. My sister went to Plano Isd. Houses cost there a bit more than in other parts of Dallas, but nothing compared to prices in the Bay Area. 4000 sq ft house mortgage payment there is lower than rent payment for 2 bd town home in the east bay. People are great as well. They love their state, just like we love ours. Actually they are more tolerant of Californians and New Yorkers than the other way around. Bugs and the heat are problem, especially the fire ants: you cannot enjoy the grass as you can in California. Best wishes Victoria
Hi-I was born in Dallas and grew up in Texas. I did not raise children there but can say that Texans are really nice people, generous, super friendly. The weather is pretty tough with really hot and humid conditions but on the plus side you can wear shorts at night and sit out on the patio until midnight. I have several friends who still live there and are raising their families there. One of my best childhood friends lives outside of Dallas
June 2012
I am about to accept a 2-year assignment with my company in Dallas. My husband is a stay-at-home dad to our 4-month old daughter. We're San Francisco natives who have never lived outside the bay area. We are looking at Dallas proper, but don't know anything about the neighborhoods other than Uptown is nice. Which Dallas neighborhoods should two San Franciscans who have lived in Berkeley and Oakland consider? Blue in a Sea of Red
I worked in Dallas for a few years and enjoyed my home in University Park. This area may feel too suburban compared to San Francisco, but it was a great location with great schools. However, I lived there well over 20 years ago, so my info is old. Good luck! pam
Feb 2006
My family and I (husband and 2 boys - 3yrs and 10 months) will be moving soon. We must choose either Columbia, South Carolina or Dallas, Texas. Factors such as the best salary etc will motivate our decision, but we also want to choose the best home for our children who are parents of Califorians. Where will we fit in? What about culture and diversity? We are looking for any and all advice on making the best choice related to schools, economy. Note we are not religious and are nervous about this factor. Please help - decision is pending! Thank you! Not a southern bell!
I am Dallas native (born and raised in Plano). I am child of immigrants and not WASPy. I can say that it was not easy for me to grow up there. Now that I am older, I understand why.
3. No diversity
Given these reasons, I do think life is easy there and affordable. There is lots of cultural events. Schools are good in certain towns, like Plano. Also, I do not think being non- religious should be an issue. Also, my family is a product of the Dallas area. My youngest brother who just graduated is very active member of the democratic party. karen
Don't know anything about South Carolina, but I grew up in Dallas and would find it hard to live there now.
The pros: affordable-big houses, good restaurants/clubs, good airfares to vacation spots, big city opera/symphony/children's science museum, etc.
The cons: HOT (when it's not cold), humid, bible belt, middle of nowhere - but also middle of the country so you can get to either coast, questionable schools, mall country, Conservative with a capital ''C''.
Having said that, I'm convinced that if you try hard you can find like-minded people wherever you live, but I would find the political leanings of the majority there difficult. Have heard good things about Fort Worth -- sure it's still conservative, but had some great city planning and apparently a better sense of community. Don't know if that's a possibility for you or a doable commute. Good luck with your decision. anon - I still have family there
March 2004
Well, I have read many of these ''we may move'' questions but never thought I'd write one (I checked the archives). My husband has a job opportunity in the Fort Worth area of Texas. We are considering it for all the reasons many people leave the bay area - more space, lower cost of living, etc. We don't have kids yet but have been trying for over a year. Anyone have any thoughts on the area? I am trying (and having a hard time) to stay open minded and imagine the decision if we had children. We don't have extended family members close by now so that is not really an issue. Thanks!
I grew up outside of Ft. Worth and it can be a wonderful place. That said, it depends on what you are used to. Unlike the Bay Area, it's HOT, HOT, HOT in summer. And, COLD, COLD, COLD in winter. It's pretty conservative outside of the city - as is much of TX - but you'd find more ''free thinkers'' in the city limits. I'd suggest not looking in the suburbs if you are used to the Bay Area. They are very homogenous (both in architecture and culturally), and they lack diversity of any kind. The neighborhoods around TCU are funky and fun. I'd say, go and check it out. My sister had her children in TX and they are good kids, with pretty open minds (not easy to find in suburban Ft. Worth) but, get ready, they do have Texas accents! I call them their naturally acquired defense mechanisms - Texans tend to like their own and distrust outsiders. Best of luck.
I will be moving to the Dallas area in June. Im not from there, but my best friend is. We went to law school together, and then she moved back there. California has gotten much too expensive, and the school situation is ghastly where I live, so I decided to relocate. I visited my friend who lives in Arlington, (30 or so minutes north of Dallas) and I was very impressed. Dallas wasn't at all what I thought it would be like. The area is very diverse, although politically conservative. The weather in November was chilly but not unreasonable, there were GREAT restaurants and always always lots to do. I wanted to move somewhere where I could be close to family or friends. My choices were Chicago, So. Carolina or Dallas. Despite my moderate liberal personal politics, and the fact that my son is mixed race (which I recognize might be a problem for him later in Texas), Im pleased with my choice. The housing prices are considerably lower and the Arlington public schools are very good. If you want to chat more privately, please feel free to email me. Lori
One thread that runs through the recommendations and advice wanted postings is a sense of frustration with living in the Bay Area. As a person who spends summers in the Bay Area (while fantasizing about living there year round), I find these postings riveting for the contrast they provide with Dallas.
First, housing. Housing is affordable in Dallas. If you want to live in an older home there are lovely bungalows and larger Spanish-style houses in Dallas' oldest neighborhood, Oak Cliff, which is where liberal, upper- income straight and gay people live in greater density than elsewhere in the area. If you would prefer a large home with bells and whistles and in a good public school district with a diverse population, one of the suburbs, like Richardson, Plano, Colleyville will suit your needs. Three- bedroom, two-bathroom houses in Richardson start at $130,000 and are within 15-minutes of downtown Dallas. If you would prefer to live in the city, you can choose from over-priced lofts, brand-new condominiums, or from houses starting at $450,000 in the Park Cities, a beautiful, though utterly undiverse and thoroughly conservative, community in the middle of Dallas with an outstanding public school system, park system, public library, and set of city services. ($40 a summer pays for membership in the two beautiful pools which are complete with all the services of a pool club). There are other neighborhoods in the area that are affordable and appealing, including Lakewood and the M Streets.
Second, shopping. I have an array of wonderful, well-stocked, affordable grocery stores to choose from. I never fight for parking, I never wait in line, and we eat incredibly well. Anything you can get in the Bay Area is available here, with the exception of incredibly fresh, as opposed to only fresh, fish. Within two miles of my house there are three large chain grocery stores, two large alternative/organic grocery stores (Central Market and Whole Foods), two large Mexican grocery stores, a German butcher, several bakeries, three gelato shops, etc. etc. You get my point? Durable goods are also available in abundance here: this speaks to one of Dallas's drawbacks, the rampant materialism. But when I need a pair of pants, I have plenty of choices, including funky ones, and it is easy to get there and get it done.
Third, doing stuff. There are numerous museums in the area, many more in Ft. Worth than in Dallas, two zoos, two aboretums, excellent mainstream and alternative theaters (including a spin-off of NYC's Angelica), excellent restuarants of every sort, all kinds of bars (including ones with pools in the patio where you can swim if the urge strikes), great concerts small and large, every type of fitness opprotunity imaginable (including fabulous yoga centers), and amazing spectator sports. We have found that most activities involve a commercial transaction, which is another drawback to the area. The ''great outdoors'' is not in much evidence: it is very, very hot in the summer, the pollution is such that even if you like and can handle hot weather it is often dangerous for children and older people to be outside, and there is not really anywhere to go, other than manmade lakes with speedboats and such. The weather during the school year, however, is lovely for the most part. We get about three weeks of genuinely cold weather (twenties and thirties) and the rest is mild in comparison with the North and East.
Fourth, services. Domestic help, household repair, and all the other services that can make life good or hard are available here in abundance and much more cheaply than in the Bay Area. For instance, the average wage for nannies who also do housekeeping is $10 an hour. And the people who work for you too can fashion decent lives for themselves without hours of miserable commuting and without living in slums.
Fifth, diversity. The Dallas/Ft. Worth area is one of the top five cities for receiving new immigrants since 1990. South Asians, Africans, Chinese, Vietnamese and of course Mexicans/Central Americans are here in abundance, as are many others. Why? Jobs and homes. Would I give all this up to live in the Bay Area? Probably, but I am a sucker for natural beauty, the great outdoors, and liberal politics. I'm not sure how long these three things would make up for a house that is too small, constant struggles in traffic and with parking, inability to afford middle/upper class ammenities like nannies, housecleaners, pool memberships, special activities for my child, excelent education. I do appreciate the quality of life that I have in Dallas and I am positive that I can bring my child up with MY values and without a Texas accent. -- Easy living in Dallas
I grew up in the Dallas Fort Worth area (North Dallas, Richardson to be exact) and could not imagine ever living there again. In fact I can't imagine anyone who has loved life in the East Bay could find anything redeeming about Texas, except that the huge brand new houses are cheap, good salsa and margaritas are easy to find and you can sit outside in your shorts at 10:00 at night for months and months. I do miss that aspect of the heat. I find Dallas to be very ''plastic.'' When I go to the store in jeans and a t-shirt and without makeup I get dirty looks (makeup is a HUGE aprt of life!) (and I wish I was kidding or exaggerating about the dirty looks) So much seems to be about the way you look, the way you dress, the car you drive. And in the south there is a forced kindness that can be initially thrilling (''the people here are so friendly!'') but very, very hard to get past (''they are all so friendly but I don't have one single friend!'') I would imagine as an adult, especially as a child-less adult, it would be extremely difficult to meet people. I've lived all over the US since I left Dallas, and I''m always struck by how much of a difference where you live makes in what you do for fun -- in Dallas, we went to the mall. It was too hot to do anything outdoors, and I only knew one family that ever camped. There are very few outdoor spaces -- people mostly go from an airconditioned house to an airconditioned car to an airconditioned church to an airconditioned mall (which might be about the same size as the church!)
Anyway, I actually find myself feeling jealous of the childhoods that people who grew up in other areas describe -- children in Texas will play outdoors despite the heat but at a certain age everyone goes into the AC. There aren't places to hike (I can't think of a single one), no one walks anywhere (When I go home and insist on walkking the one block to the store or ATM, I find often the sidewalks just end in the middle of the road). There are a few lakes for recreating but mostly it is a very indoors culture. And the sexism. Wow. My next door neighbor in WASPY north dallas had a dog named ''poontang.'' Expain htat to a 10 year old girl! I didn't realize how much I was objectified as a young woman there until I left at age 18 and moved to the east coast -- for the first time in my life I wasn't looked up and down by men, conspicuously evaluated. (it was very hard to get used to at first - I had come to love being objectified and I felt kind of lost and invisible once I lived in culture where men didn't do that.)
I have so little nice to say about Dallas (oh! you can always find a parking space at the grocery store) that I feel sort of guilty writing this, but I hope having an honest opinion is helpful to you. In fact, I recently said my husband ''I feel bad taht I can't think of anything nice to say about the place I grew up,'' and he said ''why? I can't think of anything nice to say about it either!'' I have heard that Forth Worth is a much less plastic area, but I personally wouldn't go near it either. I think it would be extraordinarily difficult to make like-minded friends, and I would be terrified to raise children there. Oh, and it is nearly impossible to find decent produce, and you can forget about organic stuff. Hope this helps! Good luck making your decision. julie
I grew up in the Dallas area (DFW) and now live in Berkeley, so here are my thoughts. Sorry in advance for the long-winded post.
- You'll probably get to have a huge yard but the weather is awful. Summers are unbearable; spring and autumn are tornado/storm season; and Dallas actually gets pretty cold during the winter. Even though I had much larger yards in DFW than here in Berkeley, I actually spend way more time outside now than I did then.
- Keep in mind that unless you're in an industry that is also super-hot in Texas, your pay will actually go down to compensate for that lower cost of living, so don't count on making in the same ballpark of that mid-200k salary unless you're in the defense, medical, or petrochemical industry. (Yeah, tech is also hot in Texas, but not nearly as hot as in the Bay Area.)
- Do you like suburb living? Most of the good school districts are out in the suburbs. I hope you like subdivisions, cul-de-sacs, and strip malls. You can try to live in the more expensive enclave cities in Dallas proper (University Park, Highland Park, The Colony) but then you start erasing some of the cost-of-living benefit. With young kids, this might be a plus, but I know as a teenager I absolutely loathed DFW suburbs.
- If you do end up in the suburbs, you should know that most Dallas suburbs are very conservative. Growing up and gradually becoming more liberal there was pretty isolating. Even when I go back to visit family culture out in the suburbs still shows a lot of Bible Belt influences (football, mega-churches, football, social circles built around mega-churches, football, oh and did I say football?). Your family's experience may vary, but this conservative/religious culture was one factor out of several that contributed to me wanting to leave DFW pretty badly. You'll have better luck in Dallas proper with more progressive culture, but again getting into a good schools in Dallas might cost you more than you expect. That being said, I think it's easy for people to make fun of/pigeonhole Texas culture, but Texas and DFW are much more diverse than people generally expect, so even really conservative areas (I grew up in one of the most conservative counties in the nation) will have a wide diversity of cultures/ethnicities and will generally be friendly, so long as you aren't obviously counter-culture. (Though for all the reputation of southern hospitality, in Berkeley my neighbors and I actually talk and run into each other on the street, whereas this almost never happened in DFW suburbs.)
Obviously I prefer living in Berkeley/the Bay Area, even if it is the most rat-race-y place I've ever lived in. Growing up I aspired to live in some place that was not like DFW: fairly urban, progressive, tolerant, better weather, and dynamic; so take my thoughts with a grain of salt. Plenty of people find Dallas a great place to live (like my parents did). Just make sure to be realistic about what you want, and realistic about what a move would mean for your pay, the culture you and your kids will enjoy (or be subjected to), and schools. Texas schools on average are probably better than California, but really good school are even harder to get into than here (there's no "school choice" provision in Texas, so you absolutely have to make sure to buy in the right neighborhood).
I lived in the Dallas area for 25+ years. I've lived in the East Bay nearly that long-- we moved here when our youngest was born-- he is now 24. I return to Dallas 1-3 times per year to visit family.
For some people, a house and 'things' are very important. If that is you, then Dallas will be a good fit as everything is cheaper. In my experience, the weather was so hot in the summer that people mostly either hung out in their back yard at their pool, stayed inside their air-conditioned house, or shopped in air-conditioned malls (shopping is a big past time there). For outdoor activity, we went to local lakes but still tried to avoid being outside in the hottest part of the day from 11am-4pm.
I am an outdoor person so the bay area is heavenly to me-- we can easily get to the mountains or beaches in just a few hours and there are beautiful hills and hiking areas all around our house. When our kids were young, we spent lots of time on weekends at one or the other, enjoying the great outdoors. We did not have a great back yard, nor a big, fancy house, but worked on them over the years and now they are quite nice.
Texas is in the 'bible belt' --religion runs deep and the politics are extremely conservative. You will feel both in your everyday life there. Not in explicit conversation, but in a million different ways. There is definitely a redneck culture there as well-- In my latest trip to Texas this month, there was lots of talk about how happy everyone was about the new 'open carry' gun law in Texas so they could all have guns. This will be the environment your kids grown up in and what they see and hear in school.
I'll be eager to hear others' comments about Texas to see if anyone shares my views. Good luck with your decision!
I'm a 3rd generation Texan now living--with hubby-- in El Cerrito for last 6 years (in an apt carved out of back of funky house). We overlook Wildcat Canyon & pay 3 x as much rent as we did on our Texas home which was just one year from being paid off. We come from Austin, Texas, where we owned 2 wooded acres with view of Lake Austin cliffs, & an awesome ranch-style house that we personally worked on for 25 years== & paid a pittance to purchase. We moved here to be nearer friends & other family members even though we couldn't afford it. Now we can afford it less...but are grateful to still be here.
I feel Austin is the best place Texas offers. Mostly I only "hear' what people say about Dallas, all of which has been expressed here in BPNers responses. My stays in Dallas have been short. (There are some super museums there) Overall, Texans are friendlier everywhere in the state compared to folks here in Calif, but typically that's not the case if you're dark skinned, speak with an accent, come across as gay, etc.-- I'm fair skinned and blonde but I've witnessed how people can be treated because they don't talk, look and/or act 'right'. (I have nieces & nephews--from a brother-- who are outspoken racists, as well as homophobic, war-mongering, lovers of weapons. Obviously we don't speak about anything that'll rile them up) I'm sorry to be negative about my tribe, my Texas. There's something about that state I'll never git outta my bones, but oh lordy to move back..?..Ok, say we have to go back (where we no longer have a house-- and have decimated the profits from selling to move here) yes, we'd do it. I mean ya gotta do what ya gotta do. For us, it'll help that in Austin we have wonderful Berkeley-minded, creative, loving liberal friends-- and a sister-- who'll welcome us back. ) Surely you can experience a healthy, freeing life in Dallas. Ultimately it'll be your attitude, don't you think? I find that if I'm willing to let go of fixed preferences, solid expectations, and ask to be open and present more & more, then I'm 'ok' no matter where I am, typically it's much more than just 'ok'. Now that I and other BPNers have shared opinions/preferences with you (as you requested), golly I bet Dallas improves once you're living there. You've heard all the 'bad' so everything else will be mostly 'good' :)) Who knows, maybe Dallas will end up being THE best place for you & your family. BTW: Living near the grandparents is an understandable draw. All the best!