“The Great Migration” to Red States

(Greenville, South Carolina) For Jen Hubbell, a real estate agent in Greenville, South Carolina, a good life starts with a good home. She keeps getting calls from customers from other states hoping to find both of these things in her town.

They are often conservatives from very liberal states – New York, Washington, California, etc. – who can no longer stand the political orientation of these “blue states” (acquired in the Democratic Party). M^me Can Hubbell, herself a conservative, help them find neighborhoods filled with like-minded people?

“You’re going to love it here!” », she always answers.

M^me Hubbell heads the South Carolina office of Conservative Move, a Texas-based agency that helps conservatives migrate to strongly Republican states (“red states”).

“If your city no longer has morals and values, it may be time to move,” reads the agency’s website. Last year, South Carolina surpassed Florida as the state with the fastest growing population in the nation.

Red migration

This red migration has for years caused a real estate boom in South Carolina, where the governorship and the state Congress have been controlled by the Republican Party for more than 20 years. According to real estate agents like M^me Hubbell, many of their clients are religious conservatives opposed to abortion, support for transgender rights and mandatory vaccination, among other issues.

According to Paul Chabot, founder and CEO of Conservative Move, which works with about 500 agents across the country, few clients had South Carolina in mind when he launched his agency in 2017. For the past two years, however, this State has joined Texas and Florida – two red states – among the top three destinations targeted by buyers, he said. About 5,000 customers in its database are considering moving to South Carolina soon.

Its clients’ primary destination is Greenville County, in a deeply conservative and Christian region known as the Upstate. Greenville ranks second in population growth in the state (between 2020 and 2022), behind Horry County, which includes Myrtle Beach and where homes are more expensive.

M^me Hubbell — like a half-dozen real estate agents not affiliated with Conservative Move — says selling Greenville’s attractions is easy. Particularly for clients arriving from large liberal cities and their suburbs and wishing to retain a hint of cosmopolitan life.

Clean little town

In Greenville, there are Broadway shows and rooftop bars. But the city is small enough to recognize its neighbors in the city center, where a pedestrian bridge allows you to see the falls of the Reedy River… and where there are no homeless encampments, residents often note. agents.

More important, perhaps, property taxes are low and homes more affordable than in the West or New England. Median price: $360,000. Agents also point out that there are hundreds of churches near Greenville. Bob Jones University, an influential evangelical institution, is also there.

“I felt good and welcomed there. I had the impression of being in the United States,” adds M.^me Brock, who lived in Temecula, California, where she was dismayed by support for abortion.

Last year, South Carolina – with a population of 5.3 million – welcomed 15,500 newcomers from New York state, 15,000 from California and 36,000 from North Carolina (which ‘is not a blue state). There is no data to determine the political affiliation of the new arrivals, but few believe they are changing the political situation in the state. It’s not the same thing in Texas, Georgia and North Carolina, which are becoming a little bluer with the arrival of young people – more liberal – in certain cities, observes Mark Owens, professor of political science at the military college Citadel, in Charleston, South Carolina.

A polarized country

The conservative migration to South Carolina illustrates the new reality of the United States, a polarized country where people decide to separate themselves from neighbors with whom they disagree. A sad reality, according to many newcomers to Greenville, who said leaving was difficult, but who were tired of feeling alone, even ostracized.

Yana Ghannam, a client of M^me Hubbell, says she moved from Livermore, Calif., to Greenville because she wants to make friends who won’t criticize her for her Republican and anti-union views. “It was really, ‘Oh, to fit in you have to do this and that,’” M says^me Ghannam speaking about his life in Livermore.

Politics, of course, isn’t South Carolina’s only appeal. The climate also plays a role, and employment counts for a lot, particularly in the growing electric car sector.

Pamela Harrison, another real estate agent, says the equation is simple for most of her clients: “They like the climate, they like the political direction, and they want to leave their blue state.” »

According to Brad Liles, a real estate agent in Spartanburg, 30 miles from Greenville, he and his colleagues have a name for the wave of Republican newcomers: “the great migration.”

Several agents report that many conservative clients want lots of several acres, a little out of the way, without a homeowners association. They buy houses with large yards, with room for a vegetable garden, a henhouse or a stable, with the aim of being self-sufficient.

“If you had told me five years ago that I would have chickens, I would have called you a liar,” says Lauren Gomes, a conservationist who moved to Greenville County in 2022 with her husband and their three children because she was frustrated with the liberal policies of Minnesota, where her family had lived for seven generations.

Against “transgender ideology”

M^me Gomes, who calls herself Christian and anti-abortion, says she left Minnesota because unrestricted abortion is allowed there, because she was yelled at in grocery stores during the pandemic – she didn’t wear a mask – and because “Transgender ideology permeates every aspect of education and public life” in Minnesota, she said.

M^me Gomes and other newcomers to South Carolina say they like that abortion is banned there after six weeks. They also recognize themselves in local decisions, like that of the Board of Library Trustees, which voted to move children’s books depicting transgender minors from the children’s section to the parents’ section.

The arrival of wealthy families has driven out many poor residents, a problem that is hardly unique to Greenville or the South, but which particularly affects the black community.

According to a 2023 study by Furman University, Greenville’s black population has decreased by 22% since 1990, while the city’s overall population has increased by 21%.

“Wealthy white families are settling in the former black neighborhoods that surround the city,” the study indicates. Their interest in places they previously avoided pushes property values ​​beyond what the existing black population can afford. »

This article was originally published in the New York Times.

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