The Blizzard That Sent Me to Florida

It was a blizzard in April in 2001. That was my breaking point that led me to the decision to move to Florida from Massachusetts. I had been on vacation in Key West nine times in three years and was trying to figure out how I could just move there. There was such a different vibe there. I felt lighter, happier, and the lack of seasonal depression really helped as well. (yeah that’s a real thing. I would literally hibernate from New Year’s Day until late March/April.)

Remote work wasn’t a thing yet. I actually had been on a committee at my employer to sign telework. But it hadn’t been implemented yet. I started to think about how I could make this move with a target of October of that year.

Then my boss came to me in June 2001 and said, “ you need to lay someone off from your department.” They were doing layoffs and were trying to be consistent across the company even though my Dept was the only one in the black.

At that time, I was working in an “officle” — the term I came up with for a tall cubicle — so I told him I’d call him back from his office. He was based in California, but had an office in our building in Massachusetts.

So I called him back and said, “ I think you should lay me off” and proceeded to lay out all the business reasons. Why, including the fact that I did have somebody under me as a team leader who could take over and I was making the most money of anyone in the department. I had no idea if there would be any severance when I did this, but my level of burnout and frustration with New England weather had reached a breaking point. Two weeks later, I was out of a job.

And it was the turning point of my life. In September 2001 I moved to Florida where I’ll likely remain until I die.

Farcaster recently launched a series of challenges where you create a 59 second video on a topic and compete for a prize. One recent one this week was on Tiebout Sorting. And it got me thinking about my journey and how many others have made similar journeys to the sunshine State, “ voting with their feet.”

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What is Tiebout Sorting?

In 1956, an economist named Charles Tiebout had an idea about how we choose where to live. Say there are two towns with the same commute. One charges higher taxes and puts more money into public schools. The other keeps taxes lower and offers fewer services. If you’ve got three kids in school, you might pick the first town. If you’re on a fixed income, you might pick the second. Either way, your moving truck just cast a vote.

That’s Tiebout Sorting. When people can move and have enough places to choose from, where they go tells you something about the taxes they’re willing to pay and the services they want in return. And if enough people make those choices, towns have a reason to pay attention. They’re competing for residents.

In my case, the blizzard did a lot of the persuading. The part of my story that made me think about Tiebout was what it took to actually leave. I already knew where I wanted to live. I’d been there nine times! I still had to figure out how I was going to make a living there.

Today, if you can take your job with you, the question can shift from “Where can I work?” to “Where do I actually want to live?”

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So, why do people move to Florida?

This revisit of the concept of Tiebout Sorting got me thinking about why people move to Florida.

For me, it was a blizzard in April. But I was curious how many people had their own version of that story. University of Florida researchers found that the answer depended a lot on your age. For people under 55, the most common reason was work. (Walt Disney brought a lot of people to the Sunshine State in one population wave in the 1970s). For people 55 and older, it was the climate. Family mattered at every age. So I guess I was a little ahead of schedule on the weather thing. University of Florida research

I was also curious about the timing. A couple of years after I moved, Florida’s population was growing by about 400,000 people a year. The housing boom was in full swing. There were jobs to come here for, and if you were retiring, you had a better shot at selling your house back home. When the housing market crashed, both of those things got harder, and population growth slowed way down. University of Florida population analysis

Then came another moment when a move suddenly became possible for a lot of people. During COVID, some people could take their jobs with them. In the year ending July 2022, Florida gained about 311,000 people on net from other states. By the year ending July 2025, that number was down to about 22,500. The warm winters were still there. So was the lack of a state personal income tax. But the cost of getting a place to live here had changed, and UF researchers found that several counties with more attainable housing were still drawing new residents. Census migration figures · UF housing analysis

That’s where I come back to Tiebout. If you’re thinking about moving, you might weigh what you’ll pay in taxes, what you’ll get in local services, and whether you can afford a home in the town with the schools you want. You might do all that math and still spend three years trying to figure out how to make the move work. I’d already picked Key West. I was waiting for a way to get there.

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Will Passage of Amendment 3 lead to Tiebout Sorting?

Last week Amendment 3 passed in Florida, which means that those who own homes will get a greater homestead deduction on their state property taxes. There’s been quite a few studies showing that this will lead to a short fall for local government services like schools, law-enforcement, fire departments, beaches, parks, libraries, etc. which intern may lead to new local taxes or a serious reduction in services.

This seems like it will be an actual test of Tiebout Sorting but the execution of all of this still remains to be seen. I doubt at this point in my life that I t will change much for me, but it’s always hard to know. I do appreciate that in our current age of more acceptable remote work. I do have more opportunity than I did in 2001.

But I’ll never go back to anywhere that has blizzards in April.

References

Smith, S. K. (2005, June). Florida population growth: Past, present and future. University of Florida, Bureau of Economic and Business Research. Report⁠

Smith, S. K., & Cody, S. (2013, March 11). Trends in Florida’s population growth, 2000 to 2012. University of Florida, Bureau of Economic and Business Research. Article⁠

Tiebout, C. M. (1956). A pure theory of local expenditures. Journal of Political Economy, 64(5), 416–424. https://doi.org/10.1086/257839⁠

University of Florida. (2026, July). Florida migration slowed sharply in 2025, with mid-sized counties continuing to grow. Article⁠

U.S. Census Bureau. (2026, January 27). U.S. population growth slows due to historic decline in net international migration [Press release]. Press release⁠

Amendment 3

Florida Department of Revenue. (2026, November 5). Constitutional Amendment 3: Increased homestead exemption; lower cap on increases in non-homestead property assessments (Property Tax Oversight Informational Bulletin No. PTO 26-21). https://floridarevenue.com/property/Documents/PTO_BUL_26-21.pdf⁠

Florida voters approved Amendment 3 on November 3, 2026. It increases the homestead exemption for non-school property taxes and lowers the annual cap on non-homestead assessment increases from 10% to 5%, effective January 1, 2027. Official ballot text⁠

Additional data prompts can be found in my ChatGPT session here: https://chatgpt.com/share/6af49eab-6fc0-83ea-9454-6770e805aa3a