Believe it or not, some people really do ‘boomerang back’ to Massachusetts
Official data doesn't capture it, and it may be tough to believe as you're digging out from this week's blizzard, but it's a fact: some people who leave Massachusetts eventually boomerang back.
After I wrote about people leaving the state earlier this month — something that U.S. Census data does track — I heard from a few folks who fell into the little-known category of "jetted but regretted."
The decision to leave, and then come back, is "emotional, personal, and professional," said Anne Gatling Haynes, an urban planner who traded Boston for Houston, and then Austin, before boomeranging back to Massachusetts in 2024.
She said shedding layers of outerwear when she arrived in a Texas airport "was kind of fun." But after returning to a home she purchased in Onset, "I've been so psyched to shovel snow. You feel productive, like you've accomplished something."
She does acknowledge, however, that some things here "drive me bonkers. We can be a little bit provincial."
What pulls people like Haynes back to the Bay State?
Sasha Hoffman is a tech executive who moved to San Francisco in 2019 for a job at Uber.
"It was a really exciting job, and SF just pays better than Boston," she said. During COVID, when Uber shifted to remote work, Hoffman spent time in Mexico, Florida and New York.
"I came back for a couple reasons," Hoffman said. "It's a very intellectual place — the most stimulating environment I've ever been in. … I go to a dinner in Boston, (and I) feel like I'm with people who are changing the world. It makes you feel like you should do something with your life."
Hoffman appreciates how Boston is walkable and "very safe compared to a lot of other cities." She said she "met some of the best female friends I've ever had" when she initially moved to Boston in 2012 to take a job at a financial services startup.
In 2018, when Christine Bond got a job at an insurance company in Columbus, Ohio, she sold her house in Springfield.
"I had just launched a couple kids in college," she said, and "my plan had been to stay out there through the end of my career."
The new job brought her closer to her parents, who were in Kentucky.
However, she found the corporate culture at her new employer to be hierarchical, and the state to be more conservative than she expected.
"Everyone told me Ohio was a purple state," she said. But Bond found it to be "a bright red state, with Columbus being a bright red pearl in the middle of it."
She returned to Massachusetts after five years and is now living with relatives in Chelmsford.
Jake Felser, a graduate of Olin College in Needham, moved out to San Francisco in 2013, when his employer asked him to help open a new office there. He and his wife, a nurse practitioner, didn't have "any particular intention to come back to Massachusetts," he said.
But they returned in 2019, he said, because "we wanted to settle somewhere where we could buy a house, have access to great public schools (which SF doesn't have), and be closer to our families," who are in New York.
The couple also wanted "compelling jobs," and Boston "was by far the most interesting place for the combination of deep tech and medical that we were looking for."
Felser is now the co-founder of a startup, Reservoir, that sells a smart home water heater.
Nathan Spielberg went west to earn a doctorate at Stanford University and start his first company. However, after about six years, he and his wife "prioritized the move to Boston because of the livability of the city, the safety of the city relative to SF." There was more diversity in the business landscape here, he said, rather than a "concentration of only tech."
Spielberg is now co-founder of an AI startup, Tamarin AI; a builder of electric guitars; and founder of BUILD617 , a community that aims to support entrepreneurs in the Boston area.
One of BUILD617's mottos: "Boston doesn't have to be SF to change the world."
The last time I'd seen Haynes in person was in March 2024, when she was working for an economic development agency in Austin, and I was visiting the city for the annual South by Southwest conference. She gave me a walking tour of the downtown area and seemed bullish about the city's future.
MassLive columnist Scott Kirsner and urban planner Anne Gatling Haynes, in a selfie taken in March 2024 near the Texas State Capitol building in Austin.Courtesy Scott Kirsner
However, Haynes, who grew up in Lexington, said that "very few places in the country have what Massachusetts has" — what she describes as "intellectual depth" that shows up "even in social interactions." She added that she had a larger network and "more professional opportunities" in Massachusetts. So she relocated to a summer house near Buzzard's Bay that she'd purchased while living in Texas.
What about the cost of living in Texas, compared to Massachusetts?
"If you like suburban living, you can do much better" in Texas, she said.
But she paid more for car insurance and health insurance. She also found property tax rates to be "much more volatile. " Living in a city in Texas, she said, was "not that much less expensive" than living in Boston or Cambridge.
Of course, recognizing that some people are not one-way movers but rather round-trippers shouldn't overshadow the larger trend of thousands of people voting with their feet to live in warmer, less expensive states. (Among the big factors for the emigres I spoke to earlier this month: housing costs, taxes and child care expenses.)
But it does suggest that if we had a smart strategy to promote our state's positives — like the ability to go skiing in two feet of fresh powder or go sailing off Cape Ann, along with culture and lifelong learning opportunities — it's not unrealistic to think that some of those who leave might be persuaded to come back.
Stories by Scott Kirsner
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