The Californication of Texas

When I first moved to Texas in 2006, I spent several months living with my in-laws in Georgetown, a quiet town of about 46,000 people located 30 miles north of Austin. There was a giant house in their neighbourhood that looked different from all the others; apparently the owner had sold a much smaller property in California and built this dream home with the proceeds. Large-scale migration from California to Texas had not yet begun so nobody thought this was a harbinger of social and political change. The concern, rather, was that too many of these “McMansions” would increase property taxes.