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I'm looking for a somewhat liberal area in Georgia or Tennessee. Safe, affordable housing ($1000 or less for a 2/2) ,a good/decent economy that has options, good public schools, stuff to do for families (parks nearby, museums within 1-2 hours), not a huge city or something just outside of a large city is fine... Any suggestions? I am not into the religious scene at all and would like to avoid that.
I am a Real Estate Agent, I have my Bachelors in Psychology and am currently an advocate at a center for women, I can waitress, and nanny, etc...My options are wide open but eventually I'll probably be looking for a full time position doing something in the social work field, some real estate on the side, and waitressing on the side if necessary. I need my ful time job to provide about $35k a year at least while I supplement the rest for savings, etc.
I am leaving FL due to the hurricane situation. Second serious one I've been through in 13 years that has disrupted life significantly and I'm over it.
You may be a good fit for Gwinnett County. We have one of the best (and largest) school systems in Metro Atlanta, great healthcare through multiple centers and a diverse population. The leadership here is widely conservative, but the landscape is changing rapidly.
Finding something around $1,000 per month may be a challenge, but can be done. I'm afraid I can't address the whole religious thing, but you'll likely be able to find something here. Who knows? You may be able to make it happen in real estate alone.
For more info on Metro Atlanta, you may want to check out the Atlanta forum.
I hope your family came out OK during that horrible hurricane. And I hope you choose Atlanta.
I'm looking for a somewhat liberal area in Georgia or Tennessee. Safe, affordable housing ($1000 or less for a 2/2) ,a good/decent economy that has options, good public schools, stuff to do for families (parks nearby, museums within 1-2 hours), not a huge city or something just outside of a large city is fine... Any suggestions? I am not into the religious scene at all and would like to avoid that.
I am a Real Estate Agent, I have my Bachelors in Psychology and am currently an advocate at a center for women, I can waitress, and nanny, etc...My options are wide open but eventually I'll probably be looking for a full time position doing something in the social work field, some real estate on the side, and waitressing on the side if necessary. I need my ful time job to provide about $35k a year at least while I supplement the rest for savings, etc.
I am leaving FL due to the hurricane situation. Second serious one I've been through in 13 years that has disrupted life significantly and I'm over it.
Thank you!
There are only about a handful of areas in both Georgia and Tennessee collectively (two generally (but not completely) deeply conservative states) that might fit your criteria of being somewhat liberal areas.
Because of the affordability factor and because of its status of being a relatively significantly progressive city with lots of recreational and cultural amenities in an otherwise generally deeply conservative state (in Tennessee), Chattanooga is the first city that comes to mind.
Chattanooga more than likely may be the most affordable city in the states of Tennessee and Georgia that fit your criteria of being a somewhat liberal area with a good/decent economy, access to good public schools and stuff to do for families.
Chattanooga sits in a scenic river valley (along the Tennessee River) and has lots to do (particularly for a metro of its relatively small size of just over 500,000 people).
Chattanooga has a famous aquarium (Tennessee Aquarium), a popular zoo (Chattanooga Zoo), an IMAX 3D theater, numerous art galleries and museums (like the Creative Discovery Museum, the Battles for Chattanooga Museum, the Tennessee Valley Railroad Museum East Chattanooga, the Hunter Museum for American Art, the Houston Museum of Decorative Arts, International Towing and Recovery Hall of Fame and Museum, the Songbird Guitars Museum, the Bessie Smith Cultural Center, etc.).
Chattanooga also has multiple popular major outdoor attractions like Lookout Mountain, Ruby Falls (a guided tour of an underground waterfall), Rock City Gardens (a scenic walking trail through rock formations, gardens and views of seven states famously advertised along Interstates 24 and 75 with roadside billboards that say "see Rock City"), Raccoon Mountain Caverns (a guided tour past scenic cave formations), Signal Mountain (a scenic Civic War historic site on top of a mountain), etc.
Chattanooga also has two popular and rising urban districts in a growing Downtown Chattanooga and the eclectic NorthShore district (on the north shore of the Tennessee River across from Downtown Chattanooga).
With lots of cultural amenities, retail amenities, restaurants/dining options, breweries, pubs, coffee shops, outdoor recreational amenities, etc, with a scenic backdrop of high hills and mountains in the Tennessee River Valley, for a relatively smaller metro area of only about 500,000-600,000 people, Chattanooga is packed full of things to do and experience for a city/metro of its compact size.
Knoxville (site of the 1982 World's Fair and home of the flagship campus of the University of Tennessee postsecondary system) is also a place to consider because of the numerous amenities, attractions, points-of-interest, gorgeous hill/mountain/valley scenery of the Upper Tennessee River Valley and outstanding outdoor recreational amenities of the Knoxville area and surrounding/nearby Eastern Tennessee/Western North Carolina region as a whole.
As Tennessee's largest metro area and site of its state capitol, Nashville is a much-larger (and much more trendy) progressive Upper South city/metro that is in high-demand right now because of its numerous higher-education resources (Vanderbilt University, Belmont University, Tennessee State University, Fisk University, Meharry Medical College, etc), its booming tech/life sciences/medical services sector, and its legendarily robust live musical entertainment scene.
While Nashville remains compact compared to a notoriously sprawling metro area like Atlanta, Nashville is a pretty HOT commodity on the national stage right now...Something that makes it less-affordable than smaller active Tennessee metros like Chattanooga and Knoxville.
Quote:
Originally Posted by AtlantaMove
You may be a good fit for Gwinnett County. We have one of the best (and largest) school systems in Metro Atlanta, great healthcare through multiple centers and a diverse population. The leadership here is widely conservative, but the landscape is changing rapidly.
Finding something around $1,000 per month may be a challenge, but can be done. I'm afraid I can't address the whole religious thing, but you'll likely be able to find something here. Who knows? You may be able to make it happen in real estate alone.
For more info on Metro Atlanta, you may want to check out the Atlanta forum.
I hope your family came out OK during that horrible hurricane. And I hope you choose Atlanta.
Atlanta (including its key suburb of Gwinnett County) is definitely a somewhat fairly progressive area compared to an otherwise generally deeply conservative state in Georgia and an otherwise generally deeply conservative region in the interior Southeastern U.S.
With their desire to be located in a somewhat conservative area with access to lots of cultural and recreational amenities, the OP definitely should take a look at an area in metro Atlanta like Gwinnett County.
The challenge with an area like Gwinnett County and metro Atlanta is that the OP's projected/desired base salary of $35k potentially may have some trouble stretching in a large major metro area like Atlanta where the housing market has been highly competitive as of late and where utilities and other living costs are much higher than they might have been known to be in the past when Atlanta was widely known as an affordable option to living in more expensive coastal regions.
With a booming technology industry, the continuing relocations into the area of multiple national corporate headquarters and an exploding television and film production industry as of 2017, Atlanta is an even hotter commodity as a city/metro than the Central Tennessee/Upper South metropolis of Nashville.
Living costs like housing and utilities and arguably some taxes (like sales taxes and even property taxes) continue to climb (escalate) in the Atlanta area compared to what they might have been during past boom eras like the 1980's and 1990's when Atlanta's lower living costs made it a major draw for residents looking to escape from higher-cost coastal regions.
Except for a few key differences, Nashville is basically a smaller version of Atlanta (Nashville basically is as a booming Southeastern U.S. metro area where Atlanta was as a booming Southeastern U.S. metro area back in the 1970's and 1980's).
Nashville is noticeably less-expensive than Atlanta, but Nashville is still experiencing rising housing prices due to a highly-competitive housing market of its own as well as a booming tech/life-sciences and medical services sectors.
With less crime and significantly much more affordability than Atlanta and Nashville, smaller (yet still extremely active and robust) metro regions like Chattanooga and Knoxville are probably the better options for the OP when looking through the states of Tennessee and Georgia, particularly on the OP's projected/desired base salary of $35k per year.
$35k will likely stretch much farther in smaller, less-competitive metros Chattanooga and Knoxville than it will in larger, much more competitive and much more high-profile metros like Atlanta and Nashville.
Come to Woodstock. You'll love the little downtown area with restaurants and events (outdoor concerts, parades, festivals). Great schools. About 30 miles northwest of Atlanta. The demographics are changing as well. My wife and I are Liberal and not religious, and we met others in our subdivision that share the same views. But it is a mostly Conservative area. I've noticed Liberals down here tend to not display/wear it on their sleeve like in other parts of the country. So theoretically there could be TONS around here. Just don't know until you start talking to them
Thank you all so much for your advice and information! I will be looking into each of the areas mentioned!
In addition to looking into each of the aforementioned areas (Gwinnett County northeast of Atlanta; Chattanooga; Knoxville; Nashville; Woodstock northwest of Atlanta), another area that you could look into is Asheville in the Blue Ridge Mountains region of Western North Carolina.
Asheville may not be located within the states of Tennessee or Georgia as you originally stated, but Asheville definitely fits the criteria of being a relatively affordable and relatively very progressive city (a city that is extremely, if not exceptionally progressive by Southeastern U.S. standards) in an otherwise deeply conservative region (Western North Carolina mountains region) with lots of things to do, see and experience amidst a background of gorgeous Blue Ridge Mountains region scenery.
Asheville (which some regard as having a few similarities to a deeply progressive West Coast city like Portland, Oregon) is a very progressive small city/metro that sits 4,560 feet above sea level, a level of elevation that obviously is very high by Southeastern U.S. and Eastern U.S. standards.
Asheville has a very robust craft brewery scene that is widely regarded by many to be one of the best local craft brewery scenes in the entire U.S.
For someone like you coming from a generally very warm/hot and humid climate in a low-elevation state like Florida, the climate of a high-elevation city like Asheville and a high-elevation area like Western North Carolina might would feel almost Alpine-like with the area's relatively extremely mild/cool summers and relatively very cold winters where snow is not uncommon (...there are at least about eight ski resorts that operate during the snowiest winters in the mountains of Western North Carolina).
Also, the recreation-oriented exploits of the Great Smoky Mountains region (a region which includes a popular casino at Cherokee, NC; the recreational scenic drives and hiking trails of the overwhelmingly popular and much beloved Great Smoky Mountains National Park; and tourist/vacation-oriented exploits of the Gatlinburg/Pigeon Forge/Sevierville area of nearby Eastern Tennessee are relatively very close by.
Plus, if one has the urge to experience the big city life, major city/metros like Charlotte and Atlanta are a relatively short drive away (...Charlotte is only about a two-hour drive from Asheville, while Atlanta is only about a less than four-hour drive from Asheville).
The only challenge with an adorable small city/metro like Asheville is that the economic opportunities potentially might not be as prevalent or as robust as they might be in larger cities in the Southeastern U.S. region (particularly in larger Southeastern city/metros like Nashville and Atlanta).
And speaking of robust economic opportunities, North Carolina city/metros like Charlotte and Raleigh are two other areas in which you probably definitely should look into because of the prevalence of economic opportunities in those areas.
Charlotte has an extremely large financial services sector that (along with logistics) drives much of the robust economic activity in its metro area.
(...Charlotte is home to the world headquarters of international banking behemoth Bank of America. Charlotte is also home to the East Coast headquarters of West Coast-based banking giant Wells Fargo, if that helps to give you an idea of just how much of a major player Charlotte is in the financial services industry.)
Raleigh has an extremely robust diversified economy that is anchored by three major research universities of high national/international regard (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Duke University in Durham and North Carolina State University in Raleigh) and their joint research/technology/business venture with the State of North Carolina at Research Triangle Park.
(...Research Triangle Park (which is regarded by many as being to the Southeastern U.S. what Silicon Valley is to California and the Western U.S.) is located part-way between Raleigh and Durham along Interstate 40 near Raleigh-Durham International Airport in the Raleigh/Durham/Chapel Hill-anchored "Triangle" region of east-central North Carolina.)
The robust medical services, education, technology, research and financial services industries of the area help to drive demand for real estate in the North Carolina Triangle area....Something that probably might be of particular interest to you as a real estate agent looking for a good progressive Southeastern alternative to the hurricane disruptions of Florida.
Both the Charlotte and (especially) the Raleigh areas are home to a good deal of progressives, many of whom have migrated to the area from the Northeastern U.S. to work in the industries that serve as powerful economic drivers for those respective metro areas.
The challenge with the state of North Carolina is that many of the state's political leaders (particularly in the state's deeply conservative state legislature) sometimes tend to want to push back in controversial and (sometimes) destructive ways against the political, social and cultural changes that are being driven in the state by so many people moving into the state from other parts of the country (particularly from the Northeast) to learn at the state's high-profile educational institutions and work in the state's booming industries.
Hard to see the poster finding many housing options in Asheville for her price range. Woostock is a nice place but even there her budget might not make it.
Hard to see the poster finding many housing options in Asheville for her price range. Woostock is a nice place but even there her budget might not make it.
True. It is definitely getting pricier as more people flock here. But I think she could possibly find something, but it would definitely be outside of the downtown area, and at her max budget of $1k per month.
Warner Robins is nice. Definitely within your budget, decent amount of things to do and within driving distance to much more. I don't know that I would label this area as "liberal" but due to Robins AFB there is a lot of diversity. I'm from MD and have adjusted just fine. This area seems on the rise and is building up very quickly.
Come to Woodstock. You'll love the little downtown area with restaurants and events (outdoor concerts, parades, festivals). Great schools. About 30 miles northwest of Atlanta. The demographics are changing as well. My wife and I are Liberal and not religious, and we met others in our subdivision that share the same views. But it is a mostly Conservative area. I've noticed Liberals down here tend to not display/wear it on their sleeve like in other parts of the country. So theoretically there could be TONS around here. Just don't know until you start talking to them
Did you seriously just recommend Woodstock to someone looking for a liberal area? Woodstock is 70 to 75 percent Republican.
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