Millenial Family Trying to Decide Between VA & NC for a Move (Virginia Beach: schools, income)

[Watchful]

Originally Posted by moderatelycrunchy

Thank you for this suggestion! How does Lexington compare to Roanoke? The feedback we've received is that Roanoke is probably too small for what we desire.

Also, Floyd keeps cropping up as a recommendation! When I looked it up on Google Maps, I've noticed it is teeny tiny. I wonder what it would be like for a transplant? In my experience, small towns can be kind of difficult for newcomers.

Roanoke is quite a bit larger than Charlottesville so I'm not sure what your parameters are. It is a metro area of about 250,000 population.

I did Google up a home school network for STEM activities in Roanoke (Bricks 4 Kids).

Charlottesville does have some shopping options that Roanoke does not have due to the average income I suppose. Roanoke would have a better cost of living for housing I think.

Lexington is MUCH smaller than Roanoke. Population of about 7,000 in the city of Lexington and 22,000 in the surrounding county (Rockbridge).

Lexington is a perfect example of the disparity in culture between the city and the county. Just to use a political example, in 2020, Lexington voted 65% Biden while Rockbridge County voted 65% Trump.

Floyd is TINY. About 400 population in the town. About 15,000 in the entire county. But it is quirky-cool and a great place to visit and not at all like your average small town!

[VA Outdoorsman]

Recommending Floyd to the OP just doesn't compute for me. I have a homestead in nearby Patrick Country and this area is for rural, country living. People moving to Floyd, Franklin or Patrick, etc., from out of state (or in-state like me) are more of the homesteader variety who want to be self-reliant, hunt and fish, farm their own food and generally get as far away from any real city as possible.


Some place more like a Richmond, Roanoke, Virginia Beach or Lynchburg makes more sense for the OP. Those are the metros I would consider first and foremost -- all of them are politically mixed with a good share of conservatives and liberals, albeit getting more conservative the further away from the cores you get.

In terms of mask and vax mandates -- many of us here simply never followed them when they were forced on us. Then our new Governor struck them down as soon as he got into office.

I never even got the jab and did fine. You could live here and be left to yourself or you could follow the crowds. Sounds like you think for yourself though, which I applaud.

[spencer114]

There were never any mask mandates. Do conservatives ever concern themselves with things that actually exist?
Businesses and employers may have suggested them but outside of state office buildings, no state agency was requiring or policing mask use. Unless you worked for the state, you were never subjected to a mask “mandate”. Even if you did work for the state the exceptions were so generous that you wouldn’t be required to wear one anyway.

The new governor had nothing to “strike down” and he took office after 70%+ of Virginians were already vaccinated (and hardly anyone was wearing masks anywhere any more).

[Watchful]

Originally Posted by spencer114

There were never any mask mandates. Do conservatives ever concern themselves with things that actually exist?
Businesses and employers may have suggested them but outside of state office buildings, no state agency was requiring or policing mask use. Unless you worked for the state, you were never subjected to a mask “mandate”. Even if you did work for the state the exceptions were so generous that you wouldn’t be required to wear one anyway.

The new governor had nothing to “strike down” and he took office after 70%+ of Virginians were already vaccinated (and hardly anyone was wearing masks anywhere any more).

Don't let the facts get in the way of a good scramble. Maybe we could add a separate Virginia subforum - "Endless Political Wrangling!"

[VA Outdoorsman]

There were no mask mandates, you say, yet in the same breath you admitted the state imposed mask mandates on it's workers? That implies there were mask mandates.

Then, did you also forget about certain public schools requiring masking of their students or face suspension/expulsion?



You just lied.

[Serious Conversation]

Originally Posted by spencer114

Only 19% of Virginians consider themselves to be evangelical (Bible Belt). 55% of Virginians report no religious body affiliation (do not belong to any church, synagogue of masque).

35% of North Carolinians identify as evangelical.

https://news.virginia.edu/content/wh...%25%20Catholic.

A big part of this is going to be the huge population of NOVA that leans heavily non-religious. NC is not dominated by one metro in the way that VA is with NOVA.

Once you get out into the smaller towns and rural areas, VA is still probably a bit less religious, but not by as much as you might expect.

[canalcity63]

I would recommend Norfolk, VA. Norfolk is the urban core of a metro area of approximately 1.8 million as mentioned earlier in the thread. It offers a historical urban environment with many nearby activities. There are both beaches and rivers within Norfolk itself as well as many beaches, rivers, and lakes within the metro area as a whole. I think you would like the Ghent neighborhood in Norfolk which has many young millennials because of its proximity to ODU, EVMS, and Downtown. It is a very charming neighborhood with many antique shops and locally owned businesses. Richmond offers similar neighborhoods as well but is further from the beach. Alexandria in NOVA is another good option but you will have a lot more traffic in that area due to its proximity to DC. I think overall Virginia cities have better access to outdoor recreational activities. Most of the larger North Carolina cities are in the piedmont region which is mostly hills. Most of them are more than 2 hours from the beach or mountains. Whereas Norfolk is on the coast within 3 hours of mountains and Richmond is about 2 hours from both the beach and mountains.

[spencer114]

Originally Posted by Serious Conversation

A big part of this is going to be the huge population of NOVA that leans heavily non-religious. NC is not dominated by one metro in the way that VA is with NOVA.

Once you get out into the smaller towns and rural areas, VA is still probably a bit less religious, but not by as much as you might expect.

True, but unlike NC, Virginia doesn’t have a large rural population. What you’re saying is that once you leave the parts of the commonwealth where the vast majority of Virginians live, it gets more religious.

And compared to NC, Virginia’s Uber religious people don’t have as much political clout as their counterparts in North Carolina. It’s one of the reasons why Virginia cities score higher on the Human Rights Campaign Index (and the commonwealth as a whole clobbers the state of North Carolina) than NC cities. It’s the reason why marijuana is legal for recreational use in VA but still illegal even for medical use in NC.

[VA Outdoorsman]

Originally Posted by spencer114

True, but unlike NC, Virginia doesn’t have a large rural population. What you’re saying is that once you leave the parts of the commonwealth where the vast majority of Virginians live, it gets more religious.

And compared to NC, Virginia’s Uber religious people don’t have as much political clout as their counterparts in North Carolina. It’s one of the reasons why Virginia cities score higher on the Human Rights Campaign Index (and the commonwealth as a whole clobbers the state of North Carolina) than NC cities. It’s the reason why marijuana is legal for recreational use in VA but still illegal even for medical use in NC.

^ More pseudo-intellectual quackery

No state in the nation has as big of an intra-state wealth disparity as Virginia, according to the UVA's Demographic Research Group at the Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service. And that's not the only thing that differentiates NoVa from the rest of the state, also their politics, where they choose to live (density), formal education, religiosity, etc., We are talking about a full 1/3rd of the population that believes they are living in D.C. but technically have Virginia addresses. That skews with the state-wide data so much that if you want to be scientifically rigorous and honest, you must account for this disparity.

When you take the averages of things in Virginia, you have to account for this wide disparity otherwise you risk glossing over important facts, like the rural population of Virginia against the whole -- which is way higher when you account for the NoVa disparity.

Once you account for this disparity, Virginia is a whole lot more like it's fellow Southern states than anything else. Also, I already showed you the Pew data where Virginia -- even with NoVa included -- has a higher church attendance than North Carolina. If you were to account for NoVa, the evangelical population as a percentage of the whole in Virginia would also even out, possibly exceed that of North Carolina (already the difference is minor at 30% vs. 35%). You must use the same data sources if you are trying to compare states instead of cherry-picking like you do.

Your humans rights thing regarding cities also belies the fact that Virginia cities don't bleed into the counties like they do in other states like NC. When you strip a city down to just its urban core neighborhoods, of course you are going to get a more liberal bent. Virginia's metros get more conservative further from the cores.

[spencer114]

The NOVA whining is ridiculous.

Northern Virginians are Virginians and they count just as much as people in Denver and Seattle count in their respective states. The liberal bent in Northern Virginia is grossly overstated too. Many localities outside of Northern Virginia are more liberal than Arlington and Alexandria. It’s also important to note that the political leanings and voting patterns in Northern Virginia have remained the same for 30 years. Northern Virginia alone isn’t able to sway the politics in the state. What happened to swing Virginia is that the suburbs in Richmond and Hampton Roads became more liberal. Henrico, Chesterfield, Virginia Beach and Chesapeake are where republicans went to make up for their losses in NOVA. Those localities went blue over the last decade and a half (some more decidedly than others of course). A great election year for Republicans now is just breaking even in Chesterfield, once a reliably red county.

Nice mental gymnastics on the HRC data. Once again, the entire state of Virginia clobbers the entire state of North Carolina. Large counties are also measured. Fairfax and Virginia Beach (not a county on paper of course) both extremely suburban, score 100 (along with Richmond, Charlottesville, Arlington and Alexandria). Both Roanoke and Norfolk score higher than Raleigh (but Carborro and Chapel Hill both score 100). The score is based on state and local laws, not opinion polls…so it reflects the will of the state as a whole (insofar as the people elected representatives that favor these laws). It’s evidence of a weaker evangelical hold on Virginia than on North Carolina.