[ghaff]

>Living in rural Texas is much more concerning than living in Seattle during COVID19.

That may be true but living in a suburban/exurban area outside of the Seattle core might well be better than either for many. I'm not sure how many will ultimately make a change because of this though. It will depend on people's job/commuting situation and how diminished city living seems when lease renewal time comes around.

[electricEmu]

> Why risk living in close quarters if this may be a recurring pattern and pay a premium for doing so.

Your original assertion was renters will move because the city is unsafe during COVID and that suburan areas are worth the price to commute trade-off.

Two suburban areas around Seattle are Snohomish and Pierce counties. Those "safer" suburbs are doing an objectively worse job of following Washington State's "Stay at Home" order [1]. Prior to COVID, hospitals were closing in rural and exurban areas, which reduced capacity during this pandemic [2]. Disregarding SAH/SIP orders and reduced capacity sounds dangerous, not safer and worth saving money.

As for cost, when enough housing capacity was built in Seattle then the rent stabilized. After short-term rentals are converted back into single-family homes or long-term leases then rent should continue to stabilize or decrease. When I last looked, increasing my commute from 25m to over 1h was not worth the savings in rent and would have required purchasing a car.

It's great you prefer the suburbs and there are absolutely people the 'burbs are better suited. Unless you have a valid reason to suggest people are going to move in-mass from cities to the burbs then I find "diminished city living" mistaken and comical.

[1] https://www.unacast.com/covid19/social-distancing-scoreboard... [2] https://www.npr.org/2020/04/09/829753752/small-town-hospital...

[ghaff]

I don't live in a suburb and don't really like them. But I am in the orbit of a major city while being pretty rural. I don't really anticipate en-mass movement. A lot of the people already living in cities will just accept whatever restrictions and risk. But I do think some on the edge might reconsider living in places where you don't need to be in elevators or share transit with a lot of other people,

[electricEmu]

Some people will move away from a city and others will move to a city. It happens. Neither of us expects to see a sizable net movement from urban to "exurban" (rural) areas.

Why choose the exurbs where you pay a premium to drive long distances and live far away from opportunity and medical care? Plus, exurbs were some of the hardest hit during the '08 recession [1].

> But underlying today’s exurban fervor is an uncomfortable truth: The reason that homes in these communities are so affordable is that these areas were among the hardest-hit by the housing crisis and recession, and prices have only recently recovered.

Recessions are very difficult to predict. Maybe it will be some time before a reckoning in the exurbs comes due again.

[1] https://www.marketwatch.com/story/it-can-be-risky-to-buy-a-h...