- Share via
Cynthia Rollins doesn’t hate California — far from it.
The sun-drenched shores of San Diego, the vibrant desert oasis of Palm Springs and the hustle of San Francisco all held special places in the California native’s life story.
But in 2020 — at the height of the pandemic — Rollins’ typically serene Ocean Beach neighborhood became crowded with people desperate for an outdoor place to congregate. She couldn’t leave her 650-square-foot apartment without worrying about finding a parking spot when she got home. She was isolated working a remote job for a tech company, but still overwhelmed by the sheer volume of people around her.
Tulsa, Okla., had never been on her radar. But months earlier she read about a program, Tulsa Remote, that pays remote workers to relocate to Oklahoma’s second-largest city for at least a year. She decided to give it a shot and visit. By November 2020, Rollins was a full-time resident in the Sooner State.
Despite a growing narrative that California is hostile to businesses, experts say the state still has unmatched advantages.
Tulsa Remote has attracted more than 3,600 remote workers since its inception in 2019. More than 7,800 Californians have applied to the program and 539 have made the move, cementing California as the second-most popular origin state behind Texas. More Californians have moved to Tulsa through the program than those hailing from other coastal states such as Florida and New York.
Similar programs have popped up in Alabama, Kansas, Arkansas, West Virginia and other states looking to reverse population decline. The programs, which are a boon to small and medium-sized towns in the middle of America, highlight a troubling, years-long trend of Californians uprooting their lives and relocating to less expensive locations. The transition to remote work following the pandemic has made leaving the Golden State even easier.
From 2010 through 2023, about 9.2 million people moved from California to other states, while only 6.7 million people moved to California from other parts of the country, according to the American Community Survey.
- Share via
A Public Policy Institute of California survey conducted in 2023 found that 34% of Californians have seriously considered leaving the state because of high housing costs.
Politics might also play a role for some who decide to leave, with conservatives more likely to contemplate leaving than liberals. Republicans make up more than 52% of registered voters in Oklahoma compared with roughly 25% of California’s registered voters.
“I definitely had people ask me, what’s in Tulsa?” Rollins said. “And I was like, ‘I have no idea. Who knows what’s in Tulsa? But I’m going to find out’.”
Unsurprisingly, it’s less expensive to live in Tulsa than it is in a major metropolitan area in California. The lower cost of living was a huge bonus for Zach Meincke and his wife, Katie, when they decided to make the move three years ago.
They went from a two-bedroom, two-bathroom apartment for $2,400 on L.A.’s Westside to a five-bedroom, three-bathroom house for just a few hundred dollars more.
It ended up being fortuitous timing for the couple, who discovered they were expecting their first child — a daughter named Ruth — just weeks after they decided to move.
“When we were first considering Tulsa, I was Googling the city trying to figure out if it was a great place to live, and there was this blurb that came up right at the top that said Tulsa is a cool place to live. If you’re young, you might live here for a while and you might get a little bored. But if you’re a parent, this is the perfect place to raise your kid,” he said. “And that couldn’t have been a more true answer.”
Meincke used to spend his days running along the beach, but now his time is focused on taking Ruth, who is almost 3, to explore Tulsa’s parks and the Discovery Lab, an interactive kids’ science museum.
The couple are expecting their second child in December. It’s a life milestone that Meincke says may not have happened in Los Angeles. In California, it costs nearly $300,000 to raise a child to 18. In Oklahoma, researchers estimate, it costs about $241,000, according to a LendingTree study this year.
“There was no way we were going to move into a house in Los Angeles unless we had roommates, and that’s not an ideal situation,” he said. “We were 37 when we left Los Angeles and it felt like we were at a point that if we wanted to have all those other things in life — children, a house — we need to make that shift.”
With Hollywood production activity and employment down while the cost of living rises, some film and TV workers are leaving Los Angeles — and California.
While remote work brought Rollins and Meincke to Tulsa, they’ve both since launched their own businesses. Meincke started a creative strategy and storytelling firm and works with companies across the country, and Rollins opened a consulting business.
“When I was [in California], I was so consumed with the process of day-to-day living — the traffic, getting places, scheduling things,” Rollins said. “Here there’s so much more space to think creatively about your life and to kind of set it up the way you want.”
Business leaders and local officials had struggled for years to come up with a way to keep college-educated workers in America’s heartland. A “brain drain” plagued the state for the better part of the 2010s as the educated workforce migrated to larger, coastal cities for higher-paying jobs.
Gradient is a large co-working space in downtown Tulsa, used by local workers.
Rather than focusing solely on keeping Oklahoma natives rooted in the state, Tulsa Remote — funded by the George Kaiser Family Foundation — sought to recruit new residents to diversify the city’s workforce, which was largely reliant on the oil and gas industry. They ended up creating one of the largest relocation incentive programs in the country, offering $10,000 for remote workers to move to the state for at least a year. The program also provides volunteer and socializing opportunities for new residents and grants them membership at a co-working space for 36 months.
“We really were looking to attract knowledge workers to the city of Tulsa, which we knew would help create an economy that was resilient for the future and prepared for what’s ahead,” said Justin Harlan, managing director of Tulsa Remote. “It was also this desire to really put Tulsa on the map for people, and if it’s the $10,000 that gets folks’ attention, that’s OK with us.”
Applicants must be at least 18 years old, be authorized to work in the United States, have full-time remote employment outside of Oklahoma, have the ability to relocate within 12 months and have lived outside the state for a full year before applying.
And the program isn’t just looking for people who see Tulsa as a stop on their way to somewhere else. It wants applicants who want to build a life in the city, Harlan said. As of 2024, 96% of Tulsa Remote members stayed longer than a year and 70% have remained in the city since 2019.
The program has proved to be beneficial for Tulsans too. For every $1 spent attracting remote workers, the program returns more than $4 to Tulsans through local spending, job creation and increased tax revenue, according to a recent economic report from the Upjohn Institute.
“The George Kaiser Family Foundation has really taken the mantle of place-making and more what I think my line of work considers nontraditional economic development,” said Andrew Ralston, who previously worked at the Tulsa Regional Chamber of Commerce. “The answer is never just recruit businesses and grow businesses locally. It’s always to do the work to make sure people want to live here, to make sure people are being recruited to bring a new population and new tax base in, and that, I think, was the principle behind it.”
Thousands more workers left California for job opportunities in other states than moved into the state, according to a recent report. High housing costs were a major factor in the migration.
For Rollins, she can finally answer the overarching question that people asked her before she moved: What’s in Tulsa?
For her, it’s fewer logistical challenges, a chance to build community, get involved and, ultimately, find love.
After five months in Tulsa, Rollins met her significant other at a trivia night set up by mutual friends. Her partner, whom she now lives with, made the journey from California to Tulsa for school during the pandemic.
“He grew up in Santa Cruz and was living 10 minutes from me down the road in Pacifica, but we never met in California,” she said. “We met in Tulsa.”
More From the Los Angeles Times
Podcasts
So-Cal Edison likely sparked the Eaton Fire. CEO Pedro Pizarro gives host Kate Cagle his pitch for the Wildfire Recovery Compensation Program amid lawsuits accusing the company of negligence.
In this special “Rebuilding L.A.,” Kate Cagle examines fire recovery and resilience. Featuring Rick Caruso on rebuilding the Palisades a year after the fires.
In this specially released bonus episode, An entire bank heist crew was caught – except for one man. And he could have maybe kept it this way if he hadn’t decided to blow up that gosh darn ATM. L.A. Times journalist Nathan Solis tells the story in this week’s bonus episode.
