Zillow says Gen Z is moving to Texas, but Michigan is way better | Opinion

I'd lived in Michigan for about a week when I found myself paging through the March 1, 2000 edition of the Metro Times as I sat in my car in a Ferndale parking lot, waiting for a friend. Among the week's offerings was a column examining then-candidate George W. Bush's enthusiasm for the death penalty that explained Michigan's longstanding disavowal of capital punishment, banned here since 1846 after neighboring Windsor hanged a man who, it turned out, had been innocent.

That was 24 years ago, but I vividly remember the sense of relief I felt. Born and raised in Alabama, I'd moved here from Louisiana, both states where the electric chairs had nicknames — "Yellow Mama" and "Gruesome Gertie," respectively — and for the first time, I was living in a state where my tax dollars wouldn't support state-sanctioned killing. That's not why I moved to Michigan, it just was a benefit I hadn't anticipated. I had been relieved of a burden I did not realize I was carrying.

These days, I'm not sure I could live, or pay taxes, in any state with the death penalty.

Particularly not Texas ("Old Sparky"), where 587 people have been executed since 1982, more than any other state in the nation. Including, in 2004, Cameron Todd Willingham, who was almost certainly innocent, and just last month, Ivan Cantu, about whose guilt serious questions had emerged. People convicted of murder in Texas are significantly more likely to be sentenced to death if the victim was white. Texas death row inmates are dispropotionately Black and Hispanic.

And I have a hard time squaring that with the news that more members of Gen Z are moving to Texas than any other state. Gen Z is widely regarded — and identifies — as the most diverse generation, the most educated, the most politically progressive and most focused on equity and racial justice. One recent survey found that more members of Gen Z identify as LGBTQ+ than Republican. Yet in 2022, more than 76,000 Gen Z'ers moved to deep red Texas, the real estate website Zillow found in an analysis of the U.S. Census' American Community Survey. California was second, with 43,913 new Gen Z residents.

Dead last? Michigan.

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I'm not fussed with you, Gen Z — when I was a young person, I sure wasn't looking at a state's progressive politics, or lack thereof, to decide where to move. I mostly cared about professional and social opportunities (I mean — a newspaper job and City Club) but I consider myself lucky to have landed in a state with policy I can be proud of. Gen Z, I want you to be better than me. (Also, my kid is one of you, and I can't stop myself from sharing my hard-won knowledge, even when you wish I wouldn't.)

So, let's talk about Texas.

Texas is a bad place to be a woman

After the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, the landmark case that rendered state laws banning abortion unconstitutional, Michigan leapt into action.

In Michigan, a near-total 1931 abortion ban was still on the books, but made unenforceable by Roe. With Roe gone, it was poised to become law again. Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and the state ACLU filed a pair of lawsuits challenging the constitutionality of the 1931 law, and Whitmer and other Democratic state lawmakers campaigned vigorously for a ballot amendment to make abortion and more broadly, bodily autonomy for women, part of the state constitution. Michiganders approved the ballot proposal in 2022 by a 13-point margin, and after Democrats won a legislative majority in the same election cycle, lawmakers repealed the 1931 law.

In Texas, lawmakers didn't have to hop to it.

In 2021, they'd passed what's called a "trigger law," common in conservative states: If Roe were overturned, most abortions would become illegal, with no further action required. So, after the Supreme Court's ruling, abortion in almost all circumstances became illegal in Texas.

Some Texans have sued, but without the precedent of Roe, they're out of luck. (Texas is also the state where a lawsuit challenging the legality of the abortion pill originated, and a lawsuit that might find personal protection orders against domestic abusers unconstitutional, both verdicts still pending ... but I digress.)

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Abortion rights aren't just about the ability to terminate an unwanted or nonviable pregnancy. They're about a woman's right to self-determination and bodily autonomy. A state that restrict's a woman's ability to decide whether, when or how to become a mother is a state that doesn't recognize women as fully human.

That's Texas.

It's also a bad place to be poor

The U.S. Congress passed the Affordable Care Act in 2010 ("Obamacare"), aiming to get more Americans access to health care by making private health insurance more affordable, and by offering states the ability to expand Medicaid, largely on the federal government's dime.

Most states chose to expand Medicaid, raising income eligibility for the federal health insurance program to 138% of the federal poverty level and broadening the eligibility criteria. That's what Michigan did, with a Republican governor and a Republican-dominated Legislature. Now, almost a million Michiganders get health coverage through the Medicaid expansion.

Texas didn't do that.

The Kaiser Family Foundation estimates that in the 10 states that didn't expand Medicaid, 1.5 million Americans don't have health insurance. About 40% of those uninsured people are in Texas.

Texas has stringent Medicaid eligibility standards for its bare bones program: To qualify, a Texan must be over 65, disabled, blind, pregnant or the parent of a child under 18 with, for a parent of three, an income of less than $344 a month. For non-disabled, non-pregnant, non-blind non-parents under 65, Kaiser warns, "there is no pathway for coverage."

This hit home when a relative back in Alabama who'd lost her job needed emergency dental care. I figured Medicaid would cover it — as an unemployed person, I thought, she was surely eligible. She would be in Michigan. But I'd forgotten some of the basic differences between Michigan and Alabama; like Texas, Alabama didn't expand Medicaid, and it doesn't cover dental care for most adult recipients, anyway.

In Alabama and Texas, if you're out of work and break a tooth, you're likely out of options. In Michigan, you can probably just go to the dentist.

Bad marketing, good policy

Those aren't the only problematic Texas policies. There are some problems, you might have heard, at the border, and the now more conservative Supreme Court just granted Texas state police broad authority to arrest and deport people it says have entered the country illegally, and Gov. Greg Abbott is investigating nonprofit organizations that provide humanitarian services to immigrants. Laws criminalizing sodomy, mostly used to target gay Texans, were overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court in the 2003 case Lawrence v. Texas, and the high court struck down laws barring same-sex marriage in 2015, but Texas still doesn't extend civil rights protections to all of its LGBTQ+ residents.

"Michigan: A great place to be poor or have an abortion" doesn't make for a great marketing slogan, but that's the thing: Most of the time, you don't know you're going to need the social safety net or access to abortion ... right up until you do. And if that happens, you're a lot better off in Michigan than in Texas.

But there's something else going on. If you're lucky, you'll never need Medicaid. But someone you love might. Or maybe they won't, maybe no one you have met or will ever meet will need Medicaid, but someone in your state does — in Texas, about 600,000 someones.

You can tell a lot about a culture by how it treats the most vulnerable.

Texas has a lot to recommend it: A bunch of cool cities, no personal income tax (it's worth noting that a social safety net costs money), and, if you like that kind of thing, warm weather. And in recent years, its demographics have shifted. An electoral map of the state's 2020 presidential votes can be misleading: A sea of red with scant islands of blue. But, like in most places, most Texas now live in cities (there's just lots and lots of non-city in Texas) and those cities — Austin, Houston, Dallas, Fort Worth, San Antonio — are significantly more liberal than the surrounding territory.

Obviously, I'd prefer young Americans to look around the country, do the math, and move to Michigan (it's nice here, really). But if you're not prepared to move to a place that aligns with your values, you ought to work to make your new home better. It's great to participate in and support community organizations that do good work. But there is no way around the fact that state and federal laws supersede the character or climate of your particular community. Register to vote, and vote in every election, even primaries. Get involved in movements and campaigns that can have a substantive impact on policy.

I believe that Texas will become a blue state in my lifetime. That would change the shape of this nation, and new Gen Z Texans can help make that happen.

Nancy Kaffer is the editorial page editor of the Detroit Free Press. She's Gen X, but appreciates Gen Z very much. Contact: nkaffer@freepress.com. Submit a letter to the editor at freep.com/letters.