EDIT: To be clear since apparently I did a poor job at making my thesis clear. The title is sarcasm and the lists in this article are not meant to be a tool for helping you decide where to move please do your own research based on your own life circumstances. The point of this article is to critique City Ranking Videos by showing how when you are a marginalized person you have to factor in certain things which people like Reese Martin or CityNerd or Alan Fisher are not thinking about—and how very very quickly your options are reduced and diminished when you are a marginalized person. 55 cities becomes 8-10 cities very quickly.
Anyway, to the original article:
There's a YouTube channel I love called CityNerd where this guy ranks cities in North America on various criteria in a dry monotone. Recently he did a list on "undervalued cities" and it was striking to me how many of them were in places I'd categorize as hostile for me to live in as a trans person. Some cities, like Milwaukee, WI; aren't outright hostile but their "blue state" still hasn't passed any laws protecting trans people from discrimination. So the map of the 2020 presidential electoral results is still not quite the only limiting factor that affects where trans people can wisely choose to live.
So I decided to play my own CityNerd game and look at cities in the US from the perspective of a transgender person looking for a new place to live after their home state became hostile due to moral panic, cultural backlash, and discriminatory legislation.
The United States of America is a very large federated country where all 50 states + various disenfranchised territories have vastly differing laws, in particular around anti-discrimination protections and healthcare access for transgender people. There have always been better and worse states to live in for trans people, but recently we've seen certain states become actively legally hostile in very dramatic ways: from laws that intentionally make trans healthcare more difficult or illegal to access, to the Florida DMV threatening to charge transgender people with fraud for 'misrepresenting' their sex on their driver's license application. Notably, Texas and Florida have become some of the most hostile states for trans people while also being two of the most populated states in the country.
This has created a sort of internal refugee crisis. Trans people make up 0.5 to 1% of the population, rather small! But these states are quite large. 1% of Texas is 305,033.01 people. 0.5% is still 152,516 people! These are medium sized cities worth of people. That's potentially a lot of trans people facing very strong pressure to get the fuck out of their home state as quickly as possible, just from Texas alone. Factor in Florida and all of the less-populated red states and you begin to see the growth of a small internal refugee crisis as trans people face very strong pressure to move to a very narrow range of places all at once.
Under American-style capitalism, housing is a commodity bought and sold on the free market with minimal regulations around pricing. The more people who want to live somewhere, the more expensive it will become. Even if new housing developments kept up with demand, which is disincentivized heavily by the American enshrinement of Homeownership as a financial investment, to build so much housing so quickly still has a highly disruptive effect on existing neighborhoods which, under this economic system, results in gentrification that displaces even more people and is used by landlords and real estate companies to jack up housing costs even when the whole point of increasing housing supply to meet demand is supposedly to bring housing costs down. There is, in fact, an economic impact to transphobic legislation and cultural backlash against trans people existing in public. That economic impact can be materially seen in a small labor drain upon areas pushing trans people out, and worse, a housing strain in the narrow range of places that will accept new trans residents coming in.
With the winding down of remote work opportunities, there are increasingly more and more places that people cannot afford to live in even though they want to, because there are no jobs that they can obtain to earn a living wage there. Many parts of the country, like West Virginia, are being depopulated by the lack of economic opportunity so severely that the government does things like offer a free university education to anyone who will agree to live in West Virginia after graduation for four year. Just because a place has affordable housing costs doesn't mean you can afford to live there if you can't find a decent job in the vicinity. Remote work made this more feasible, but this is decreasingly the case. As much as I love college towns, if you don't get hired at the college, the career opportunities are sparse in the town.
So, say you are a transgender domestic refugee. You need to get the fuck out of Texas, or Florida, maybe Utah or Iowa or some other state. What are you probably looking for?
-
A strongly blue state where transgender rights legislation and cultural acceptance is likely to be stable in perpetuity. Pro-trans legislation has been passed and is unlikely to be overturned. When you're picking up your entire life and moving it across the country, you don't want to put all of your eggs in a basket that'll go the way of your home state soon after.
-
A large, thriving, and growing economy where you can move there first and find a job [in your industry] later. For some, they feel there is no time to wait to get a job lined up ahead of the move.
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A preexisting sizable transgender community and subculture where you can meet new friends and build a social support network. If you know people there from the internet already, that's ideal, otherwise, you're in a new city by yourself. The presence of organized LGBT community spaces is important.
Unfortunately, everyone else in the country wants to live in a place ruled by bleeding heart liberals (who, while imperfect, do fund welfare and public infrastructure) with decent paying and abundant jobs too. There are not that many places that meet this criteria and they are not only expensive but becoming rapidly more expensive as more and more people seek to live there, including our domestic transgender refugees.
So what are the cities that our refugees are likely to consider? Remember, small college towns and minor cities might be more affordable but there's no guarantee that you can move there and find a job soon after to keep you afloat. Smaller populations also generally mean less potential to build a new support network, and our domestic refugees are more likely to already have more social ties from the internet living in larger cities with large trans communities. Domestic refugees are probably considering big cities only, or at the least their suburbs and satellites.
Here are the top 55 most populated cities in the US, with cities that do not meet these criteria struck out.
New York, NY
Los Angeles, CA
Chicago, IL
Houston, TX
Phoenix, AZ
Philadelphia, PA (Maybe! PA is a blue-leaning swing state!)
San Antonio, TX
San Diego, CA
Dallas, TX
Jacksonville, FL
Austin, TX
Fort Worth, TX
San Jose, CA
Columbus, OH
Charlotte, NC
Indianapolis, IN
San Francisco, CA
Seattle, WA
Denver, CO
Oklahoma City, OK
Nashville, TN
Washington, DC (DC does not self-govern so trans rights cannot be guaranteed)
El Paso, TX
Las Vegas, NV
Boston, MA
Detroit, MI (Rapidly shrinking economy)
Portland, OR (Infamously difficult to find work here due to lack of local industry)
Louisville, KY
Memphis, TN
Baltimore, MD
Milwaukee, WI (WI votes blue but has no legal protections for trans people against discrimination)
Albuquerque, NM
Tucson, AZ
Fresno, CA
Sacramento, CA
Mesa, AZ
Atlanta, GA
Kansas City, MO
Colorado Springs, CO (Infamously full of evangelicals)
Omaha, NE
Raleigh, NC
Miami, FL
Virginia Beach, VA
Long Beach, CA
Oakland, CA
Minneapolis, MN
Bakersfield, CA
Tulsa, OK
Tampa, FL
Arlington, TX
Wichita, KS
Aurora, CO (Infamously full of evangelicals)
New Orleans, LA
Cleveland, OH
Honolulu, HI (It is arguably unethical for non-indigenous settlers to move to Hawaii)
And just to be fair to how city boundaries get drawn weirdly and can skew these rankings, here's the top 50 MSAs by population, having removed all of the MSAs that are politically or culturally hostile to trans people, or which I already disqualified for some reason above.
New York–Newark–Jersey City, NY-NJ MSA
Los Angeles–Long Beach–Anaheim, CA MSA
Chicago–Naperville–Elgin, IL-IN MSA
Washington–Arlington–Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV MSA
Philadelphia–Camden–Wilmington, PA-NJ-DE-MD MSA (NJ is the safer bet than PA in terms of protective legislation)
Boston–Cambridge–Newton, MA-NH MSA
Riverside–San Bernardino–Ontario, CA MSA
San Francisco–Oakland–Fremont, CA MSA
Seattle–Tacoma–Bellevue, WA MSA
Minneapolis–St. Paul–Bloomington, MN-WI MSA
San Diego–Chula Vista–Carlsbad, CA MSA
Baltimore–Columbia–Towson, MD MSA
Pittsburgh, PA MSA (MAYBE!! PA is a blue-leaning swing state!)
Sacramento–Roseville–Folsom, CA MSA
Las Vegas–Henderson–North Las Vegas, NV MSA
San Jose–Sunnyvale–Santa Clara, CA MSA
Virginia Beach–Chesapeake–Norfolk, VA-NC MSA
Providence–Warwick, RI-MA MSA
Richmond, VA MSA
Fresno, CA MSA
Buffalo–Cheektowaga, NY MSA
If you want to live in a city or MSA with a sizable enough population that you feel confident you can find a job, that there will be other trans people there to befriend possibly, and where it's politically and culturally safe in a stable way to live there... you have between 19 and 20 options.
I'm not going to show this step but I'm next going to remove a few cities where I personally know someone who moved away from that city because "there are no trans people there"/"there is no significant trans community." Even if they're arguably viable, I think anecdotally trans people aren't considering them realistically.
So, let's combine these lists and now compare the living wage for this region, for a single adult with no dependents. So this is the bare minimum for a living wage in these cities. Enough to not be struggling all the time, but not enough to raise children (reproductive rights anyone?) or do things like buy a home to prevent economic displacement, or regularly go on vacation to travel and visit your friends and family who you've had to leave behind fleeing to a new city. I'm pulling numbers for the MSA in the event that living in the suburbs is arguably more affordable.
Greater Boston $62,483.20
SF/North Bay Area $62,129.60
San Diego $61,401.60
Seattle $59,696.00
NYC $58,323.20
LA $57,345.60
NoVA/South MD (Can't live in DC proper because disenfranchisement) $56,160.00
Denver $55,057.60
Sacramento $53,934.40
San Bernadino $53,601.60
Chicago $50,252.80
Philly $50,169.60
Baltimore $49,940.80
Providence $49,940.80
Richmond $49,088.00
Virginia Beach $47,361.60
Las Vegas $47,216.00
Minneapolis $46,779.20
Fresno $46,550.40
Bakersfield $44,595.20
Pittsburgh $43,950.40
crossed out a few more cuz let's be real when's the last time you heard about a big trans subculture in Bakersfield or Fresno. It's technically an option by our criteria plausibly but you probably don't know anyone there.
Minnesota apparently is starting to have a new conservative swing going on but it's still solidly always blue and they do have pro-trans legislation. So the cheapest on our list is about $22.48/hr full time to just have a basic living wage with no intentions to ever raise children or perhaps travel to visit friends and family now that you live in a new city on the other side of the country. At this wage you probably live in cheaper neighborhoods that'll get gentrified as more people move into these cities and if you don't want to get priced out and displaced you'll want to buy a house but a living wage is not a house buying wage. This is basic comfort.
A Tangent on the "Living Wage"
If you earn less than this, you're scraping by. You're not earning a living wage. For a lot of millennial and younger trans people, the living wage sounds like rich people money. It sounds luxurious and fancy. It is. not. The number is based on the average annual regional costs for Food, Child care, medical care, housing, transportation, taxes, internet, phone, etc. It's not factoring in luxuries. It's the amount you need to be able to consistently and comfortably pay for everything you need to living.
If you earn below a living wage, perhaps you aren't fully financially independent, or you're on welfare, or you're struggling in that welfare gap. You probably have a large quantity of adult roommates or something in order to make ends meet. It's highly unlikely that home ownership, children, or retirement are on the horizon for you unless something improves—or unless you accept a level of precarity and instability associated with negative physical health outcomes. My friend Vin wrote a thread on X about how hard it is to imagine the gulf in standard of living. Among trans people who I know in my city, I am pretty sure I earn among the most of any of them, and I don't earn much at all compared to literally anyone working in the STEM fields. If you earn above the living wage in the trans community here, you are regularly spending a lot of that extra money quietly helping out friends who live below the living wage.
We've normalized a lot of things we all see as necessary to make ends meet that, in the past, would be seen as marked signs of personal financial failure, especially to be doing well past young adulthood. I don't think I know anyone else in this city who is trans and lives alone besides myself. Being older than 30 and having not just one but 3+ adult roommates is something we've normalized now but that is a four income household. That is not normal among the cishets of older generations. We have normalized the degree to which we all suffer from the same array of chronic illnesses and disabilities which are all associated with prolonged stress and trauma. We have normalized a very low quality for the basic items we use, like shoes or furniture. Everything is old and second-hand and used until it breaks so bad that it is unusable.
These numbers for the living wage may seem tremendously large. The minimum wage in Pennsylvania is only $7.50/hr but the minimum for a living wage is $50,000?! That's $24.03/hr! The living wage is nearly 300% of the minimum wage! I mean, when I was earning $47k in Philly I was living an OK life... but inflation has happened since then and I had three adult roommates working full-time... and my only savings was actually a form of debt. A living wage is supposed to offer you a certain amount of stability such that you're not constantly worrying about money.
People certainly do live below a living wage. Most Americans actually do. But they deserve better. Everyone deserves better than that.
Now, say you work in a highly specialized field in Greater Boston and there's a lot of jobs competing for your talent. You can sort of look at these salaries as they are relative to the living wage in Greater Boston. A salary of $95,000 can be expressed as "The Living Wage + 34.2% of the living wage." In Greater Philadelphia, $95,000 is "The Living Wage + 47.1% of the living wage." That's a pretty decent salary in this city, but substantially less impressive in Boston. It's hard for me to imagine, from my vantage point of only earning 22.8% more than the living wage what it would be like to earn more than twice as much beyond the living wage! Some people are earning $300,000?! What?! And that's not even considered to be putting you among the "super rich"?! It's an imperceptibly tiny wedge of a the income of a member of the bourgeoisie?! What?! How!!! I feel so rich earning $65k!
Evidently, from looking at, the housing market for instance, a lot of people clearly are earning even more than 47.1% beyond the living wage. I don't know how there are all those people but apparently they exist. Buying a house in Boston means spending nearly a million dollars. Enough people are doing that regularly enough that you're able to sell even very smell condos for that much. It's kinda hard to wrap your head around! Especially since the median person in Philadelphia only earns a living wage plus 13%, and 22% of the city lives below the poverty line... and then on a global scale a "living wage" in any US city puts you among those living most luxuriously on the entire planet. And yet a lot of people earn more than 100% beyond the living wage!! Or even 1000% of the living wage!! Holy crap!!
There's 8 billion people on the planet, and the breadth of living standards is pretty mind boggling. I am always very aware of how many people are doing far better and far worse than me because of the careers I've had. Very few people ever truly feel "rich" even as they are perceived as "rich" by so many people doing worse off than them. You are always aware of your own hardships more than anyone else ever could be. It's also easy, when you start doing better than before, to not notice how things have changed. I felt like I was living it up pretty comfortably when I was earning $29k in Western MA, but I had adult three roommates, bought prepared meals less than once a month, and was mostly eating variations on rice and beans for every meal. These days, I live alone, I buy lunch from a halal cart every single work day, and I get takeout so often that DashPass does actually save me money overall. And yet often I meet people who are shocked that I've never like, visited Europe or gone to Disney World. For me, those sound like once in a lifetime adventures I'd have to save up for years and years to afford as like, a life goal? Bizarre that it's so common that some people see it as a universal experience. I regularly have interactions with people discussing certain luxuries as so universal that it makes me feel poor. I've felt fancy and rich for buying a new queen sized mattress to sleep on, only for people working in STEM to call it an uncomfortable cheap bed off a no-name brand's website on the internet. It had been my first time not buying a used mattress for $50 from someone who might as well have been willing to pay me to get rid of it for them. I've had many moments of feeling poor when I compare myself to people earning $100k+/year, and I always have to tell myself "I am not poor. I have been poor and it was not like this. I am not inadequate. I am rather normal."
Another thing worth factoring into cost-of-living and living-wage is that more expensive cities do tend to have better Urban Fabric which when good enough can eliminate the need to own a car which does bring down transportation costs substantially. CityNerd has some good videos on this. The MIT Living Wage calculator factors in $10,000+/year for transportation for people living in Greater Boston. But a monthly LinkPass is $90. That 10% the annual transportation costs of someone with a car. If you live in a location that lets you knock off $9000 from your annual transportation costs, it make mean your housing is $9000/year more expensive... but if not... then the Living Wage can be $9000 less.
Back to Autistically Ranking Cities
So, we have our 16 trans-friendly cities ranked by their living wage. The next CityNerd-esque thing to do would be to add WalkScores, BikeScores, and TransitScores! :)
| City/MSA | Living Wage | Walk Score | Transit Score | Bike Score |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Greater Boston | $62,483.20 | 83 | 72 | 69 |
| San Fran-Oakland | $62,129.60 | 89/75 | 77/57 | 72/65 |
| San Diego | $61,401.60 | 53 | 37 | 43 |
| Seattle | $59,696.00 | 74 | 60 | 71 |
| NYC | $58,323.20 | 88 | 89 | 69 |
| LA | $57,345.60 | 69 | 53 | 59 |
| Arlington / idk College Park? | $56,160.00 | 71/53 | 59/44 | 72/70 |
| Denver | $55,057.60 | 61 | 45 | 72 |
| Sacramento | $53,934.40 | 49 | 34 | 67 |
| Chicago | $50,252.80 | 77 | 65 | 72 |
| Philly | $50,169.60 | 75 | 67 | 67 |
| Baltimore | $49,940.80 | 64 | 53 | 53 |
| Providence | $49,940.80 | 76 | 47 | 61 |
| Richmond | $49,088.00 | 51 | Literally 0  | 51 |
| Las Vegas | $47,216.00 | 42 | 36 | 46 |
| Minneapolis | $46,779.20 | 71 | 55 | 83 |
| Pittsburgh | $43,950.40 | 62 | 55 | 55 |
These are weird fucky numbers because we're taking culture and politics into account. DC-proper is probably a great place to be trans! But it's not politically stable since it isn't entirely self-governing. My living wages are calculated based on the full MSA but WalkScore only gives me numbers for specific municipalities. The more walkable parts of Philadelphia are going to be more expensive than other parts, but the living wage calculates based on the entire city not just the walkable parts.
It's also notable that a lot of these cities are rapidly becoming more expensive as their urban fabric improves. Minneapolis looks like a really fucking good deal based on this chart, and like maybe all trans people should be moving to Minneapolis, but as CityNerd mentioned in his latest video, gentrification is fuckin' on overdrive in Minneapolis right now and the % increases year over year are crazy. 1.4% in only one year for overall cost of living! It won't stay the most affordable trans-friendly city for long.
Trans people as harbingers of housing apocalypse
Trans people have less than half the states in the country that are "safe" to move to. Which, honestly, is a lot better than it used to be in terms of legal protections, but it's also harder to go deep stealth than it used to be. 23/50 states protect trans people in employment and 21/50 in housing. We've got 16 cities where you can probably do OK just moving there with no job lined up and find a trans community and work to support you. The great internal trans migration situation affects the housing market and becomes an early warning sign of gentrification. How many of us can truly afford to live and stay in these 16 cities, and who are we displacing when we do? The longer you live somewhere, the more people you know who get Priced Out. The local trans community's average income drifts higher and higher and the local trans culture becomes dominated by STEM workers who are willing to spend thousands of dollars on a couch they'll only use for one or two years. They may or may not allow you to sleep on that couch. Decreasingly does this become a good candidate city for the transgender refugee facing a precarious life. If you grew up in a more conservative place, it is more likely you have more conservative parents who will not financially support you—if you were fortunate enough to be born to parents who had money in the first place. Either way, you are not someone looking to take the financial risk of moving to a city you can't afford without a job lined up.
These cities come to lose their reputation as hubs of trans culture, where you'll want to move to when fleeing where you are. People used to speak romantically of Brooklyn, Oakland, and Seattle. Now those names are spoken like epithets from the same people now living in Philly and Chicago.
People often call this the "queer diaspora" or "queer nomadism." There is this sense of "everyone is moving to the same city to be among other trans people." But that city rotates as the last one becomes Unaffordable and the only people left living there are people who are quite wealthy, who don't need the community to survive, whose material interests align more with their employer than with the Starbucks barista. There is this feeling that the community we've built in the city we live in now will be inherently temporary until everyone gets priced out of this place too. Everyone says "Well, when I can't afford Philly anymore, maybe I'll try living in...."
Let's strike off the cities which have already been burnt through by this "queer nomadism."
Greater Boston
SF/North Bay Area
San Diego
Seattle
NYC
LA
DC
Denver
Sacramento
Chicago
Philly
Baltimore
Providence
Richmond
Las Vegas
Minneapolis
I... have a hard time imagining everyone moving to Sacramento or Las Vegas, and San Diego is already extremely expensive so I don't think we're going to see a big convergence upon San Diego (or anywhere in CA) any time soon.
Greater Boston
SF/North Bay Area
San Diego
Seattle
NYC
LA
DC
Denver
Sacramento
Chicago
Philly
Baltimore
Providence
Richmond
Las Vegas
Minneapolis
Now, this list doesn't include some of the cities we struck out for not having significant trans community yet and there's always hope that some places, like Wisconsin which votes blue in presidential elections but has no legal protections for trans people, might become more trans friendly in the future. But, for now, it looks like we have 8 cities left for our nomadic journey before we run out of cities. Denver, Chicago, Philly, Baltimore, Providence, Richmond, Pittsburgh, and Minneapolis.
The best way to live is probably to try and get a job lined up in a trans friendly state but outside of a major city and then move there and have a small but tight knit community. Some college town or small city where you have loved ones. Escape the cycle of gentrification. No longer feel that your very act of living where you can afford to safely live is an inherently violent act upon the community you have moved into. No longer watch everything you came to love about your new home be built and unbuilt as your very presence is utilized by real estate agents to market the neighborhood as trendy, artsy, and hip. An excuse to drive up rent.
But, there you go. The top eight cities for transgender refugees in the United States. Here, let me arbitrarily rank them based on cost of living and ability to live without a car since that makes it more affordable too.
| Rank | City/MSA | Living Wage | Walk Score | Transit Score | Bike Score |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Minneapolis | $46,779.20 | 71 | 55 | 83 |
| 2 | Philly | $50,169.60 | 75 | 67 | 67 |
| 3 | Chicago | $50,252.80 | 77 | 65 | 72 |
| 4 | Baltimore | $49,940.80 | 64 | 53 | 53 |
| 5 | Pittsburgh | $43,950.40 | 62 | 55 | 55 |
| 6 | Providence | $49,940.80 | 76 | 47 | 61 |
| 7 | Denver | $55,057.60 | 61 | 45 | 72 |
| 8 | Richmond | $49,088.00 | 51 | Literally 0 | 51 |
| 9 | Sacramento | $53,934.40 | 49 | 34 | 67 |
Hopefully by the time these are all unlivably expensive there will be new cities that have become more trans friendly and aren't too expensive yet. I'm looking at you... Milwaukee...
