Looking for a New Home

Would we end up living here?

In The Bleak Town Killer, my main character, Hazel, lives in what used to be Seattle in a severely climate-changed world. In this world, Washington isn’t a terrible place to be. Yes, the weather is more extreme, but as it was a mild place for weather before, it’s not horrific. They can grow things and survive.

We intend to move next year, and we’d like to find a place that we can literally weather some storms. My dream has always been to live at the beach, waterfront if possible. You can understand I have had to shelve that dream, and find a new dream.

Our first decision is to leave the US and move back to New Zealand. Who knows if that will be a better place to hold out in the changes coming up? I hope so. It is a sub-tropical through to temperate climate, so it is mild. I hope it might be shielded from the worst weather changes, but only time will tell. Already coastal areas are seeing storm surges, and choices are being made about building sea walls.

We have a well-established welfare state (a boogie man in the USA - socialism!) and culturally I think it is more supportive place of all people. It hasn’t been untouched by neoliberal policies over the years, so there are problems, mostly around housing. Guns are less prevalent and the culture is that they are for hunting not for self-defense.

I always thought New Zealand is not a bad place to be with not much money - minimum wage is a lot higher. There is universal healthcare and tertiary education is a lot cheaper. Nearly all places lend themselves to having a food garden year round, and there are so many great free things to do. Being a small narrow country, you’re never too far from a forest or a beach, but being an island nation, food is more expensive and seasonal. Food quality is better, mostly grass-fed beef and dairy, less huge factory farms.

Next is to work out the area. We want to move to a smaller town of about 50,000 people. There were a couple of towns that interested us, so we visited them, went to open homes, researched flooding and earthquake risks, looked at the infrastructure, healthcare options, schools.

We ended up finding our place where the housing is more affordable (although still relatively expensive), wonderful farmers markets, great schools, an airport, great biking infrastructure and being smaller makes it extra-easy to get around by bike. It has a friendlier atmosphere to a big city and we know a few people there already. It looks like there is quite a lot of work on offer as well, if we need it.

It is a place that many different crops are grown - fruit, grapes for wine, wonderful vegetables. It has decent rainfall, on the mild side for a semi-tropical country - although that is changing. I discovered that there were floods there on the outskirts of town a few years ago. The river heading to the ocean burst its banks, so we won’t live near that river.

So, we’ve found our town, now we have to find our area within that town. We don’t want to live down on the flat as it is low, and I don’t want to be in a place that has a flood risk and it's a liquefaction zone (earthquake issues). We could be up on a steep hill in the center of town or on the outskirts with a more land, or about a half hour out of town in a rural area. Decisions, decisions!

Have you thought about where you want to settle to weather the coming storms and changes?