California migration patterns driving rural(ish) gentrification and, perhaps slowly, changes in local politics

The Los Angeles Times reported a few days ago under the headline, "Wealth, class and remote work shape California's new boomtowns, as people flee big cities," and the focus of the story is El Dorado County, California (population 181,058)--specifically the planned (but unincorporated) community of El Dorado Hills, population 42,000.  

Among the new booming counties is El Dorado, the birthplace of the California Gold Rush, which has absorbed a flood of Bay Area transplants who, in search of affordable homes, well-rated schools and access to the outdoors, have packed up their U-Hauls and headed northeast.

“It’s really just an opportunity for people who have felt pent up and squeezed in the Bay Area and felt handcuffed that they had to stay there,” said Jon Yoffie, a real estate agent in El Dorado Hills.

Many recent arrivals are young families and retirees looking for more land or following their adult children.

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El Dorado County has held on to its small-town vibe, residents say, but newcomers are making it both more expensive and more diverse.

Bill Roby, 67, and his husband James moved to El Dorado County from the Bay Area in 2005, where they settled on six acres in Shingle Springs, a rural part of the county with larger plots and open space.

“It’s a very rural environment where I can’t even see my neighbor’s home,” said Roby, who, like the majority of El Dorado County residents, lives outside of the two incorporated cities of Placerville and South Lake Tahoe.

Before moving, Roby, who worked as an operations manager for a nonprofit organization, felt that he was always competing for room. Now the executive director of the ‎El Dorado Community Foundation, Roby said he has seen not only a dramatic surge in the number of people migrating to the region since 2020, but also a heightened degree of civic engagement. In the last year, Roby said, there has been “a lot of scrutiny” over local positions, such as who is being chosen as the commissioner of a Board of Supervisors committee.“People have time, they are paying attention and they’re raising ideological concerns,” he said. “I think that encapsulates the big conversation going on in El Dorado County: Where does the community see itself?”

Though he hasn’t experienced animosity, Roby has heard some locals say that they want to maintain their region’s more conservative, underdeveloped aura, and fear that newcomers are changing that character. Some 41% of active voters in El Dorado County are Republicans, according to 2020 data from the county’s election department, while 31% are Democrats. Another 21% are registered with no party preference.

“Out of my three neighbors, two have moved because they felt the county was becoming too liberal,” Roby said.

Here's a prior post about sprawl in El Dorado County.  And a few other posts that are revealing about the county's politics are here, here, and here.   Note the "Preserve our Rural Lifestyle" heading in this El Dorado County post, from 2008.