Laura Landers/Corinne Gaston/Michael Boyink
- Tulsa is becoming a popular destination for those looking for a small city, big town atmosphere.
- Through programs including Tulsa Remote, former Californians and New Yorkers are moving to Oklahoma.
- Business Insider spoke to four Tulsa movers about the lower cost of living and friendly community.
Laura Landers, 32, was doing social media management strategy for a firm in Los Angeles when the pandemic hit. Her mental health began to decline, and she realized she needed to leave California fast. But she didn't know what her destination would be.
The Dallas native moved to Los Angeles a decade ago to be a professional dancer, and she said her first few years there were a dream. Living the transplant life had its benefits, she said, but once she switched to remote work, she started thinking of other options.
She briefly considered moving back to Dallas, but it wasn't a great fit. She visited other cities, never once thinking about Tulsa, a city of 400,000 in Oklahoma. Once she encountered Tulsa Remote, a one-year program offering a $10,000 grant and other benefits to those willing to move to and work from Tulsa, she applied, visited, and moved there in 2022.
"Tulsa was all the parts of LA that I loved because it's still a city, and I wasn't willing or ready to give up that city life, but it did have the small-town charm where everybody was super kind and genuine," Landers said. "LA is not necessarily genuine. People might be kind but it's a fake kind just to get through."
Over the last few years, thousands of Americans have moved to Tulsa. Some moved through Tulsa Remote, while others discovered the city on their own. For those moving through Tulsa Remote, the retention rate is around 76%.
Tulsa offers affordable living and lots of cultural activities to newcomers and has grown by nearly 17,000 residents between 2020 and 2022. But its growth isn't without a cost. Housing Solutions Tulsa found in its annual Point-in-Time Count that homelessness in Tulsa County rose 6.6% from 2022 to 2023. Additionally, the price of a one-bedroom home rose over 36% year-over-year, according to Rocket Homes, while Zumper estimates rent increased 5% year-over-year.
Business Insider spoke to four people who moved to Tulsa from California, Michigan, Missouri, and Pennsylvania. All agreed the city has surpassed their expectations and plan to live there for at least the next few years.
Laura Landers: Moved from Los Angeles
Within a month and a half of leaving LA, Landers and her husband found an 1,800-square-foot, three-bedroom, and two-bathroom house in Tulsa and moved in January 2022. She said the cheapest three-bedroom home she could find in her part of LA was a 1,200-square-foot home that was around $600,000 but jumped to $1.2 million during the pandemic.
She decided this would be the opportunity to begin her own clothing line, expected to launch next year. She said the lack of resources for up-and-coming entrepreneurs in her industry — for instance, fabric stores or manufacturers — has made the process a little harder, though she said Tulsa is an "entrepreneur city" with strong support networks.
She's also felt more empowered due to the lower cost of living, where she said dinners out are between 20 and 30% less, while gas is about half the cost and traffic is minimal compared to LA.
"What's really exciting about living in Tulsa is it's so affordable, and my mental health increased like never before," Landers said. "I was actually a person and not just the shell of a human."
Her husband also became an entrepreneur after moving to Tulsa as a professional bass guitarist. Both have met a community of fellow entrepreneurs through events and meetups hosted by Tulsa Remote. She said while every day in LA felt like survival, each day in Tulsa feels like thriving.
"Those people have been through life and culture, and they've gone through the same life switch that you are," Landers said, adding she hopes to stay in Tulsa indefinitely. "It's really amazing to have a very large community of people that kind of 'get it.'"
Corinne Gaston: Moved from Philadelphia
Corinne Gaston, 31, moved from Philadelphia three years ago through Tulsa Remote and works as an operations manager at a climate justice nonprofit — a job she found in a jobs group chat for the program.
Gaston said she's met like-minded people in and out of the program, leading her to take part in a musical last year. She also mentioned everyone is chatty, even in line at the grocery store.
She said Tulsa is also modernizing and growing fast, though she's still getting used to living in a more conservative state. She said locals told her Tulsa was almost a ghost town a decade ago, but there's recently been a huge boom in restaurants, bars, and shops.
She was able to afford a luxury apartment for $1,600 a month upon moving in 2020, and she saved up to buy a home last year. Her mortgage on her four-bedroom home was $1,200 for her first year, which she said is a lot cheaper than a comparable home in Philadelphia.
While she said the heat and thunderstorms are very intense in the summers, winters are pretty mild with the occasional windstorm. She's inclined to stay put for at least a few more years.
"Tulsa has been a really good place to just try something new or create or build something," Gaston said. "It almost feels like a catalyst."
Faith MacNeil: Moved from Lansing, Michigan
Faith MacNeil endured the brutal winters of Michigan for over two decades and watched as high-paying jobs in her area became more scarce and infrastructure fell apart. The former Lansing resident who was born and raised in Scotland said the lack of nightlife, things to do with family, and far commute from other cities pushed her to move.
After her daughters moved out, she did some research looking for a relatively inexpensive and smaller community. When a friend who moved to Tulsa invited her down, she decided Tulsa's suburbs were exactly what she wanted. The job market was strong, housing costs were low, and the rolling hills were appealing.
"I put my resume out for a couple of jobs while I was here for a week, and three days later I got a job offer," MacNeil, who works in IT, said. "They asked when I could start and I said two weeks."
She moved to Tulsa in February 2020 independent of the Tulsa Remote program. After living in an apartment for a few months, she bought a $185,000 home in Glenpool, a suburb 15 minutes from downtown, and she said she's been seeing a lot more housing being built in the suburbs.
To her surprise, there was plenty to do, from watching local hockey games to checking out the local farmers markets. Even spending time in green space in the city and gardening her home — luxuries she said she didn't frequently have in Lansing — has brought her peace of mind.
She's felt a lot more comfortable financially as gas, housing, and food costs are much lower than in Michigan, she said. She's noticed a lot of technology companies hiring more workers in or moving offices to Tulsa. She said the work culture is a lot calmer and more diverse than in Michigan, which she said was "very professional" and trended heavily toward manufacturing or farming.
"In Tulsa, they encourage you to have that work-life balance, while in Michigan, it was just go ahead and eventually burn out," MacNeil said. "For my mental stability, that was such a wonderful change of pace."
Michael Boyink: Moved from Missouri
Michael Boyink, 56, lived for eight years in an RV with his family roaming around the country. The Michigan native homeschooled his children in the RV and traveled across the country before moving to the Ozarks and taking an editing job at a local newspaper. In 2021, he left the paper and found a remote job as a managing editor at a global software integration company.
After leaving the paper, he said his family became almost completely removed from the community. He noticed some friends who also lived in an RV full-time eventually settled in Tulsa, and he decided to apply to Tulsa Remote.
Tulsa was a big city to Boyink, coming from a town of 2,000 residents, but he decided to move to the downtown loop of the city to have a walkable lifestyle. He found an apartment for around $1,000 a month.
He said a large majority of restaurants in the area are locally owned, and the music scene is thriving — there are events almost daily, and the city hosts museums including the Bob Dylan Center and Woody Guthrie Center. The family still needs to drive out of downtown for groceries, though he said the city on the whole is rather walkable.
He said Tulsa is experiencing increasing homelessness, especially as the city becomes more expensive. Additionally, the brutal heat last summer made it harder for them to get around and do everything they wanted.
But the community he's met has been very welcoming, and he said many people have seemed "generally pleased" that others want to move to their hometown. He's found community through the city's press club, and he's done all sorts of happy hours, bike races, and camping trips with those in and out of Tulsa Remote.
"I guess the downside of the upside is there's so much going on, and there's a big fear of missing out," said Boyink, who intends to stay in Tulsa for at least another year. "For every thing you put on your calendar, you feel like you're saying no to three or four other cool things."
Have you recently moved to a new state? Contact this reporter at nsheidlower@insider.com.