Editorial Board Chicago Tribune
If the state of Illinois kept score on millennials it poached from surrounding states, it could have counted Sara Niedzwiecki — temporarily. A Wisconsin native, she moved near Chicago shortly after college, envisioning city life as it’s portrayed in the movies: hip, adventurous, welcoming. Not for her, it turned out.
As part of a series on the accelerating exodus from Illinois, we’re tracking down expatriates (and potential expats) and telling their stories. From millennials to retirees, their narratives follow the same thread: Illinois is losing its promise as a land of opportunity. Government debt and dysfunction contribute to a weak housing market and a stagnant jobs climate. State and local governments face enormous pension and other obligations. Taxes have risen sharply; many Illinois politicians say they must rise more.People are fleeing. Last year’s net loss: 33,703. Among those who’ve left in recent years:
Sara Niedzwiecki, now 30, moved to the suburbs in 2010 just as millennials began to accelerate their departure. In two waves between 2011 and 2015, millennials led age groups in out-migration to other states, according to Internal Revenue Service data compiled by the Illinois Policy Institute, a right-leaning think tank. Illinois ranked second-worst in losing millennials and their dependents, behind New York.
Niedzwiecki, an accountant fresh out of college, worked in Libertyville for several years and then at a downtown location. Sure, it would have been nice to live in Lakeview or Bucktown with other 20-somethings, but she couldn’t afford it. So she endured a daily commute from the suburbs and tried to build a life.
It never happened. After years of watching her paycheck get sapped by rising rent and taxes, and after exploring options to buy a house and realizing she couldn’t afford that either, she moved back to Wisconsin. She got a better-paying job, left her $850-per-month basement apartment in the suburbs and bought a $148,000 two-bedroom condo in Madison with parking and a washer and dryer. Her property taxes are about $2,800 annually.
“I just felt like I was never going to get ahead in Illinois,” she said. “Six years of living there proved that.”
She grew up in Door County with her twin sister. Both women lived in Illinois before moving back to Wisconsin. A handful of their friends left Illinois, too, for Florida, California, Texas and Wisconsin. “I was super excited about trying something new and getting out of my small town,” she told us. “But Illinois was not feasible for me.” Instead, she has an affordable life in Madison. She hasn’t looked back.
Donald Felz, a lifelong Illinoisan who retired from a utility company in 2016, says a sinking home value and taxes drove him and his wife, Debi, out of Illinois. The Woodstock home they built in 2006 for $390,000, into which they put another $35,000, was losing value. This was to be the house where the Felzes would host grandchildren and putz in the yard. Instead, rather than put their retirement finances in further peril, they sold it in 2016 for $310,000. The property tax bill had climbed from $7,658 in 2007 to $8,340 in 2015. That’s not a huge rate of increase. But had their housing value remained at the purchase price, the taxes would have been nearly $12,500. A falling Illinois home value kept a high Illinois tax bill from rising higher.
The frustration, Felz said from his current home in Windsor, Colo., was more than taxes. It was how those dollars were spent: “If I could have seen some incremental improvement that followed the increases, then OK. I get it. I see it. But the roads were not getting fixed. The schools were still struggling. I couldn’t figure it out. The money was going somewhere.”
In Colorado, taxes on their home, valued at $510,000 and climbing, are about $4,000 a year.
Earlier this year, Felz returned to Illinois to visit his father. They spent evenings on the sofa watching TV and digesting the constant scroll of campaign ads from candidates running in the March primary election. That gave Donald Felz one more reason to appreciate his new home in Colorado: “We have term limits.”
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