I’ll put in a couple of pennies on the cost-of-living, tourist, and hurricane issues.
COL is a little higher along southern coasts than it is inland in the south. But as Bodhi said, it’s much lower than it is in many other parts of the country, and generally closer to “heartland” COL than it is to more populated areas of the northeast or west coast. And as someone else mentioned, Florida’s lack of a state income tax is nice.
Tourists suck, no doubt. But they’re not all bad.
Side rant: The worst part about living with tourists is when those (in the minority) come into the communities in which we live and treat it like their personal party zone and waste basket. If I could get paid for all the trash that I’ve personally picked up off the beach left by out-of-towners, I’d be a millionaire. Please folks, enjoy the beautiful beaches. But be courteous to its full-time residents. And for goodness sake, leave it the way you found it. We don’t want your trash strewn all over it. Rant over.
The thing about tourism and the beaches is that people are generally only familiar with the communities that they’ve vacationed at, ie tourist meccas. The Destins and Panama Cities and Orange Beaches and Gulf Shores come to mind. Personally, you couldn’t pay me to live in one of those places (though OB isn’t half bad). But for every place like that, there are 5 or 10 quieter more family-oriented little beach communities that the rest of the world simply doesn’t know about. Unfortunately, at least 3 or 4 of those places won’t be the same for a long long time. Mexico Beach, Port St Joe, Apalachicola were all wonderful little places until a few weeks ago. I’ve been sort of hoping to vacay at Dog Island at some point, but looks like many (most?) structures there are significantly damaged. Which brings us to...
Hurricanes. True, the risk is unavoidable if you want to live along the Gulf or mid-southern Atlantic coasts. It all comes down to how much risk you’re willing to accept, and how much home insurance you’re willing to pay for. Since Michael, my wife and I have been back and forth numerous times to the affected region to try to help. And in the course of that, I’ve talked to so many people whose homes or businesses were destroyed, and whom had no insurance whatsoever. I just don’t understand living in a place that has that sort of risk, but choosing not to have a safety net.
Anyway, the good thing about where Bodhi went, as opposed to almost any other coastal location along the Gulf and mid-southern Atlantic coasts, is that the Jacksonville to Savannah area sees far fewer hurricane landfalls than just about any other location. It’s a function of the concave shape of the coastline. Most storms either hit farther south in Florida, or farther north in the Carolinas. Still, it’ll happen eventually, just much less often.
