When 42-year-old Eden Reilly visited Mexico in November 2020 — the year the world changed and the event industry collapsed — she didn’t anticipate eventually leaving behind everything she knew in Oakland and living on a farm in San Miguel de Allende, a city in the state of Guanajuato three hours north of Mexico City. But nearly two years later, she still hasn’t returned to California, nor have many other Bay Area tech workers and restaurateurs who crossed the border and started a new life there.
While conservative outlets have explicitly blamed California Gov. Gavin Newsom and inflation for this so-called exodus, former Bay Area residents like Reilly fled to Mexico for cultural, political and financial reasons. But, ironically, locals fear that young and wealthy Americans might already be gentrifying the area and bringing the housing crisis with them as a result.
“As of right now, I don’t feel any desire to be in the Bay Area or the United States,” Reilly says, citing the ongoing slew of mass shootings, the overturning of Roe v. Wade and the relentless housing crisis.
Aside from having to work day and night to survive, Reilly says she left Oakland because living in the “shadow of Silicon Valley” and seeing the homelessness crisis firsthand felt shameful. According to data released in February 2022, the city’s reported population of unsheltered residents rose to 3,337, while more than 7,000 residents are unsheltered in Alameda County. “It was an issue for me, like it weighed on me,” she says. “This isn’t something that I could just walk by every day and not think about.”
Since giving up her $100,000 salary and moving to San Miguel, a colonial city in Guanajuato, she says life has become significantly easier — and comparable in terms of quality.
Instead of working full-time as a general manager at event production company Outstanding in the Field, she freelances and takes on gigs all over the world. Sometimes, she’ll pack up her stuff and spend a week exploring port cities like Veracruz. Or, she’ll buy a nice dinner for $25 that would cost nearly $100 in the U.S. She also now lives in a two-bedroom, two-bathroom unit with a washer and dryer in San Miguel’s downtown area for just 700 U.S. dollars – meanwhile, Reilly had been living in a rent-controlled apartment in Oakland for $1,100 before that.
“The quality of life that I’m able to have there is amazing,” she says. “I don’t have to work to live, you know? I can have more balance in my life.”
Karina Rivera, a 35-year-old executive chef and San Francisco born-and-raised Mexico resident, also moved from Oakland to Guanajuato after finding an apartment for $250 per month. “I couldn’t afford to live in my house with my roommates anymore,” she says, nor could she continue living with her parents in Atlanta. Though she’s currently on a tourist visa and revisiting San Francisco every six months, she’s aiming to get dual citizenship since her father was born and raised in Mazatlan.
Up until recently, she too had been living in a romantic cobblestone neighborhood in San Miguel de Allende. The town of 70,000 reportedly has nearly 10,000 expats, many of whom are retirees — but that might all be changing. In the year and a half Rivera has lived in Mexico, she says she’s met a lot of remote and temporary workers coming from the U.S.
Her friend, Brent Coulter, who works in tech and most recently worked at Meta, moved to San Miguel on a whim right when the pandemic hit. He currently splits his time between Mexico and Austin, and says that relocating made perfect sense.
“I FaceTimed a friend I knew from Burning Man, and he was smiling and radiant and I was gaunt and depressed in my Mission apartment that I was overpaying for and I asked him straight forward, ‘Why are you so happy and who gave you the license? And what are you doing with your life?’” Back in San Francisco, he was cooped up and paying $4,000 per month, but now pays $1,000 for a three-story home.
Since moving to what he calls the “Brooklyn” of the neighborhood, he’s seen many of his friends — most of whom are remote workers, or “digital nomads” — float between San Miguel and Mexico City. According to Coulter, tech workers from the U.S., Canada and other cities in Mexico are networking and circulating through the area. However, he says that San Miguel is gentrifying and becoming more expensive.
“I’ve already felt prices shoot up significantly in the last year,” Rivera agrees.
The town’s locals are grimly aware of this, too.
In 2021, the Mexico Daily Post reported that the town, which has been referred to as the “Mexican Disneyland,” panders to “gringos” while forcing out locals. “When we first came to San Miguel it was a very small town,” the owner of Helado Santo, a local ice cream shop, tells YouTuber La Karencita. “We live in the San Antonio neighborhood, and the prices have gone up like crazy.” The owner says that now, apartments start at $500, which is far out of reach for the average person living and working in the area. According to DataMexico, as of 2021, the average monthly salary in the state of Guanajuato is about $200, in U.S. currency.
On platforms like TikTok, some users have critiqued expats who arrived in Mexico during the pandemic for living out “an odd fantasy,” explaining that the state is only cheap for foreigners who are able to harness the power of the Euro or the U.S. dollar. Meanwhile, as privileged Americans boast about their new, affordable lifestyles, Mexico is grappling with a dire economic crisis: The video says that poverty has actually risen by 2% between 2018 and 2020, and that 44% of the population is living in extreme poverty.
Earlier this year, a Vox report argued that that Mexico City in particular is becoming an amusement park for expats who are fetishizing the “magical” country. As a result, remote workers are fawning over it on platforms like TikTok and Twitter, declaring it a cheap and whimsical place to start life anew.
“It’s very noticeable,” Coulter says of the recent gentrification in San Miguel. While the city has always been a destination for retirees, the influx of young remote workers is changing it significantly. “What’s new is the younger crowd with this tech money coming in,” he continues.
He’s also aware that San Miguel natives might criticize him and accuse him of driving up prices in the area, but maintains that he plays an active role in the art community.
“There’s a really interesting cultural dynamic,” Coulter says. “Native people might be like, ‘You don’t represent the community, you’re just here to gentrify,’ but on the same token, it’s like well, OK, my house is open and I’m like hosting, you know, Mexican artists all the time who are coming here and have their boutique shops in San Miguel.”
Regardless, he doesn’t plan on leaving anytime soon, nor do Reilly or Rivera. Though Coulter splits his time between Mexico and the U.S., he says he wants to buy three houses: one in Mexico, one in the U.S. and one in Taiwan.
In some areas of Mexico, however, home prices are already skyrocketing.
Ornella Peduzzi of Hexedes Group, a company that helps expats move their families and businesses to other countries, says that houses in the Baja area have gone up significantly: One-bedroom homes in the Baja area currently cost between $70,000 and $90,000, and over the past two years, prices have risen by at least 20%.
Peduzzi believes that “nomad workers” alone haven’t driven up prices, but confirmed that Californians, Canadians and residents from other Mexican towns are flocking to cities all across the country regardless. Workers in the tech, restaurant and real estate industries are typically living there 6 to 8 months out of the year, seeking tranquil environments and more affordable lifestyles.
For now, it’s uncertain what Mexico’s changing landscape means for its native communities and longtime residents — except that these changes, whether welcome or not, are in motion.
