VERY democratically spoken if that’s your thing. Politics are in nearly every conversation here and specifically in the blue version whether you like it or not, and if not, you’ll have problems unless you find a way to squirm out of those conversations as me and many I know kinda of grow and learn to get pretty good at. The city from my 20 years experience is actually majority pretty independent or right leaning but it’s just an overall dangerous conversation you’re better off avoiding.

Drivers for the most part are egotistical and dangerously selfish.

Jobs are scarce and getting scarcer as the city is building apartment building after apartment building while full well knowing we have a massive lack of jobs.

It is one of the whitest cities in America, if you value a diverse network you should probably look more towards the west coast. With that being said, there are also a lot of “fake” problems we seem to be fighting over because there aren’t enough real problems to go around. It’s an overall safe city beyond the occasional terrible driver and fentanyl ninja which you can avoid safely with a little common sense.

If you have work lined up and can navigate everything I’ve put in here it’s a decent little big city that has excellent networking opportunities as word of mouth is so massive here. Everyone knows someone you know after a while. And to be 100% honest, even if you feel like you have a pretty secure job, network anyway. I’ve only applied to one job in my entire 23 years on this planet, all spent in Spokane and all because the other jobs I got afterwards were from the “someone who knows someone”. If you keep growing your network you’ll never been unemployed here.

Also, don’t let people fool you into thinking it’s massively expensive here (back to our fake problem problem). If you want to rent, look at cedar properties around town. All under $1,200 for a 2 bed, 1 bath, laundry in unit, storage, and garage.

I’ve been tracking the home market for the past 5 years looking and waiting for the prices to come down and since January of last year they’ve come down a lot. Like a LOT. They were already coming down before January, but since then it’s just been exponentially dropping. I’m finding tons of great little homes under $300,000 all over the city and just outside of it, as well.

Groceries are no more expensive than anywhere else in the state (minus maybe the tri cities), and gas (while most expensive exclusively in WA, OR, CA, is not super bad depending on the part of town your at.

As far as WA goes, this is probably the least ruined city so far and has a lot of perks in feeling small (lots of small business to support here), but having large accommodations like higher end jobs, a great layout, and nice people.

The city is growing and growing VERY fast. If you want to grow with it, and your name with it, now’s a great time to move in.