This is part of why I want details. I need a house under $100k. After looking at what that kind of money buys in Cali -- anywhere in Cali -- and looking at what it buys outside of Cali, I eventually concluded it made more sense to go elsewhere. If you can't afford at least $200k in Cali, you can expect it to be a shithole. It would undermine my fragile health and also need ten's of thousands of dollars worth of work. I am happy to buy a fixer, but not one that will ruin my health and my finances.
I don't even need employment prospects. I have alimony and I make my money online. So that wasn't even a factor, and, no, it didn't fly in Cali.
It really is the middle of nowhere, despite being the fifth most populous city in the state.
But, you say, how can that be: the bigger cities are all embedded in even bigger urban clusters [0]. Fresno is, well, in the middle of nowhere.
[0] And even the smaller central cities; Sacramento, is a little smaller than Fresno if you look at the city itself, but the metro area is a time and a half the Fresno metro area.
Anecdotally, a of my friend moved from the Bay Area to Fresno and explicitly claims it's in the middle of nowhere.
Music events at Woodward Park often attracted women in shorts or skirts and cowboy boots. Culturally, the city reads sort of like half a million farmers and ranchers decided to move to the suburbs.
It is a fairly unique city, with an international airport and multiple national forests nearby. But "check out the natural beauty of our great outdoors!" is typically a small town or rural marketing pitch, not the pitch of a major city.
Last I checked, it was the 5th largest city in California and I think the 34th largest in the US. So I think there are 20 US states that don't have a city of that size. The entire state of Wyoming, our least populous state, has about the same number of people as the city of Fresno, in the neighborhood of about a half million apiece.
Fresno is a very unusual city and I think most people can't really relate to it. I spent considerable time baffled by its terrible reputation and simultaneously trying to wrap my mind around the place. It isn't like most big cities.
It has a terrible reputation for air quality. I found that weird when I lived there because I could see the stars at night better than anyplace else I had lived. On the other hand, moving elsewhere has dramatically improved my health. So, in retrospect, I think there are serious environmental issues there, though I am not entirely sure what they are because I remain baffled by the idea that air quality there is extremely bad when the stars are so much more visible than I am used to.