it is a proxy for jobs and a large labour market and choice, even for poor people. Eureka doesn't have one, yet it commands prices of a mid sized metro.

CA is overpriced by a long shot

I don’t have a horse in this race, but must point out that Eureka sits directly on the Pacific Coast of the mainland United States, which adds significant desirability to a town that is admittedly best known for having a lot of tweakers.

(In fact Eureka is fairly centrally located on the coast, which is kind of cool, too. I’d want to live in Arcata instead because less tweakers. But Arcata isn’t directly on the coast, so you can’t really compare them)

This is really pedantic, but Eureka isn't really directly on the coast either, it sits on the far side of Humboldt Bay and is shielded by an isthmus that is mostly empty land. That said the coast is a 10 minute drive (and maybe 25-30 minute drive for Arcata)

As for the populace... they don't call it Eutweaka for nothin

The more we narrow our focus the less meaningful the discussion. Whether Eureka is overpriced is a digression. The parent post to this whole offshoot is implying that comparing a carefully chosen podunk town in California with one of the only two big cities in the entire state of NC shows why people are leaving CA.

Eureka can be overpriced while the overall thesis remains carefully constructed malarkey. NC has grown by 300% in the last century while CA has grown by 900% in the same period. More recently NC has grown at about 1% per year over the last decade. California grew similarly over the same period until 2016 when it started to slow down. Its barely a blip in the graph and needs no complicated explanation.