Californians flee to Montana and Idaho for off-grid homes with doomsday bunkers

Californians, tired of fleeing the state, are buying homes in safer states offering rural, open spaces with apocalyptic-style underground bunkers stocked with guns and ammunition for added safety.

Resettlement consultant and former U.S. Marine Todd Savage told the California Post that 80 percent of his clients are from the Golden State and are looking to escape “high taxes, high crime, low freedom and blue-haired liberals.”

The 55-year-old said: “They’ve had enough, so they vote with their feet. My clients want to raise their children in a city where people are not kidnapped and murdered, with drugs and all kinds of lawlessness. They say: let’s go somewhere where we will be treated as citizens and not as subjects.”

“They want to take back control of their lives. People on the left are also fed up, which is very surprising. People just want to be free.”

He cited a recent newly married “affluent” California couple; online business owners looking for a safer place to live and raise a family, who purchased 20 acres in Idaho with chickens, goats and cows.

A “nice house” in northern Idaho and northwest Montana on 10 to 20 acres can cost between $750,000 and $1.25 million, Savage says — a significant discount from California’s eye-popping real estate prices.

One of his companies, Strategic Relocation, offers clients “disruptive real estate in times of danger.”

He added: “My clients are leaving the city to live somewhere safe. They will build an off-grid home with a bunker, guns and ammo on a sustainable farm.”

While previously its clientele tended to be people “ready to retire and move from a blue state to a red state,” today 70% of its clients are between the ages of 30 and 50.

The previously most cited reason residents fled California was stratospheric taxes, Savage says – but “rampant” crime is now the biggest obstacle.

“And they can’t defend themselves in California,” said Savage, who also runs Survival Realty. “You can’t necessarily carry a gun everywhere you need to. It’s not a fundamental position.

“If you go into a self-defense scenario and you unfortunately have to shoot your attacker, they want to sue the victim. That’s insane.”

A father of five, Savage moved from the Bay Area to Idaho in 2006 and cited places such as Coeur d’Alene, Sandpoint and Bonners Ferry in the northern part of the Gem State as desirable.

He described the area as “like Lake Tahoe without the liberals.”

He continued: “We have two giant lakes. We have a world-class ski mountain. And we have freedom. I live in a county where I can build a house without a building permit.

“Everyone gets along. People respect each other here.”

Demand for a remote lifestyle has also increased since the United States launched a military attack on Iran in February. “Customers no longer trust any part of government,” Savage said.

“They want that freedom that we had in the ’40s and ’50s. They just want to raise their family the way they want and live a good life and you really can’t do that in California anymore. It’s a nanny state.”

Another benefit of the family lifestyle is that guests can grow their own food “because of what happens to the food supply.”

Savage’s harshest criticism was aimed at the state he previously lived in and its largest, sprawling city.

“They’ve spent $24 billion to address the homeless crisis over the last few years in California and it hasn’t worked,” he said. “For that amount, you could build a city and give everyone a small house.”

And of the City of Angels, he proclaimed: “I can’t take my children for a walk in downtown Los Angeles without fear of being murdered, kidnapped or shot.” »

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