and the hills down to the lake are fairly steep. Getting up them in the winter can be challenging.

"I find it interesting that people from California and Colorado seek refuge in freezing cold Duluth, while people from MN run to warmer climates."

I will be one of the climate movers you are talking about. I will retire in freezing cold Maine after a life in brutally hot Texas.

This winter has been unusually annoying, but I'll stick it out here rather than move to a southern state where the weather is getting hotter and the politics are medieval.

I am not a fan of winter, especially this year, but the other three seasons are quite pleasant. I am resolved to forever live only in blue states. Not into medieval politics and draconian laws.

Even if my Social Security is taxed (I only mention that because the wingnuts like to pretend that people are leaving the state in droves because of the taxes). Better to pay a bit more to live in a civilized state than in one of the more backward areas of the country.

Of course, I'll also be staying in the metro area.

shortages in reasonable multifamily housing -- and tying it to people landing with a lot of cash and buying up multiple properties.

Now it's the billionaires and investment corps buying everything in sight. I live in the equivalent of a FEMA house, not a permanent structure, I'm getting old and there's no place to move to even if I could afford it. Not looking good in the options for the aging.

we've got up here illustrate pretty clearly that Duluth and northeastern Minnesota are absolutely not "climate-proof."

Now there's one hanging out on my front porch, eating leftover cat food.

Mostly to establish my own private "climate arboretum", growing species from further south in our northern climate to act as an assisted migration biodiversity pocket. Most trees and shrubs only migrate a few miles a decade, and climate change is poised to start moving so fast that native trees will die out before more southernly species can move in to fill the empty niches. My 1.5 acre plot down here is already filling up fast with persimmons, pawpaws, Osage orange, tupelo, Carolina silverbell, bald cypress, sweetgum, sycamore, shingle oak, chestnut, Carolina allspice, tulip poplar, redbud, pecan, etc.

Since I originally grew up near St. Cloud and have 5 uncles with farms still in the area, I was looking up there at first. My dad had 120 acres there, and my love of environmentalism and planting trees started when I was a teenager in the 1990's. Then he sold the farm around 2013 and and the new owner clearcut everything I had planted for 20 years. I pretty much stopped talking to my dad after that.

Unfortunately, due to high tillable land prices, 20-40 acres of woods is already out of my price range around St. Cloud. Unless one of my uncles offers to sell me land at a discounted rate, I'll probably be looking even further north for my plot of heaven.

Hope you are successful in finding a plot to see it through.
Makes perfect sense.
God speed to your plot of heaven.