Eventually you will run out of available, qualified local talent and you will need to hire someone from a coastal tech hub. Only most Californians/New Yorkers don't want to move to Salt Lake City, or Oklahoma, or Houston, or anywhere else in the middle. The flag is the same but the culture is drastically different.
I can assure you given vast experience that there's a severe underemployment problem in tech everywhere other than NYC SFO SV. Lack of talent is just not a serious issue.
The group think is there is "a" culture or political outlook for each area. The reality is its more multicultural and the difference is in the ratios. For example the LGBT community in Milwaukee is healthy, according to my friends in it, but its much smaller than SFO. If you just want to live the suburban kid raising life there's a lot more of them here, than in Manhattan, but that doesn't mean there's no flannel wearing hipsters at all LOL.
Regarding Houston, it's among the fastest growing cities in the US. People are moving there in droves from the coasts. It's also not even remotely as cheap as a lot of people think.
When you get south of Houston into the Clear Lake region Houston living gets much cheaper - but you run the risk of everything being obliterated by a hurricane.
You have to remember that lot of inner Houston is funded by oil money, so people are willing and capable of spending quite a bit of money on housing/meals.
You will never be so short of people that you will have to hire someone from SF or NY. Those places don't have an excess of programmers, they have a deficit, and it's one that is continually resupplied from middle America and overseas.
