Priced out of Atlanta, where to next?

My partner and I (both 30, work fully remote) moved to east Atlanta in March of 23 (from conservative BFE South Carolina). We signed a two year lease on our place, so the end of that is coming up in a few months. Over the last year+ life has had some changes and our financial situation hasn't really allowed us to take advantage of what Atlanta has to offer. I've been a bit disillusioned by it all. The food scene near me is incredibly hit or miss, unless you have $$. We are at the point financially where it's not worth being here if we can't even leave our house. This plus continuous landlord issues has convinced us that it's time to try to buy a house somewhere. With rent prices rising, I've been feeling really insecure about being completely priced out of rent in the next few years if things don't change.

With that in mind, we would like to buy a house somewhere. For an area to move to, what I'm looking for is:

• Liberal area (preferably in a blue or purple state)
• Restaurants/dining (particularly non-American food, Japanese, Korean, Indian, Mexican, Greek, Italian, etc.)
• Music scenic (for us we prefer rock, metal, indie)
• I'm not a huge fan of driving, I'd like to be within ~30 minutes driving distance of metro area (I'm from a rural and don't really want to be back in it)

Our house budget is ~215k and I am worried that's too low to actually have decent quality of life in the types of places I would prefer to be, but maybe reddit will surprise me!

I only have experience living in the South (NC, SC, and GA) but I am open to moving anywhere really, but would need to be near to a major airport in order to visit family if so.