• Re: California exodus continues, with L.A., San Francisco leading the w

    From Going Woke? Dump That State!@21:1/5 to governor.swill@gmail.com on Wed Sep 6 01:16:38 2023
    XPost: alt.news-media, alt.journalism, alt.politics.libertarian
    XPost: talk.politics.guns

    In article <ud86ft$24nkn$26@dont-email.me>
    <governor.swill@gmail.com> wrote:


    Very happy to see Swallwell fail after his immature ignorant behavior with a Chink whore spy.

    Monkey Pox, right on time to give Democrats an excuse to cheat in the next election.

    After living in the Bay Area for nearly seven years, Hari
    Raghavan and his wife decided to leave for the East Coast late
    last year.

    They were both working remotely and wanted to leave California
    because of the high cost of living and urban crime. So they made
    a list of potential relocation cities before choosing Miami for
    its sunny weather and what they perceived was a better sense of
    safety.

    Raghavan said that their Oakland house had been broken into four
    times and that prior to the pandemic, his wife called him every
    day during her seven-minute walk home from the BART station
    because she felt safer with someone on the phone. After moving
    to Miami, Raghavan said they accidentally left their garage door
    open one day and were floored when they returned home and found
    nothing had been stolen.

    “We moved to the Bay Area because we had to be there if you want
    to work in tech and start-ups, and now that that’s no longer a
    tether, we took a long hard look and said, ‘Wait, why are we
    here again?’ ” Raghavan said.

    He said there wasn't much draw in California's quality of life,
    local or social policies, or cost of living. "That forced us to
    question where we actually wanted to live," he said.

    An acceleration of people leaving coastal California began
    during the first year of the pandemic. But new data show it
    continued even after lockdowns and other COVID restrictions
    eased.

    California ranks second in the country for outbound moves — a
    phenomenon that has snowballed during the pandemic, according to
    a report from the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, which tracked
    data from moving company United Van Lines. Between 2018 and
    2019, California had an outbound move rate of 56%. That rate
    rose to nearly 60% in 2020-21.

    Citing changes in work-life balance, opportunities for remote
    work and more people deciding to quit their jobs, the report
    found that droves of Californians are leaving for states like
    Texas, Virginia, Washington and Florida. California lost more
    than 352,000 residents between April 2020 and January 2022,
    according to California Department of Finance statistics.

    San Francisco and Los Angeles rank first and second in the
    country, respectively, for outbound moves as the cost of living
    and housing prices continue to balloon and homeowners flee to
    less expensive cities, according to a report from Redfin
    released this month.

    Angelenos, in particular, are flocking to places like Phoenix,
    Las Vegas, San Diego, San Antonio and Dallas. The number of Los
    Angeles residents leaving the city jumped from around 33,000 in
    the second quarter of 2021 to nearly 41,000 in the same span of
    2022, according to the report.

    California has grappled with extremely high housing prices
    compared with other states, according to USC economics professor
    Matthew Kahn. Combined with the pandemic and the rise in remote
    work, privileged households relocated when they had the
    opportunity.

    "People want to live here, but an unintended consequence of the
    state’s environmentalism is we’re not building enough housing in
    desirable downtown areas," Kahn said. "That prices out middle-
    class people to the suburbs [and creates] long commutes. We
    don’t have road pricing to help the traffic congestion, and
    these headaches add up. So when you create the possibility of
    work from home, many of these people ... they say 'enough' and
    they move to a cheaper metropolitan area.”

    Kahn also pointed out that urban crime, a growing unhoused
    population, public school quality and overall quality of life
    are driving out residents.

    “In New York City, but also in San Francisco, there are all
    these fights about which kids get into which elite public
    schools," he said. "The rich are always able to hide in their
    bubble, but if the middle class looks at this quality of life
    declining, that’s a push factor to leave."

    Redfin chief economist Daryl Fairweather cited a June report
    that tracked the change in spending power of a homebuyer on a
    $2,500 monthly budget. While 11.2% of homes in Los Angeles were
    affordable on that budget, using a 3% interest rate, that amount
    swelled to about 72% in Houston and about 50% in Phoenix.

    “It’s really an affordability problem,” Fairweather said.
    “California for the longest time has prioritized single-family
    zoning, which makes it so people stay in their homes longer
    because their property taxes don’t reflect the true value.
    California is the epicenter of where the housing shortage is so
    people have no choice but to move elsewhere.”

    While California experienced a major population boom in the late
    20th century — reaching 37 million people by 2000 — it's been
    losing residents since, with new growth lagging behind the rest
    of the country, according to the Public Policy Institute of
    California. The state's population increased by 5.8% from 2010
    to 2020, below the national growth rate of 6.8%, and resulting
    in the loss of a congressional seat in 2021 for the first time
    in the state's history.

    Although California has relied on immigration to offset its
    population decline for the past two decades, that flow has also
    shrunk, according to UCLA economics professor Lee Ohanian.

    Delays in processing migration requests to the U.S. were
    compounded during the pandemic, resulting in the lowest levels
    of immigration in decades, according to U.S. Census Bureau data.

    Estimates showed a net increase of 244,000 new immigrants
    between 2020 and 2021 — roughly half the 477,000 new immigrant
    residents recorded between 2019 and 2020 and a drastic reduction
    from more than 1 million reported from 2015 to 2016.

    The state is also seeing a dwindling middle class, said Ohanian,
    who cited a report from the National Assn. of Realtors,
    outlining that the national median home sales price has reached
    $416,000, a record high. Meanwhile, California’s median home
    price has topped $800,000.

    “[California is] at a risk for becoming a state for very, very
    wealthy people and very, very low earners who receive state and
    local and federal aid that allows them to be able to live here,”
    Ohanian said. “We should worry about those in the middle who are
    earning that $78,000 household median income and is, at the end
    of the day, really struggling, especially if they have interest
    in buying a home.”

    Los Angeles County, in particular, has suffered from slowed
    population growth, as have rural parts of the state, while
    Orange County, Sacramento and some parts of the Bay Area have
    managed to see some gains, the Public Policy Institute of
    California found.

    Fairweather said that since she last lived in Los Angeles in
    2016, she's noticed fewer affordable places to rent.

    “It used to be that Santa Monica and Beverly Hills were
    expensive, but you could find affordable housing on the
    Eastside,” she said. “But that got expensive and you had to find
    housing near South Central. Now, there’s nowhere within a two-
    hour commute of downtown Los Angeles that’s still affordable.”

    Bay Area native Kenny Phung, who made the exodus from California
    last fall when his partner got into nursing school in Portland,
    Ore., said high rent prices helped cement the decision to move
    out of state. Phung was living with three roommates in Los
    Angeles for $3,600 total per month but found a two-bedroom
    apartment for less than half that price in Portland. He's
    currently working as a project manager at a San Jose-based
    company that allows him to work remotely.

    “It just didn’t make sense,” Phung said. “Why would I want to
    live in California when I’m working from home and paying
    something outrageous for such a small space when I can try
    things out and be able to save money on rent?”

    Housing was also a major factor in Raghavan's decision to leave
    the Golden State, he said, adding that downtown Miami has
    multiple skyscrapers, more affordable housing, well-paved roads
    and better infrastructure and services.

    “The Bay Area has become a land of minor inconveniences, and
    some are not-so-minor anymore," he said. "Housing and real
    estate have ripples across everything. It makes rent more
    expensive for restaurants, which raises food prices, and it
    causes people to commute over longer distances. Everything
    becomes a burden.”

    This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.

    https://news.yahoo.com/california-exodus-continues-l-san-
    130027864.html

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