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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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