Dave Horton, 58, lived in California for 40 years. Two months ago, he and his wife packed up their Bay Area home and moved across the country to Tampa, Florida—joining thousands of other residents fleeing the state.
California’s beautiful coastal beaches, mild weather, and laid-back culture aren’t enough to keep residents around anymore, they say. Thus, migration to other states has been coined the “California Exodus.”
“It’s a general tenor that the respect for [the] middle class or upper middle class and the wealthy has diminished,” Horton told The Epoch Times. “And it seems like the state is moving more toward the ultra-haves or the ultra-poor with no space in the middle.”
High Living Costs, COVID Rules, and Crime
Horton said his wife, who leans more liberal, ultimately became aware of issues plaguing the state’s middle-class residents. He cited the high cost of living, the COVID-19 mandates shutting down businesses and requiring workers and school children to be vaccinated, and business regulations as a few reasons they decided to leave.With an income tax rate of 13.3 percent, California leads the nation on top of an 8.84 percent tax rate for businesses. In addition to permits and regulatory costs depending on the county and city, the state isn’t as business friendly as others.
In major cities—such as San Francisco and Los Angeles—with rents averaging $2,500, many are ditching being renters to own property in cheaper cities elsewhere.
According to recent data by Best Places, an informational database about the housing market across the nation, San Francisco is 169 percent more expensive to live in compared to Tampa. The data analyzes food and groceries, health, housing, median housing cost, utilities, transportation, and other miscellaneous categories.
“Even a few friends that are still in the Bay Area have bought properties out of state and as soon as their children are out of school … they’re moving,” Horton said.
Their lives have improved significantly since leaving California, he said, because of the lower cost of real estate in Tampa. More homebuyers moved to Florida compared to a year ago, according to Redfin, a home buying and selling website.
Nationwide, San Francisco and Los Angeles rank first and second, respectively, for residents moving to other locations, Redfin reported in July. New York City, Washington, D.C., and Seattle round out the top five.
In the Golden State, the average cost to own a home as of 2021 is more than $800,000, up 34.2 percent from the previous year, according to the California Association of Realtors. The U.S. national average is around $400,000.
Horton, who works in technology, isn’t alone.
Software developer Jolex de Pilar, 41, moved from Los Angeles to Texas in March. For De Pilar, his wife, and two children, it wasn’t the high cost of living that drove them away, but the COVID-19 vaccine mandates and the increase in crime.
He said while grocery shopping at a Pavilions in Orange County, he and his family witnessed a robbery.
“I could immediately tell because [the man] just looked off, and he was sticking all these alcohol bottles into his bag,” he told The Epoch Times. “And then he looked at me—we caught eyes actually—and I don’t know if he thought I was going to snitch on him or anything, but I didn’t know if he was armed or how serious he [was], so I just let it go.”
Minutes later, he saw police arrive outside the store, but the suspect was already gone.
The Public Policy Institute of California, a nonpartisan research group, examined the state’s crime trends in 2021 and found an increase in property and violent crimes—including homicides—in Los Angeles, Oakland, San Diego, and San Francisco.
Now, De Pilar and his family live in Cedar Park, Texas.
Businesses Leaving the Golden State
Among the tech companies moving out of state are Uber, Airbnb, Oracle, Yelp, and Tesla, which left for other states last year.
In the first half of 2021, more than 70 company headquarters left California—mostly for Texas, Tennessee, and Arizona—according to a Hoover Institution of Stanford University report.
Young People Moving for Better Opportunities
It’s not just the big companies and the older, well-to-do that are leaving. Young adults are also leaving for better-paying jobs and a chance to own a home one day.Los Angeles native Sebastian Hardy, 25, was a gig worker bartending for three years before the coronavirus pandemic struck.
“And then COVID happens and boom, nothing. And L.A. and California especially, [are] not the same anymore,” he told The Epoch Times. “It’s not a place to start your life, it’s very difficult.”
Prior to the pandemic, Hardy was already struggling to make ends meet in California, including trying to get a real estate career off the ground, he said.
He moved to Arizona in May and is now working remotely in banking fraud prevention for a financial service company.
He said he is able to afford an apartment, spending $1,050 on rent monthly near the city.
“You don’t realize how lucky you are to be born in a place like L.A.,” he said. “And you know, back in the 90s and the late 90s, early 2000s, it was a really great place.”
A new study from the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago reported California’s 56 percent rate of outbound moves between 2018 and 2019, which increased to almost 60 percent from 2020 to 2021. The group studied data trends from the moving company United Van Lines.
The California exodus is a phenomenon that researchers have been examining for more than a decade.
Since 2000, the state has experienced its slowest population growth, which caused the loss of a congressional seat for the first time in its history, according to the Public Policy Institute of California’s January report.
