Opinion: Until we abandon harmful public policies, CA's “challenges outweigh its allure” for many ex-locals
Pricey housing. Mismanaged environmental issues. Crime à gogo. In a thoughtful essay, Deseret Magazine's Natalia Galicza explains why hundreds of thousands of Californians a year are jumpin' ship for other states—and what the Golden State must do to preserve its "California Dream" of opportunities to establish family, wealth, and innovation (incl. better water management, revised land use policies, 180k new housing units, and more).
California is a land of contradiction as much as it is a land of promise. The wealthiest state and the state with the highest level of poverty. It carries tremendous social and political influence while serving as the butt of national jokes. It has tantalized generations of newcomers in search of fame and fortune — whether through the gold rush, Hollywood or tech booms — while granting it to a disproportionate few. Yet it has remained a beacon of hope to flock toward. Until now.
More than 800,000 Californians left the Golden State between 2021 and 2022. Last year, tens of thousands more were added to the tally. The drastic drop in population even prompted the state to lose a congressional seat for the first time in its history. California has long been held as the core of population growth for the country, yet it’s also struggled with resident retention every year since the start of the new millennium. Population has naturally ebbed and flowed, due in part to factors like international migration, a decrease in births and an increase in deaths. But more recently, people fleeing to other states is the driving force for the dwindling figures. The state now stands on an unprecedented precipice — one where its challenges outweigh its allure.
The housing crisis, worsening crime and climate concerns are at the forefront of the exodus. The state’s housing and rental markets are among the costliest in the country, especially in southern cities like Los Angeles. The National Low Income Housing Coalition reports there are only 24 affordable and available rental homes for every 100 extremely low-income renter households statewide. Other metropolitan hubs like San Francisco have suffered an uptick in high-profile crime — from the fatal downtown stabbing of a tech executive to the carjackings and smashed store windows spreading across the city like contagion. And while people struggle to find housing or fear for their safety, climate change introduces its own hurdles. The state’s sea level rises, its wildfires worsen, its Central Valley sinks lower into the ground and its water management whiplash — from severe droughts to dire floods — further strains resources. …
A survey published by the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California found the cost of housing weighs on the minds of millions of Californians every day. For many, especially in Los Angeles, it’s incentive enough to leave altogether. In 2018, the California Department of Housing and Community development estimated 180,000 new homes needed to be built statewide every year for the next seven years to drive prices down for homeowners and renters in step with the growing affordability gap; fewer than 80,000 homes a year were built over the last decade. Mayor Karen Bass and Newsom have respectively allocated billions of dollars in programs to spur housing construction and shelter options on the city and state level. Yet decades of slow growth land use policies, generations of urban sprawl and bureaucratic barriers to construction have rendered that funding inadequate in keeping up with the pace of the crisis. …
High prices and demand for housing are not new issues or unique challenges to either America’s most populous state or its most populous county. When those challenges come to a head, however, it’s a warning shot for the rest of the nation. If the maxim “as California goes, so goes the country” remains true, it’s imperative to understand the state’s housing shortage and its inevitable aftershocks, crime among them. …
As much as California’s condition can shape the attitudes and population of the country at large, the reverse is also true. Yes, Californians cite housing, crime and environmental issues as growing concerns. But, so, too, does the nation. Recent Gallup data shows only 21 percent of adults in the United States believe it’s a good time to buy a house, which is the lowest percentage in almost 50 years; 63 percent of Americans describe nationwide crime as extremely or very serious — the highest point in more than two decades; and 61 percent report actively worrying about global warming. The Golden State’s tribulations are clear and calculable. Though they could be symptomatic of a national problem, more than a state one.
For all of the state’s population decline and misgivings, there are also its reasons to stay. In 2021, a study conducted by the University of California to debunk the idea of a California exodus found a majority of residents still believe in the “California dream.” Despite everything, their search for wealth, fame, or — at the very least — security, goes on. …
As for me, my time in California had drawn to an end. On my last day in the Central Valley, I visited Tulare Lake, one year after the historic winter that refilled it. Water still stretched for miles and skated along the horizon. Debris and bacteria that flows from the rain-drenched farms had caused algae to form, the water an opaque green, the shoreline dotted with the occasional dead seagull. Victims of avian botulism.
Yet dozens more ducks and shorebirds waded in the temporarily respawned wetland. They, like their human neighbors, forge homes in inhospitable landscapes. For as long as they can withstand it.
Read the whole thing here.
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