Morning Wire - The Great California Exodus | 7.16.23

Episode Date: July 16, 2023

According to the LA Times, forty percent of California residents are now considering leaving the state. We speak to some of the 700,000 people who have already moved out of the state about the reasons for their departure and what the migration means for the rest of the country. Get the facts first on Morning Wire. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

According to the LA Times, 40% of California residents are now considering leaving the state. Census data shows that the mass exodus from the Golden State has continued post-COVID and shows no signs of stopping. The state has been hit with a net loss of nearly 700,000 people since 2020, more than any other state in the nation. In this episode, we discussed the Great California Exodus, what's driving it, and what it means for the rest of the country. I'm Daily Wire, editor-in-chief John Bickley with Georgia Howe. It's July 16th, and this is a Sunday edition of Morning Wire. Joining us to discuss the exodus from America's most populous state is Daily Wire reporter Amanda Prestiz Yakima. Hey, Amanda. So how significant are these numbers out of California?

Hey, John, it's not looking too good for California, and it really hasn't for years. Census data show a loss of about 509,000 residents from April 2020 to July of 2022. that's second in the nation only behind New York, another blue state that's struggling with population loss. New York lost about 15,000 more people to edge out California. However, if you look at just the total number of people who moved out of the state during that period, that number is nearly 700,000 people, and that is the highest in the nation. 700,000, that's a sizable percentage of the state's 40 million. So why are we seeing this mass exodus from these blue states, California in particular,

Are the reasons commonly assumed? For the most part, yes. It largely comes down to freedom, cost of living, crime, and safety, the stuff that really matters to Americans. California had some of the strictest lockdown measures in the United States. It has the highest personal income tax rate,

some of the most onerous regulations, and about half of all homeless people live in California. It's true that the state is the most populous in the union, but it only makes up a total of about 12% of the U.S. population. So a really high number there. Yeah. Tack on this trend of remote work, which allows people to move and you've got yourself in Exodus. I wanted to learn more about this trend of people leaving, especially after lockdown restrictions have eased.

So I spoke to Scott Shepard, a real estate agent who founded Exit California.org back in 2019 right before the pandemic. Once I started to see the trends take place and the fact that I started working with more clients than I had worked with up into that. point, I decided to build a model around it. Shepard told me people were already on the edge of leaving the state before COVID hit because of things like costs of living, outrageous taxation and crime and homelessness, himself included. Shepard and his family picked up and left California, the only place he had ever called home back in 2019 for a lot of those same reasons.

My wife and I were doing well financially, but we were, you know, bleeding out. We make good money, but it's like a sieve, you know, it's just in the front of door and out the back door. Then these really draconian COVID measures were implemented and pushed those people on edge who hadn't moved yet right out of the state. Shepard said he witnessed the peak of move inquiries during the pandemic, which is really no surprise. I asked what has changed since then, and he said only the matter of urgency in those trying

to get out of California. I think maybe if anything, individuals who were filling the squeeze during COVID, some of them weren't ready, but forced themselves to be ready. Now I feel like people who are still wanting to leave, but maybe feel like, okay, at least the heightened sense of fear of this lockdown and all the measures being put in place has kind of eased. I still want to move, but I still have things to take care of before I can actually make that move.

But I still have a lot of clients that have their eyes on another state. It's just they're going to need to wait a little bit longer to make it happen. I also spoke to 46-year-old Tito Soto. He lived in California, his whole life. before he picked up a move with his wife and two high school-age sons back in 2021 during the pandemic. The move was so urgent, Soto actually had to quit his job where he'd worked for 24 years without having something lined up in Nashville where he moved. I've been wanting to get out of California for many years. Multiple reasons, obviously, the expenses, cost of living is more than anything, was really the push.

Soto told me how hard it was on his children to be out of school in California and, out on things like sports due to those really extreme lockdown measures? I think with COVID and everything the way that went down, that was, I think, the straw that broke the camel's back. You know, we finally just, like, we got to get out of here. I mean, the big trigger, I believe, was really my kids and the things that were at their schools being shut down for so long, you know, a lot of talks about having vaccine requirements, things like that, for them to go to school. When they were out of school for, I think, a year time for a little bit when they did finally go back.

He also expressed to me the intolerance he witnessed in California over his personal politics. That certainly played a role in his relocation too. Politics started coming into play, but even then for a long time, it really never was that bad until the last few conservatives that I had a voice at that point. On the flip side, there are, of course, people who can't imagine leaving the state and just love California. I spoke to Susan Farris, a former Navy nurse and now Politbu. publicist who has lived in several states and is originally from New Jersey. She's now lived in California for 25 years. I love the environment here. I absolutely love it. I have always loved the ocean

as I grew up in New Jersey on the central coast. So the ocean means a lot to me. But as a birdwatcher and nature photographer, I love the lagoons. I just love the nature and the environment around here. Ferris really gushed over California's geography, upsetting the weather, theater, the attractions and the diversity in the state. But she did acknowledge some drawbacks. The prices have gone up, I think, since COVID and everything, prices are higher probably everywhere. But, you know, the gas prices, the electric bill, cable, food, restaurant,

definitely have increased over the past year or so. Safety, crime, it comes and goes. And when I asked her about the number of people leaving in California, Farris said she thought it might be due to rising prices and the housing crisis in the state, which seems to at least partly align with the analysis from Shepard. I wonder if it's just the amount of income and the housing prices to be able to sustain, or even the rentals are pretty high here too. So it's difficult, especially for young people, you know, just starting out that might want to buy a house.

It's difficult for them to buy houses in this market. high housing costs are certainly a major factor in this trend. So where are these people that are leaving California moving to? Well, states like Idaho, Tennessee, Texas, and Florida have had an influx in their population since COVID. Texas has had a net gain of nearly 640,000 people, with Florida picking up a net of nearly 800,000 people. Those states largely resisted lockdown measures during COVID and are governed far more conservatively. I asked Shepard if he noticed a trend in where Californians were looking to relocate. And here's what he had to say. I did a quick analysis of our gross data, just our relocation form somewhere or the other. There was about 51,000 total

entries that we received. I ended up analyzing that to see if there was a particular trend in the way of maybe a red state relocate or a blue state relocate. So out of the top 20 states, 13 of them were trending on a conservative red state and seven of them were blue state. So Texas was the top, Idaho, Nevada, Arizona, and Washington. Not every single person that I talked to was motivated for political reasons, but I could definitely say a hefty portion of every conversation I had had some political undertone on their reasons for wanting to leave. Soto has personally seen an influx of Californians moving to the greater Nashville area. I couldn't tell you the number of people that I know move just here in the greater Nashville area, there's 10 families that I personally know that have

moved within 20, 30 miles of me. That's 10 families from one small city in Los Angeles County that have moved within 20, 25 miles, and we're 25, 2,000 miles away from Los Angeles. It will absolutely continue, in my opinion. So these policies that are causing so many Californians to flee the state, are leaders in the state actually backing away from? from them at all? No, not at all. It seems to be business as usual in California. Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom faced a recall effort in 2021, but handily fended that off,

and then coasted to re-election last year. Newsom did try to lure residents to California by buying up billboards in seven GOP-led states, including Texas, touting California as an abortion destination. He even aired a TV commercial in Florida. Freedom? It's under attack in your state. Republican leaders, they're banning books, making it harder to vote, restricting speech in classrooms, even criminalizing women and doctors.

I urge all of you living in Florida to join the fight or join us in California. This ad aired on July 4th last year, but it doesn't seem to have stemmed the flow out of the state of people or businesses. Tesla, Oracle, Align, Hewlett-Packard, Yelp, Dropbox, and Airbnb have all reduced their company footprint in the state. as has the Daily Wire. Right. Amanda, thanks for reporting. That was Daily Wire reporter Amanda Presta Jacamo. And this has been a Sunday edition of Morning Wire.